Bugs in shipping rate calculation: IMPORTANT

1. nopCommerce version = 1.7/1.8/1.9
2. Any private modifications you made to your nopCommerce - NO
3. The version of MS SQL database you're running nopCommerce with - MS SQL 2005 / 2008
4. Anything else that could possibly be relevant. Err on the side of too much information, rather than too little. - NO

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I have reported many bugs in regard to shipping rates but can't find my previous topics.

I just found few new bug(s) in shipping rate calculation. (in FedEX / UPS etc)

It seems like shipping rate is not being calculated correctly in nopCommerce project 1.7/1.8/1.9. If these bug are not resolved, they will continue in upcoming versions.

1) Incorrect rate calculations:

I activated and configured FedEX and UPS on nopCommerce 1.9version.

I added a product with following dimensions: http://img806.imageshack.us/img806/4913/weightz.jpg

When I added this product (with 1 item) in the shopping cart and tried to checkout I get UPS ground rate = $12.61

Now when I make increase the quantity (2 items) of same product I get UPS ground rate = $13.99

(P.S. The origin / dispatching state is different and shipping address state is different)

It is clearly visible that making the weight double with same dimensions the rate is only increase by $1.38 ? which is totally incorrect

Then I calculated the rate from UPS website directly and I was surprised to see the price difference. The nopCommerce project is calculating incorrect prices (which are way too low from the actual shipping rates)

Same problem with FedEX and other shipping methods like 2 day ,3 day, overnight etc.


2) 2nd bug : I added a product in database with a price value of $3000 - $4000 with same dimensions I mentioned above. Now once again I am getting the exact same shipping rate. BUT THE TRUTH IS shipping companies like UPS and FedEX automatically adds some extra charges in the shipping rate when any item is above a certain value and store owner is liable to pay those expenses which puts the store owner in LOSS.

So currently there is no provision in shipping rate calculation that if any item's price will exceed a certain value, extra charges will be added.


3) 3rd bug. If any store owner gets order from nopCommerce website and then gets the products shipping directly by manufacturer.

In majority of cases the manufactures have separate boxes for more than 1 items. In case of laptops. If any customer  is placing an order for 2 laptops - obviously the manufacturer of that laptop will ship 2 separate box but nopCommerce project is not taking that into consideration which again puts the store owner in LOSS.


4) 4th bug/add on feature . Currently no shipping item insurance feature is available and many times for expensive products the insurance is necessary / required.

5) 5th bug/add on feature . No feature available for order/product for which origin / dispatching place is more than 1. Currently only 1 origin place can be defined in shipping methods but there are many other situation in which orders/products requires more than 1 place to ship. Many product / order could be shipped in parts from different location.

It would be great if nopCommerce project have provision for all the above mentioned issues in order to minimize the probability of incorrect shipping rates calculation. And like I mentioned above, If these bug are not resolved, they will continue to cause problem for store owners in upcoming versions too.

I understand that nopCommerce team is busy with 2.0version (which is being developed from scratch) but I guess these bugs needs to be fixed ASAP to make a successful and strong eCommerce project.

Andrei,

I would really appreciate if you could comment on these issues.

1) Incorrect rate calculations. mwoffenden already suggested a solution with "3D Bin Packing" simulation here and here

2nd bug. The mentioned shipping providers should be refactored to use this option

3rd bug. I don't think that some of existing shopping carts can solve this issue now. If you have a good solution, please share it

4th bug/add on feature. The appropriate shipping providers should be refactored to use this option

5th bug/add on feature. Fully-featured warehouses are also not implemented yet.
P.S. 5th point is not bug. This one is a new feature that are not implemented yet

I think there is a confusion because there are several ways to go about shipping packages.

A client I have already has each of the products in their own box and ships out the individual boxes, it seems another approach is to put smaller boxes in a bigger box and ship just one big box.

When I had tried the ups shipping module, it's calculation was based on the idea of putting smaller boxes into a bigger box to get the calculation - which would be wrong for how we are shipping the products, after making changes it's working now for how we ship out the packages.

People should be made aware of these two approaches with shipping - currently the weight, width, height, length are not being used as items already boxed with those specs, they are being used to determine how big of a box you need to send and gets the calculation off of that big box.

The 3d model would need to be used, imo, for that type of "put smaller items in one big box" shipping. For those who send out multiple individual packages though, there needs to be some type of option for turning off the 'put it all in one big box' approach.

Hello dfwitdepartment,

Thanks for commenting on the shipping issues that nopCommerce has. The method you proposed above is just an alternative that can only be used to avoid the current bugs/issues that shipping modules is having. I personally don't think it is a feasible SOLUTION that can work for all online businesses which are based on nopCommerce.

There are so many online stores which accepts orders from the customer and then they contact manufacturers for product shipment and product is directly shipped to the customer. Many times it is not in the store owner's hands to control the shipping method. It is not feasible that store is suggesting manufacturing company that they should put small boxes in a big one. Manufacturers / warehouses follow their own methods for shipment which CANNOT be controlled by a single store owner.

I think the only solution is to FIX the rate calculation bugs in nopCommerce (which should be based on weight and dimensions of each product).

Talking about individual box shipment - The only solution that will work for all online stores is that - Providing an option in database for each product "Is applicable for individual box/package?". So while storing/adding product in the database the store owner will enter "True" or "False" for this option and when anyone places an order for that particular item, if product quantity will be more than "1" then this individual shipment will come into action.

(For rest of the product for which value will be "False" that means they can be shipped in a single box even if quantity is more than 1)

Similar kind of solution should be added in the nopCommerce shipping module for expensive products. Like I mentioned above many times shipping company asks for the value of the product if it exceeds certain amount/price limit. If the product is expensive, the store owner (or the person who is sending the shipment) is liable to pay extra charges which can't be avoided. So I guess a solution should be available for this type of shipment also.

Would be great to have all these issues fixed in upcoming versions to avoid store owner's loss.

abcd_12345 wrote:

I'm thinking of adding "individual box shipment" to Shipping Director  ( http://www.noptools.com/ ).  Just wondering if there's a big demand, and also whether it should do each product(variant) in the cart, or if quantity > 1 do for each item?  (Or do we need ability to do either?).

I won't be "Providing an option in database...", but "Is applicable" could then be done by using a Category (Published=false).

"I personally don't think it is a feasible SOLUTION that can work for all online businesses which are based on nopCommerce."

I wasn't meaning to say its a solution, i was stating that its currently the problem.

as of 1.9, the shipping module does some funny calculations involving combining the dimensions of the boxes; thus the calculated shipping rate from UPS is not based off of factual package sizes but rather formulas based off of an assumption that you put all your packages in a big box.

If there was an add-on out there that gave people accurate shipping rates, i imagine it would also need to let them specify how they package products - are products already in their own shippable boxes or are products expected to be combined into a bigger box?

Unless the add-on provided a flexible and working solution, i would just modify the code myself to match the clients specific needs.

Well, I plan on adding a basic packaging capability into Shipping Director.  If you've seen the beta, then you should know that it was designed with flexibility in mind.  You will be able to enter an expression that determines when to use a new box.   Packing, however, is not a trivial problem, and you won't likely to be able to express an optimal bin packing algorithm in a single expression  (actually, I plan on having both 'before add item' and 'after add item' expressions).  But, this will at least allow for basic packing like box weight capacity, or box volume capacity, and you can also use a Category or maybe product specification to indicate 'separate box' on a per item basis.  In the future, developers should be able to create Packaging plugins, and the Shipping Director will be able to call them similar to how it is calling other Shipping Rate Calculation plugins.

If anyone has thoughts on how they'd like to do basic packaging, I'd be happy to hear them.

My only shipping source is FedEx. They determine the rate using the dimensions. The FedEx plugin for 2.3 is only sending the weight info although the dimension info is being captured to the database.

Any ideas as to why it is only sending the weight and not length, width and height?

After all the install problems I can't use NOPCommerce if I can't resolve this and I'm sure it must be a setting I'm missing.

I have the same problem too on nop 1.90. The problem is the online business is switch to nop 6 months ago and cant change. Fedex works fine when the item are not much like 1-10 items but it's really outrageous when items are more like 20-80,100, even more. We have had customers turn  us down due to this reason. I hope someone can find a solution to this problem soon. It's very important. Thanks.