Exclude a specific product from a shipping option

[extragear]

Hi:

We are adding a new type of product to our site. Due to its size and weight, we want to exclude it from one shipping method. We use the currency method to determine shipping rates. And offer standard ground UPS and charge for USPS Priority Mail as shipping services.

Is there a way to exclude USPS priority mail as a shipping option? (This item is too big/weighs too much for USPS) Poking around I dont see anyway of using the options in the Shopsite interface to achieve this.. As a stop gap measure I put a note in the ordering options box indicating that the product is excluded from USPS shipping even though its shown as an option. In addition I plastered it on the free shipping, shipping and policy pages. Not very elegant, but its a start. Plus it would only show up when someone orders that item.

If handling this through the shopsite interface isnt an option, what about custom programming where a script checks to see if the product entered in the cart matches a list of specific SKUS and if it does it removes USPS? Note, there are only about 12 of these types of products.

Thanks
Tim

[Jim]

You could use the Custom Shipping API to calculate rates for such products. However, if you have other shipping calculation methods enable those would also display so the shopper would still see rates for UPS, USPS, Currency shipping. The only way to not see those would be to have a custom shipping API do all of the shipping calculations.

Another thing you might consider (if you don't want to use realtime shipper such as UPS, FedEx, USPS or Shipping api) is using the weight instead of currency but use it differently. Set the weight equal to the price, except for products that are oversize and for them use a larger value. Your shipping rate table would remain the same except that you would add additional larger values for the over size items.

[gentlemans01]

Hi Tim

I'm not sure who you host with, but if it's Lexiconn (like us,) they have a great custom shipping module which does precisely what you want:

http://www.lexiconn.com/ecommerce/shopsite/shipping_module.html

Before that module, we had to

We use it to exclude certain restricted items from shipping outside the US at all, and also to force orders with oversized items to choose from a different list of shipping options.

BTW, we switched to Lexiconn from another shopsite host and couldn't be happier. Great crew over there, and very knowledgeable about shopsite's inner workings.

Hope this helps.

-Chris