There's got to be more to shipping than this, right?

[enchant1]

The fact that I can't find anyone else complaining about this leads me to believe that there's a solution that I haven't discovered.

I'm a little stunned to find out that paypal only provides five tiers of shipping based on weight. That is, you can set it up something like this:

1-5 lb - $5

6-10 lb - $10

11-15 lb - $14

16-20 lb - $19

21-25 lb - $23

And that's it. This seems mind-bogglingly limited to me. Why not just a simple formula like:

first pound: $5

ea addl pound: $3

The problem with the "only five" method is that at some point, people get free shipping regardless, or you set that last tier to something so astromonically high that no one will order that much.

Is there something I'm missing, or is the paypal shipping truly this braindead?

[enchant1]

We're using paypal as the ecommerce site - simply the paypal buttons.  This business hasn't sold via ecommerce before and only has five items.  Not enough to warrant a complex shopping cart system.  Also, I'm pretty sure that no system will integrate with their local shipper.  I'm working on writing one myself.

[DPCreations]

@enchant1

Ok.  You want to use PayPal calculated shipping as your method to determine shipping costs.

Click on your profile (upper right corner of your PayPal account).

Click on My selling tools, bottom of list on left.

Scroll to botom and select update for shipping calculations.

Add new shipping method.

[enchant1]

Good, now we're on the same page.  I've done exactly what you said.

I'd copy and paste from my original message, but this forum software doesn't allow that for some reason.  I can only ask that you look at it again, starting from "paypal only provides five tiers of shipping..."

[DPCreations]

When click on add a new shipping method it asks for information about shipping countries/states.  That should be the first place to start.

At what step did you have a problem?  How did you get the the bracket options?

I can only look for an answer if I know what steps you take.

[enchant1]

Ok, we create zones throughout the country.  They're shipping from the southeast (US), so it's obviously more to ship to Oregon than Florida, etc.

Now we've got a page of "domestic shipping methods", one for each zone, with checkboxes next to them.  I check a box and then "Edit" (bottom-right).

This brings me to the "edit domestic shipping method" page.  Toward the bottom of that is the shipping method section with the shipping rates.  This is the critical part.  The shipping should be calculated by weight.  It'd be nice if it was $x for the first pound and $y for every pound after that.  But they want you to say that from 1 pound to 2 pounds costs this much, then from 2 pounds to 3 pounds costs that much, etc.  And they give you only five ranges.  THIS is where the problem is.

And even if they had an infinite amount of ranges, it'd still be awkward to code, but at least possible.

This company sells industrial shelving units.  So let's say they weigh:

Unit A - 129 pounds

Unit B - 184 pounds

Unit C - 247 pounds

Unit D - 255 pounds

Unit E - 313 pounds

So based on what a customer wants to order, the shipping rates could vary wildly.  They *could* order just one Unit A.  Or they might order 2 Unit Bs and 17 Unit Ds.

[DPCreations]

When you select the add shipping method you should see an option to select where you are shipping.  What did you add here?

Next ti will ask you set up calculated shipping, so you would set up for weight and then select the weight brackets that you wll use and the price for each bracket.

Is this what you are doing?

[enchant1]

---

@DPCreations wrote:

When you select the add shipping method you should see an option to select where you are shipping.  What did you add here?

Next ti will ask you set up calculated shipping, so you would set up for weight and then select the weight brackets that you wll use and the price for each bracket.

Is this what you are doing?

---

 (first question) - For each state in the zone, I click on the state, then click the Add button to add them to that zone.

(2nd question) - yes, that's what I'm doing.

[DPCreations]

Ok, so you are creating your own shipping zones based on states you include in each zone.

Now for each zone you will need to work on the wegith brackets and the price you want changed for each weight bracket within each zone.

Is that correct?

[enchant]

Yes, that's right

[DPCreations]

So now you just add your shipping charges for each of the bracket weights in each of the zones you created.  It's just a cumbersome process.