Solutions to USPS Shipping Problem?

[Kiriyo]

USPS does not include all of their international shipping methods in the information they provide MIVA - packages under 4 pounds may be shipped by Airmail Letter Post, Surface Letter Post, or Global Priority, but none of those methods are offered.

1. Does anyone know how to contact them to see if these methods could be included? (I'm lost in their bureaucracy)

2. Is there a way around this, by creating a shipping table by weight for each of these methods, and including them along with the USPS and UPS options? Or would having tables conflict with the downloaded UPS & USPS info?

[DesignExtend-MSI]

Did you take a look at Viking Coders' UPS Custom Integration? It will provide every solution available via UPS' gateway. So, if it can be calculated via UPS.com, VC's mod will handle it.

[dotCOM_host]

Having manually created weight shipping tables is preferable to anything that needs to make a connection to the outside world. If you use real-time shipping calculators that connect to USPS or UPS (or FedEx or DHL...), you always run the risk that if their servers are down or unreachable, YOUR customers won't be able to complete the transaction and check out from your store. That's a lost sale, or many lost sales. If your shipping is pretty straightforward and you can use weight as the cost determining factor - by all means, spend an hour to set this up in your store as hardcoded values. The less you can depend on 3rd party connections which you can't control, the better the chance your own customers won't run into problems buying from you.

[Kazoobie]

We are having the same trouble configuring our shipping. What we have decided on is the Viking Coders UPS Online Tools Module as the majority of our packages are shipped via UPS. For USPS priority mail to Alaska/Hawaii and International we are setting up the table-based shipping.

dotCOM_host we have been using the table based shipping for five years now, and still haven't perfected the tables. It hurts me to imagine how many thousands of dollars we have lost over the years in shipping. As much as I dislike relying on another parties server, both the daily savings to my company and knowing that my customer is getting an exact shipping quote is worth more than the possibility of a server going offline temporarily.

Kiriyo, please let us know if you find anything out. This has been a constant dilemma for us.

[Kiriyo]

Thanks, we've used the UPS gateway before, and it's great, but it can't handle anything going by USPS (the postal service). And when we offer both choices to our customers, most chose USPS because it's so much cheaper, even though we suggest UPS because it's traceable.

With our new website we have the capacity to ship internationally, and we're hoping it will turn into a fairly significant amount (10-20%) of our business. And USPS/postal service is really the only option here - UPS is way too expensive overseas. It's hard to create tables for international shipping because the methods and costs vary so greatly depending on the weight and to what country it's going. (France costs half as much as Nigeria.) I'll do it if I have to, but it's an inperfect choice. My question here is - can we use BOTH tables and UPS/USPS, or is it only one or the other?

[Kazoobie]

Kiriyo,
I believe you can use both. When I was setting up the UPS gateway yesterday Miva wouldn?t let me deactivate the table based shipping module because there were orders using it. So at one point both modules were activated and it showed all of the different shipping options at the checkout. Our only problem is the order of the options. We want UPS Ground to be offered first and USPS shipping to be last. We found this module that might solve the problem: http://www.emporiumplus.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=wcw&Product_Code=1AA00008 (http://www.emporiumplus.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=wcw&Product_Code=1AA00008)

Good Luck!

[dotCOM_host]

Kazoobie,

You cannot delete modules that are actively used in your store, ie: you have past orders tied to these modules. Your choice is to either delete these past orders (whether they are batched or unbatched), or, simpler method - open the MODULES tree in your store, look up the module in question, click on it, and uncheck the "Active" checkbox. Hit UPDATE, and you are done. The module will still be in the store, it will just not be active, so people going through the checkout process won't see these various shipping options which you may not want displayed.

[Kazoobie]

dotCOM_host,
I wish I would have posted this yesterday. Thanks for the tip. I went through and deleted all of the batched orders, and shut the store down for a few minutes to make the switch. Deactivating the module would have been so easy.

Thanks again.

[Red Flare]

And when we offer both choices to our customers, most chose USPS because it's so much cheaper, even though we suggest UPS because it's traceable.
Actually USPS is traceble (http://www.usps.com/shipping/trackandconfirm.htm?from=global&page=0035trackandconfirm).

[Kiriyo]

*Some* USPS services are traceable, for an additional fee, and additional effort on our part to fill out the forms. With UPS it's part of the basic service. But given a choice people will almost always choose the cheapest option, which in our case is Media Mail (we sell books), which is not traceable. And USPS is not insurable to many countries in the world, unless you choose the expensive services like Global Express ($50 to send a $25 book).

But the relevant information for our on-line store is that USPS (to my knowledge) does not provide all of these services as part of their on-line hook-up to MIVA shipping options, so even if I want to offer the extra proof of delivery options, I can't. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see the full line of their services in the hook-up.

[cdelarte]

Is there a solution to the original question? I too am facing this dilema.

Most of the (lower cost) shipping options are not being returned to Miva for international orders (although they do display for domestic orders).

Internestingly, the lower cost options do display on the USPS web postage calculator and their standalone shipping assistant software which implies that miva is dropping this data.

see this thread for an example http://extranet.miva.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4530&highlight=usps

[Kiriyo]

I don't think MIVA is dropping the data, I think USPS is not offering it.

Some of these choices are not primarily designed for the shipment of merchandise - Letter Post has a four pound limit. Priority Mail doesn't go to all countries, the flat-rate envelope has size limitations.

I think the programming should be able to get around this, but I suspect that USPS isn't interested in making a broad range of choices available when they can get more money through Parcel Post.

Once I understand MIVA more, I'm going to create a weight table to try to get around some of this. If anyone already knows how to do this, I'd appreciate some help.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Not all services that the USPS offers are indeed offered via webtools API.

[cdelarte]

I am confident that USPS IS providing this information. Using their standalone shipping assitant tool which is configured to query production.shippingapis.com, I can confirm that the XML response contains ALL shipping options for a 1 pound lettermail package to canada. Miva is only displaying 4 of these options (the most expensive) Please see the screenshot:
http://images6.theimagehosting.com/usps.th.gif (http://server6.theimagehosting.com/image.php?img=usps.gif)

http://server6.theimagehosting.com/image.php?img=usps.gif

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

That is not using the MIVA supplied module, that is a tool from USPS.

[cdelarte]

That is not using the MIVA supplied module, that is a tool from USPS.

Which brings us back to the original question of why isnt the miva module displaying this information which is clearly being provided by USPS webtools?