I don’t like the 3 methods to calculate shipping charges in cs-cart. I don’t think that they are customer friendly, really penalizing the customer with higher charges the more they buy.
Another method is instead of putting in a products weight, assign them a ‘freight class’ from 1-5 with each class costing a different amount.
The customer is charged shipping costs according to the product with the worst freight charges, but not more. If the customer buys 5 products all of them class ‘1’, he’s charged class 1 cost once (not 5 times). If he buys 5 class ‘1’ products, and then 2 class ‘2’ products, he is charged class ‘2’ charges once (not twice and no class 1 charges).
1 .The customer can quickly understand shipping costs
2. Will not feel inhibited in what they can buy because the shipping costs just get higher and higher each time they add something to their cart, encourages them to buy more.
3. Extra shipping costs for me is offset by the fact that the customer bought more.
Anything wrong with this method? Isn’t this method common in other shops? I assume ‘weight’ is otherwise the ‘normal’ way to calculate costs?
[quote name=‘Tail’s’]
The customer is charged shipping costs according to the product with the worst freight charges, but not more. If the customer buys 5 products all of them class ‘1’, he’s charged class 1 cost once (not 5 times). If he buys 5 class ‘1’ products, and then 2 class ‘2’ products, he is charged class ‘2’ charges once (not twice and no class 1 charges).
[/QUOTE]
Bloody great idea, as always I’ve been dependant on totalling up the costage per item however $24 for 3 items usually costs somewhere near $10 so I can fully understand where you’re coming from… I’m all ears if your planning on something.
I need this feature!!!
Is this happening?
Would this be hard to customize? We might be willing to pay someone to do this if our customer will not bend on the way they want to charge shipping.
Thanks.
B
i think this is easy to do but not sure, need to think about it.
i get charged my the postal services i use, by weight! they dont go my class, lol!
Fair enough. 
My customer will be handling their own shipping and would like to have a flat rate.
This is fine and easy enough, but they sell oversized items. Not by weight, but size that cost more to ship.
They would like to have “Classes” so that if one of these items ends up in the cart a higher flat rate is charged.
Anyone?
B
ok heres a coupld of ideas.
in the manage shippings, setup the classes, each class with a weight limit.
class 1 = 0 → 1000g
class 2 = 1001g → 10000g
class 1 item wieghts will be a flat rate of 1g. so 10 class 1 items will be a total of 10g so it will charged the class 1 rate.
this is a easy way of doing it but limited.
a improvement on this would be the same but instead of totaling the order weight. the total order weight would be the total order weight / number of items.
Yes, I was trying to work something like this out but was worried that if someone ordered enough product, it would hit the next weight limit.
I guess if the gap was big enough it would work though wouldn’t it.
So from your example, I would give normal items a weight of 1g each and oversized 1001?
Thanks for your help with this.
B
you might get a few cases they may be charged the next level but that will be a very small percentage, if that happens then you can always adjust their order. also if you make the gap big enough then this will reduce errors further 
nearly got into the shower. Just had another idea.
Why dont you treat the weight variable as a volume variable? each product has a volume value and build the shippings costs round volume breaks?
Great, I’m going to give this a try. Thanks so much for your help.
B
[quote name=‘ashtek’]nearly got into the shower. Just had another idea.
Why dont you treat the weight variable as a volume variable? each product has a volume value and build the shippings costs round volume breaks?[/QUOTE]
Not sure I quote follow.
from my understanding you want shipping costs to be volume based i.e. by size not weight.
so i could setup my shipping charges by volume i.e. width x length x height.
costs
band 1 = 0 → 1M3
band 2 = 1.01M3 → 10M3
if i have a dvd player. which is 0.3m x 0.2m x 0.05m == 0.003M3. so that would fall into band 1 shipping.
Now i might have a a big rear projection tv. 1.5m x 1M x 0.75M = 1.125M3. so that would fall into band 2 shipping.
Any clearer? or am i barking up the wrong tree?
No, that makes sense now.
The Volume would accumulate though, so several smaller items would eventually add up to the larger items and cost the same to ship.
I think I’m going to try your first idea. Thanks again.
B