Based on the discussion about FREE SHIPPING and the comment Jaime made about needing to completely redo the shipping code to accomodate what we were discussing...I've been doing a lot of thinking. Not sure if this is the best way to do it...but it might spark other ideas that help Jaime make improvements to the shipping system.
One of the things that came to mind was "Shipping Groups". Groups the can contain shipping methods from multiple shipping providers. Right now we have to choose between "enabled services" (all of them) and "a specific service". If we need multiple services, but not all of the enabled services...we have no option. For instance, I have product like T-Shirts that I would like to be able to ship USPS in some situations, and UPS in others (primarily when other items are ordered that can only be shipped UPS). If I were able to create a group with all of the basic UPS services as well as USPS services and enable the Shipping Group on the T-Shirts, customers could pick from either when checking out (I'm sure they would pick the cheaper USPS). If the customer puts another product in their cart that only has UPS, they would only be offered UPS at checkout.
This same concept would let us create a group that has all of the basic UPS services as well as a custom "Free UPS Ground" or "Free Shipping" service. For products that we want to offer this free shipping on, we select the group that has it. Otherwise, we select a default shipping group (that may only contain regular UPS services).
Another possibility would be a setup similar to the product options. Default would be equal to "enabled services" or to some sort of default group of shipping methods. Selecting "custom" would drop down a box with radio buttons to select specific shipping methods to enable for that particular product. This would again allow selection of a custom "Free Shipping" option, or possibly USPS in my T-Shirt example...or any other custom subset of shipping methods.
To me, this setup seems simpler than using rules to accomplish custom combinations of shipping methods. Rules could still be used for making specific adjustments to methods based on whatever criteria are needed by the store owner.
Just some thoughts...hopefully they will generate a discussion or other ideas that may be better than mine. I'm running into issues almost daily that stem from the limitations of the current shipping setup, I don't really want to have to think about a cart change but some of these are beginning to cause significant extra work on the part of myself and my staff...work that my cart should be able to do for us!
Reply With Quote
