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usps rate increase = shipping module changes?


Guest conspicuouschick

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Guest midwest

I checked with the post office and they have told me that for Global Priority, they will now be using the regular USPS Priority Packaging and have done away with the Global Priority Packaging.

It used to be that all Global Priority was worked through the Express units. That is now no longer the case. It will go through the Foriegn unit except for Express and Express Guaranteed.

midwest :(

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Guest midwest

All from the same mold :(

Are you calling the number listed in the CC admin ?

If you are, they will not be open for about 2 more hours.

midwest :)

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Guest midwest

I've contacted their support. I believe their customer services is closed right now. I want to see official documentation before trying to implement any changes prior to testing.

Oh you have a SPECIAL number. hehe.

Anyway, the email I sent you as well as the post above by Tim are the only docs I've seen on this.

I know that hafree created a new International Priority varible for Varible Weight which I use and it works great.

I don't know if the same thing can be done for new International Products or not.

Here is the link to the post

http://www.cubecart.com/site/forums/index....l=international

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Guest midwest

Don't feel bad Al,

Neither does anybody else.

On a possitive note, it appears estell has fix the International Shipping in the By Catagory.

One less thing you have to worry about :)

Any luck with the DHL / FED-EX issue?

midwest :(

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Guest conspicuouschick

Special number... I wish.

I'm waiting for their customer support to get back to me. We get no special treatment. :(

I'm sure they're painfully inundated by every merchant in the country at this point. Not that I'm defending them, but as with any other organization, it's not the people that made the decision that are dealing with the fall-out from it.

This dimensional thing is the most disconcerting, for obvious reasons. I spoke briefly with someone who sells on ebay and they did say they have to input the package dimensions as well as weight when computing shipping now. As my prior post indicates, the prices went up yesterday, but that's my concern, it's all based on weight, so what about package dimensions. And even worse, if folks order multiple items, they'll obviously be shipped in a larger package and how will they account for that???

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Guest steveboy

I just spoke with USPS customer service and was told there is nothing they can do until Cube Cart updates their code to accommodate the new USPS info. I'm using V3.0.1.2 and have several mods & plugins; there's no way I can take the week it took me previously to re-create my shopping cart if I have to upgrade. Does anyone have any idea what is necessary to make this work, or has Cubecart provided anything? Many of the posts here refer to individuals providing code or solutions, but I don't have any idea who those people are.

Meantime I don't see that I have a choice but to take down my online store, as currently no one is being charged shipping.

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Well if they publicized their API changes on their site we could do something about it. For such a vast company this seem inexcusable to me.

There is NOTHING we can do until they bother to assist us. Please try not to let this affect your opinion of our software as we have been completely left in the lurch by USPS as well as many other companies I'm sure. :D

I'm truly very sorry for any inconvenience caused.

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Guest steveboy

The rep I spoke to said flat-out that everything that needed to be done to make Cube Cart work had to be done on Cube Cart's end. Which sounded like passing the buck to me.

I guess I will have to shut down my store until this gets sorted out. Sigh. I have truly grown to loathe the USPS. Their handling of the rate increase has been abominable; the email they sent out to online store owners was a yard of XML code that required you be an MIT graduate and IP admin to make any sense of, and no other explanations.

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Yes they are correct that changes will have to be made to the CubeCart end but we cannot do this until we know what these changes should be.

Of course it is impossible for us to make any updates until they publish these changes for us. I've searched high and low and I can't find anything.

We are in stalemate I'm afraid.

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Guest steveboy

Has anyone called their customer service line to find out who they can be directed to or where they can find this info? 1-800-344-7779 (7:00 AM to 11:00 PM EST daily). Online commerce hasn't ground to a halt, so someone's getting this info somewhere, and I doubt the USPS is going to knock and hand it to anyone.

They do have an atrocious website, don't they?

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Guest midwest

First let me say that I know that the All is doing all he can to resolve this issue. The only suggestion I would make is that if you haven't done so already Al, is ask Brooky and sirwilliam to take a look at this as it appears from looking at the files they wrote alot of the shipping files in CC and might have an idea or 2.

Second, Al, take a look at the post by Tim, (email) and the message I sent you. They told me that the V3 is not really nesaccery to Domestic unless you are shipping large packages. However, in many of the International references, it says that those options in V2 will no longer be available.

ex: "After May 13th, Global Express Mail V2 API will no longer be available."

It also states this:

International Rate (IntlRate)

"Changes to the International Rate API (IntlRate) will be implemented in response to the International rebranding."

There is some additonal coding that may need to be added, but I read this as these are changes made at the live server for this api, which is already in CC.

Having read this I am wondering if simply changing the code to V3 from V2 would remedy this. Would that not call from the V3 info that is on the USPS live server? Just an Idea. I would be willing to test this theory if you or someone else could point me to the ALL files that the shipping references are in. They would have to all be changed.

An emplimentation for dimention will need to be coded in however for those shipping large packages (over 84" (length+girth) or 1 cubic foot).

Chick-

I understand your concern about the Size issue. Go to www.usps.gov. Use the rate calculator and you will see that no dimention info is required unless you are shipping a "Large Package"

Once in the rate calculator, click on the "?" next to the package type and it will give you size info.

Ex-

" Use “Package†when the length plus girth (the distance around the thickest part) of a package equals 84 inches or less and it is less than 1 cubic foot.

If you are unsure of your package category, select “Large Package†on the first page of the rate calculator. You will be prompted to enter your package dimensions and the correct rate will be calculated."

Bottom line, unless you are shipping packages over the 84" 1 cubic foot peramiters, don't worry about it.

I can tell you from years of experience, unless you get a real moron ( which is possible of coarse), they ARE NOT going to measure every package and envelope with a tape measure. They absolutly don't have time or personel for that.

Just check your package sizes. I will have some other suggestions on how you and others can handle this for the moment in a later post.

steveboy-

Don't give up the ghost just yet. I have grown to loath them as well. BELIEVE ME when I tell you I have more reasons than most here when it comes to that.

First , calling that number you indicated might or might not help you. most of the time you get " are you using a 3rd party shopping cart" at which point you say yes, and it is over from there.

It is really impossible for them to be able to instruct on how to code the cart. Simply because there are HOW MANY different shopping carts out there? I think you get my point.

HOWEVER, they SHOULD have an IT pro or programmer familiar with at least most of the common programming code and set it up so that Al, or someone as such could send a copy of the file to them & they could then say, "ok, this needs to be here, etc." Just like we do here.

As far as re doing your store, there is really one solution. Back EVERYTHING up and store it on file so you can reload the unchanged files, reload if you goof.

With this cart or with any other, shipping and other updates and changes are going to need to be made that sometimes are not going to be made available by the developers. As much of a pain as it might seem, you need to learn to do this or you can always hire someone.

Many of the solutions you find here were developed by other CC's by trial and error. If you are nervouse about emplimenting mods from a forum post, head over to cubecart.org. There are many Reputable Moders there. I have used a couple myself. See what mods others have implimented to see if those work. Some have them listed in the bottom of thier posts.

Everyone-

Really take a look at your situation and see how you can impliment temporary work arounds for your customers until we can get this issue resolved. You can look at my store and see what I did.

The reason Al is having trouble is because the good ole USPS did not update the application guide BEFORE they made these changes. The most current one is dated March of 2006. I don't know if Al got info before hand or not, but I didn't. No notification at all.

Please be patient and help to get this issue resolved by posting anything you run across that you think might be of help. The more we have working on this this sooner it will get done.

midwest :D

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I've had some official correspondence and I'll try to get the new modules released today. Anyone willing to help me test will be most welcome. I'll attach progress to this topic.

Thanks to midwest for his help with this. :D

*Edit* - The first line of the email from USPS forwarded to me says:

RateV2 will still be available after the release of RateV3, and will suffice unless rates need to be calculated for Large Priority Mail packages.

Surely RateV2 should still be working?

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Guest midwest

I've had some official correspondence and I'll try to get the new modules released today. Anyone willing to help me test will be most welcome. I'll attach progress to this topic.

Thanks to midwest for his help with this. :huh:

*Edit* - The first line of the email from USPS forwarded to me says:

RateV2 will still be available after the release of RateV3, and will suffice unless rates need to be calculated for Large Priority Mail packages.

Surely RateV2 should still be working?

Hey Al,

It Does. Remember me saying that the domestic is fine ? That is what they are refering to.

Unless you are going to ship a package over the dimentions of 84" length+girth or 1 cubic foot, it should work fine. This should apply to all classes EXCEPT for International Mailing.

In regards to the International, in V2, the International was refered to as "Global" , ex: Global Priority, Global Express,. Also some, as in the Parcel post were refered to as "AIRMAIL"- Airmail Parcel Post, etc.

They have consolidated everything in International and renamed them for V3. Now it's First Class International, Priority International, etc.

That is the way it was explained to me anyhow.

Also, I'll be up for a little while. Not sure how much help I can be to you, but if you need help ,let me know.

midwest :D

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Guest conspicuouschick

I've had some official correspondence and I'll try to get the new modules released today. Anyone willing to help me test will be most welcome. I'll attach progress to this topic.

Any news on this would be most welcome.

For whatever reason (I'm sure due to the changes in the module code), my customers can no longer choose "first class mail" as a shipping option but only parcel post. First class rate increases are bad enough but to expect them to pay an unnecessarily high parcel post is ludicrous.

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Guest steveboy

I've simply had to shut down my online store. International customers were being charged for the item but not for shipping. Surely Cubecart isn't alone in being affected like this; aren't there solutions available somewhere? I'm also amazed -- but hardly surprised -- that there was absolutely no news about the USPS servers going down the day of the rate change.

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I've simply had to shut down my online store. International customers were being charged for the item but not for shipping. Surely Cubecart isn't alone in being affected like this; aren't there solutions available somewhere? I'm also amazed -- but hardly surprised -- that there was absolutely no news about the USPS servers going down the day of the rate change.

Steveboy, are you using the normal /class.usps.php file or is it modified?

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I seem to be getting mixed reports as to whether it is working or not. It seems from most that just international shipping is broken.

We are looking into this still.

One thing I've noticed with pre-May 14th changes with the USPS International shipping is that the international options are tied into the domestic shipping options.

For instance, in the admin/usps shipping module settings; If you have one shipping method selected, then the international methods will come up as normal selections.... However, if you have 4 different USPS domestic methods selected then international shipping options will repeat 4 times!

Just wondering if that would have anything to do with USPS Cubecart users to be now suddenly lacking all international shipping options... :)

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Guest Jim Guinn

I seem to be getting mixed reports as to whether it is working or not. It seems from most that just international shipping is broken.

We are looking into this still.

Yes, Al. It is just the International USPS shipping rates that are causing problems. I only ship within the US, and I have had no problems at all this week.

Jim

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Guest ladagerick

I seem to be getting mixed reports as to whether it is working or not. It seems from most that just international shipping is broken.

We are looking into this still.

Yes, Al. It is just the International USPS shipping rates that are causing problems. I only ship within the US, and I have had no problems at all this week.

Jim

I ship world wide and have shut down our store since monday, if there is not a fix by monday is there an simple way to only ship to USA and not allow other countries (or do I delete them one by one?)? Obviously we cannot afford to ship international without shipping charges but I need to get store up for USA customers.

Were are a Non-Profit Ministry so I have a little leeway. :)

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I ship world wide and have shut down our store since monday, if there is not a fix by monday is there an simple way to only ship to USA and not allow other countries (or do I delete them one by one?)? Obviously we cannot afford to ship international without shipping charges but I need to get store up for USA customers.

Were are a Non-Profit Ministry so I have a little leeway. :)

Ladagerick, has you USPS modules ever been modified from the original ones that come with CC3.0.15?

I'm just wondering why so many people are having problems where my store is running fine shipping domestic/international. I would like to try to help anyone if possible.

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Guest conspicuouschick

Ladagerick, has you USPS modules ever been modified from the original ones that come with CC3.0.15?

I'm just wondering why so many people are having problems where my store is running fine shipping domestic/international. I would like to try to help anyone if possible.

I only have first class and parcel post enabled (no international options). Over the weekend, when I knew the rates were increasing but the module had not been updated, I disabled usps module completely, enabled UPS and a flat rate per item module. I put a notice on the front page of my store so customers knew what was happening.

On Monday, I enabled USPS, disabled flat rate per item, did a mock purchase and first class and UPS appeared as shipping options.

Today I receive notice of an aborted order, and "parcel post" was chosen as the shipping option, when the item in question was first class. So I do another mock order, same item, and first class is no longer showing as a shipping option, just parcel post and UPS.

I have not modified the usps shipping module at all.

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