Idea: EasyPost and shipping rule Fallback/Piggyback options.

[Michael Weekley]

As we all know, using something to estimate shipping isn't going to be perfect. As seen in a bug report I made the EasyPost API may spaz under certain conditions. This isn't necessarily a bug in the way IPS handles it but I submitted it anyway.

While currently EasyPost does a great job at calculating estimates for single items, as well as making us shipping labels based on the dimensions we put in, it can get pretty tricky if that's your only shipping method . And, well.. It can fail.

Today I was bored again and made a zone map based on my location with all the priority rates per pound broken down as zones in the shipping methods as my default shipping option. The only problem with this is sometimes the prices would be much more expensive than if heavy items could fit in a flat rate box.

For example if two items were 10 pounds each and I was shipping to California. That would be 20lbs and $48.10

But, say they were 6" statuettes, so side by side they could fit in a USPS Large Flat Rate Box and shipping would only be $17.90.

Now, the current setup breaks us down by invoice total, weight, and number of items rule sets.

The problem with that is your restricted to one of those methods per set. So if you're using weight, you can't have it switch over to free shipping over/under a certain price. You also can't address "exceptions" to the rules in general, like my example above. What I'm suggesting is some type of exception within the shipping rates, and allowing it to use various methods in one rule set.

For example:

Shipping Method 1

- Weight Rule - 20lbs Shipping = 48.10

-- if item [count] fits within flatrate box Shipping = Flat Rate option depending on size

--- if not, show regular options = 48.10

---- if item matches "free shipping" exception, give them free shipping.

 

Am I thinking too far ahead or is this doable? It just kind of sucks that we can't mix the options when making shipping rates and have to use multiple sets.