ShopSite Improvement with UPS Air Versus Ground

[koryb1]

I noticed on my UPS bill shipping "corrections", which of course were always more shipping charges to my UPS account. I determined that this is due to the way UPS treats Air shipments versus Ground.

For Ground shipments, unless the box is really big (5,184 cubic inches), UPS calculates the shipping cost by weight. As we have accurate weights recorded, our Ground shipments calculate accurately.

For Air shipments however, for all shipments, no matter the size of the box, UPS factors in the box size when calculating their charges, and the calculations they use assume items are heavy. For example a 1.5 pound pair of shoes we ship in a 14x10x7 box via Air would actually be charged as if it weighed 5.9 pounds.

ShopSite does have ways of identifying what size box an item would ship in, but this assumes you ship only one item per box. We ship multiple items per box, and for a multi-item order ShopSite would add up all the shipping box sizes together as if they were shipped separately. So that approach isn't accurate either.

The end result is that while the rates we charge for Ground are accurate, each week we get hit with additional charges for Air because ShopSite is not able to effectively account for multi-item shipments that get shipped via Air.

To avoid losing money on shipping each week, I could increase "Handling Charges" or use UPS "Rate Adjustments". However, this would effect all shipments, increasing the Ground rates we're charging which I don't want to do.

So, the "feature request" which seems like an easy one would be to offer a way to set Handling Charges or Rate Adjustments based upon the type of service used. With this control I could leave my Ground rates as they are, and increase my Air rates by 10% or so to cover the amounts I am losing out on with these types of shipments.

The features are in there, but they just need a little more granularity.

Thanks for considering!