Question
Sitting down with UPS today they asked me to go over a few things with you guys to make sure they are included in our shipping information. We would like to use negotiated rates + a handling fee for our shipping rates. We ship a lot of UPS stuff so the shipping charge can be considerably lower than the published UPS rates. We would like customers to know time in transit with other shipping options, such as ground, overnight, 2 day etc. We would also like to use the UPS address validation to make sure every address is entered correctly therefore avoiding shipping to a wrong address. Thanks.
Answer
Here are some thoughts for you about shipping.
- Yes, Store Manager and Checkout will use your negotiated rates with UPS. It does this of course by using your UPS Account Number.
- We do not recommend “showing” a handling fee in Checkout because we’ve learned consumers hate seeing a handling fee. We are able to “bake” handling fees into the shipping fees but when we do we’re unable to show or say anything about UPS because they are no longer sanctioned UPS rates. However, we’ve developed a clever “work-around” that allows you to charge the consumer one rate at Checkout but use a different rate, your negotiated rate, when you ship the items in Store Manager. You do this by telling Checkout to use either the Drop Off Rate or On Call Rate. These rates are more expensive than the Daily Pickup Rate, which is your negotiated shipping rate with UPS.
- Regarding showing Time in Transit to the consumer, this is not a feature we offer today. However, the consumer does get a copy of their UPS Tracking Number when you ship the product in Store Manager. Clicking on this number in their email takes them to the UPS website where they can see this information.
- Checkout already does use UPS Address Validation on City, State and Zip. It will “yell” at the consumer a couple of times if they’ve incorrectly entered this information; however, it will eventually allow them to enter a bad address. We do have some very nice fraud capabilities built into Store Manager.
- Finally, you will want to go to Website > Preferences > Shipping and check off the appropriate Shipping Methods like Next Day, 2nd Day, etc.
Please let me know if you have any more questions. Thank you.
Date Created: 04/16/13