We have been struggling with the real time shipping quotes that our customers are receiving for shipments going by UPS from Canada to USA. It was working but not within the last couple of months. No changes were made to the software.
If I take a typical package with its weight & dimensions, (as they are input into that product in CS Cart) and inquire on the UPS website, the price is always lower by anywhere from 10% - 25%. This is scaring off customers when they see an outrageous price for shipping.
It was happening in V4.3.x and no different moving to V4.9.2. I am waiting for UPS to determine if there's any problem at their end with the access key, account or other issues. In the meantime, is there something I could check at our end?
So far, I've looked at many of the options on the General & Configure tabs in the 'Edit Shipping Method' screen.
Do a UPS real time estimation for a single product.
Compare the data sent to UPS for the quote with the data in the Request/Response. You can use a web based "pretty print" for the XML data after you break it out between the request and response data.
Also make sure you are comparing apples to applies. I.e. that you're not seeing your price on ups.com and telling the api to use retail prices.
Thanks EZ. I just ran a simulation from the customer side after checking all the logging was enabled. The simulation gave me a total of 18 different log entries. I'm going to presume they're errors. They are "http/https requests" and "Shipping requests"
Is there something specific I should be looking for in these logs?
Customers have experienced issues with receiving rates from the Canada Post shipping method. Please make sure that is configured properly and that the shipping rate calculation is correct
Look for a Request/Response to UPS (will be separate requests for each shipping method or carrier).
You should look at the package properties (weight, len, height, width) as well as the rate request type (retail or wholesale or whatever it uses). Then take that info and go to ups.com and enter it and compare the rates returned in the API versus what it shows on your site.
It takes time and awareness of your specific UPS account info. Most likely you are getting a wholesale quote from ups.com and the API is requesting a retail quote.
I have been have a similar problem with my UPS rates. ups.com, cs-cart and quickbooks all showed the same, correct rates for the last 8 months. At some point in October the CS-Cart/UPS rate went throught the roof. What was $10.28 to ship is now $15.36 to the same destination. If I go on to UPS.com the rates are still $10.28 using our UPS account number. The QuickBooks rates show $14.28 and both CS-Cart and QuickBooks are setup to use negotiated rates. Just as a point of information, $14.28 is the UPS Store rate to ship the same package, so something is wrong. I had made no changes to the shipping in CS-Cart when the rate changed.
I just got off the phone with UPS and they issued me a new UPS Rates Access Key. Immediately it did not make any change to the rates on our CS-Cart site, but they suggested I wait 24 hours to see if anything changes. I will report back if any changes happen.
I'm still on 4.7.4 and have not done any upgrade during this time so I don't think the problem is with CS-Cart at this moment. I am still working with UPS to see if they are not serving the correct UPS rates to us using our account number. UPS said something about our account number and possibly not serving the proper rates to third party software connecting to the API. Will get back if anything changes.
You can enable logging of "Http Requests" that will show you what's being sent/returned from UPS. You may have to copy/paste to a web-based "beautifier" to make the XML readable. But flags for what "type" of request is being made should be visible. Additionally you can ensure that the price displayed is in fact the price returned from UPS.
I did what you suggested and found that the standard size box now causes a 1 lb item to be quoted at 2 lbs. This took care of the difference between what was being returned as the shipping cost on our website and what was being shown in Quickbooks. When using 2 lbs for each the rate of $15.36 matches between the two.
I then went over to UPS.com and input the updated package information and UPS.com now also shows $15.36, so all three prices are the same. The only problem is that what is showing is the UPS Standard/UPS Store rate, which is not the rate we are supposed to be receiving. I have sent this information back to our UPS Rep to see if they can fix the problem so that we are receiving the rates we are supposed to get with our UPS Account Number.
The discount rate was working fine until sometime in October. UPS did end a discount program and then start a new program during October. This is why I think it is a UPS problem, not a CS-Cart problem. Unfortunately, I believe we are losing many sales due to this problem.
Our problem is resolved - So, in our case, it turns out that our UPS account had a negotiated rate agreement and a small business rate plan assigned to it. The small business plan rates were overwriting the negotiated rate agreement and so the API output defaulted to the Standard UPS rate. The small business rates can not be served via the UPS API. At least that is what UPS told us. We received a new negotiated rate plan and then UPS removed the two old plans from our account. We waited until a Sunday night UPS cycle took place and we are now receiving the negotiated rates from the UPS API Server. This fixed both the live rates in CS-Cart and within the shipping module of Quickbooks. Still don't know why this happened as up until September we were receiving the rate discount in both CS-Cart and Quickbooks. I will report back if our situation changes.