SHIPPING NIGHTMARE

[WalstonNet]

I know this isn't the same topic as what I opened the ticket for, but I am having a shipping nightmare that I think you'll be able to help me out with tremendously & it won't let me open a new ticket for anything but sales.

I have not been able to get the shipping figured out since I started this whole thing, & I have been in contact with UPS, & all kids of people, UPS says it's not a problem on their end I have been in contact with a guy named Steve Mahan for weeks & in turn he has been discussing my problem with their programmers & they keep saying that it's not an issue on their end, so I am starting to believe that it is just something I am not doing correctly.

So here's what is happening, my customer sells things that will be in her own boxes that she purchased for shipping, so the boxes are all different shapes & sizes etc. I have UPS set up on her account to ship Ground, 3 day & 2 day. I have it setup to ship by weight & location, I have the origin zip code set correctly etc.

The problem is that if you add an item to the cart on her site, lets say item A costs $33.95, and because of the weight etc, the shipping is $11.48. Now if they want more than one of the same item, then it is going to cost her that amount to ship EACH item, however if you add a second item in the shopping cart, it only adds cents to the shipping, for example if you change the qty to 2, it changes the shipping to $13.18. Now if she takes two boxes with the same items in them to UPS, she is going to get charged $11.48 to ship each box, but the customer only paid $13.18, so she's losing money.

We have been STRUGGLING with this FOR WEEKS, & I my customer is literally close to going out of business if sales don't pick up SOON, & then I've list a client & money myself, & I've put A LOT of hours into this site. I close Cube Cart because I heard it was easy to setup & manage. So far I have had a few issues but so far just the shipping & custom contact form have been major issues.

So I decided to take a look over EVERYTHING again to see if there's something I am missing. & I think I might be, or I may be doing something wrong.

If I go into Modules>Shipping Methods>By Weight (now I have UPS selected as well along with Store Collection for locals who order online & want to pick it up at the store). So I guess my first question is, if I have UPS enabled & am shipping by weight & location, should I also have By Weight selected as well? And if the answer is yes, then I am confused as to what to enter into the "1st Option Name", "2nd Option Name", what to select for "Tax Type" (because we are using standard tax, which I have all set up in the tax section for our state), if I should enable or disable "Tax Included" & I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what to put in the "Packaging Weight" field because everything she sells will be a different weight. All of the weights are setup in each of the products details. Then there's zones 1-4 & I don't know if I am supposed to do anything with those or not. I have set United States as an allowed zone, and no others because she is shipping to the US only.

So as you can see I have a little dilemma going on here. I feel like a complete idiot that I cannot fix this, & haven't been able to for weeks. It makes me feel like either I'm doing something wrong, or CubeCart may not be the right solution for this particular client.

I could REALLY, REALLY, DESPERATELY use some help figuring out how to get it so that UPS charges the correct shipping & that is charges per item. I know there is a per item option under shipping but it wants you to enter the shipping per item, but each item (there will be hundreds) are all in different sized boxes, with different weights, so that is impossible to do.

I could really use some help, PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE.

Thank you.