Shipping to Korea not allowed

[Taodi]

A customer in (South) Korea tried to order and got this message:

• Unfortunately there are no suitable shipping methods available for your order. This may be because the total weight of your order is too high or we cannot ship to your country. Please contact a member of our staff for any further inquiries.

 

I am shipping from the U.S. and linking to the USPS website. Have had no problems for over a year. When I go onto my site and try to order with a Korea shipping address, I get the same message, for any of my products, all with product weights that are not above any limits. I've checked my USPS module and "Korea, Republic of" is listed in the allowed zones. I even called USPS and inquired to see if the problem could be on their end, and they assured me there's no blockage in shipping to Korea. In the backstore, in Settings/Countries&Zones, Korea is listed in Countries.

 

Not sure what else to check. Any ideas as to what the problem is?

[bsmither]

If I recall, Request/Responses to the USPS API is recorded in the admin Request Log. Would you please find an entry relative to the Korean order and post it here.

[Taodi]

Here's one from yesterday.

Request Sent - http://production.shippingapis.com/ShippingAPI.dllAPI=IntlRateV2&XML=<IntlRateV2Request USERID="964IMPER4879"> <Package ID="0"> <Pounds>1</Pounds> <Ounces>3</Ounces> <Machinable>false</Machinable> <MailType>Package</MailType> <ValueOfContents>95.95</ValueOfContents> <Country>Korea, Republic of</Country> <Container>VARIABLE</Container> <Size>REGULAR</Size> <Width></Width> <Length></Length> <Height></Height> <Girth/> </Package> </IntlRateV2Request>

Response received<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <IntlRateV2Response><Package ID="0"><Error><Number>-2147218046</Number><Source>IntlPostage;clsIntlPostage.GetCountryAndRestirctedServiceId;clsIntlPostage.CalcAllPostageDimensionsXML;IntlRateV2.ProcessRequest</Source><Description>Invalid Country Name</Description><HelpFile/><HelpContext>1000440</HelpContext></Error></Package></IntlRateV2Response>

[bsmither]

Would you please try this:

"I've checked my USPS module and "Korea, Republic of" is listed in the allowed zones."

 

According to the USPS Postage Price Calculator and the official list of country names, the proper names for the USPS API are:

Korea, Democratic Peoples Republic of (North Korea)

Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

 

Some reports suggest that South Korea and North Korea is sufficient. I don't agree.

 

But apparently USPS doesn't like Korea, Republic of.

 

So, try changing the names to include the parentheses part. You may need to edit the database directly. On the other hand, in admin Countries/Zones, you can take note of the details about the Koreas, delete them, then re-add them using the full name and the same details.

 

Let us know if you need help doing that.

[Taodi]

As suggested, I simply went into Admin, Countries/Zones and modified the Korea line to read "Korea, Republic of (South Korea)", and a South Korea customer can now order freely from the site.
Thanks for nailing this one for me!

[Taodi]

But now, I seem to have run into a bug. I attempted to add zones for South Korea in Admin Countries/Zones. I added the 9 province names for South Korea (no abbreviations added) as zones. When I then tried to order on the my site, selecting Korea now required a province selection (as expected), but strangely, the only province showing was the first one I had entered as a new zone... that is, the customer was only offered one province selection. After trying a number of things, I have deleted all of Korea's zones that I created (saving my changes), but still a Korean customer is offered that same single province selection. I even deleted the country of Korea from my countries list, saved, confirmed that it was gone from the customer view, then added Korea back again. I have tried emptying the cache in my browser, tried different browsers, tried going to my site from a different computer. A Korean address customer is still offered that one province selection. 

 

In hindsight, I should have left well enough alone and just gone with the default zones provided by CC. Anyway, is there a way to correct this problem for my Korean customers?

[bsmither]

I'm looking into it, but please let us know the exact version of CC5 you are running: admin, Dashboard, Store Overview tab.

[bsmither]

Two things to try:

 

1. Clear the cache (admin, Maintenance, Rebuild tab)

2. Store Settings, General tab. In the selector for your store's country, choose Korea (South). Does the State selector get updated with the zones you added?

 

If so, then double check with the Korean order.

[Taodi]

Clearing the admin cache did it. A Korean customer can now order freely without having to select from a dropdown for county/province.
Also, I think for the time being I will indeed leave well enough alone and not try to enter zones where they're not provided already by CC. I was talking with a Korean friend today and he said that in addition to the 9 provinces that USPS.com has listed for South Korea, Seoul is its own administrative area and would thus, for the purposes of my shopping cart, need to be set up as its own selection on the shopping cart's dropdown list. But the USPS.com write-up on Korea doesn't give that information. So where would a guy find reliable sources of this kind of information for each country?! I'm guessing it doesn't exist!

 

Much appreciate the help in getting me up and running again!

[bsmither]

"So where would a guy find reliable sources of this kind of information for each country?! I'm guessing it doesn't exist!"

 

To start, maybe the Consulate General of Korea in San Fransisco, as well as all other Consulates. Whether the USPS, UPS, FEDEX, or the Amazon Drones would incorporate that info is questionable. I guarantee you the NSA would have that info.