Shipping costs by towns within the same country - help required.

[SirBob]

Hi

 

I really could use some assistance correctly setting up shipping costs and weight ranges for goods shipped to different towns within the same country.

 

Background: The shop is based in Johannesburg, South Africa and delivers its physical products throughout the country.

 

My carrier has its head office in Johannesburg (which is also the largest metropolitan area serviced)

 

My carrier applies different shipping fees to deliver goods to different towns. (I will use the words "region" and "Metropolitan Area" to describe these so as to not confuse them with the Prestashop terms "Zones" and "States")

 

Region 1

Covers a geographical area comprising the major metropolitan areas of the City of Johannesburg and Pretoria - and the service for this region has the following parameters:

 

Delivery: Next Business Day

Rate: Flat fee for packages up to 30 Kg with additional costs for every Kg thereafter.

 

Region 2

Covers the geographical areas comprising the metropolitan areas of the countries next largest cities (Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Bloemfontein etc) - and the service for this region has the following parameters:

 

Delivery: 24-48 Hours

Rate: Flat fee for packages up to 2 Kg with additional costs for every Kg thereafter.

 

Region 3

Cover the geographical areas comprising the countries towns (not as large as the Cities) and the service for this region has the following parameters.

 

Delivery: 48-72 Hours

Rate: Flat fee for packages up to 2 Kg with additional costs for every Kg thereafter.

 

Region 4

Is basically a "Catch-All" region for any place/address which is outside the definitions of Regions 1,2 or 3. This region has the following parameters:

 

Delivery: 72+ Hours

Rate: Flat fee for packages up to 2 Kg with additional costs for every Kg thereafter; PLUS

Surcharge: Under-Serviced Area Surcharge consisting of a flat fee.

 

Admittedly I am a Prestashop newbie but I cannot understand how to set up this shipping fee format and how to obtain the necessary granularity by town or region.

 

From a lot of forum posts I gather I can bundle countries into Zones and apply different fees to different zones - but can I do so for towns and cities within the same country?

 

Finally I'm not sure which parameters (fields) Prestashop actually uses to determine which shipping carriers and fees to apply - any input here will also be welcomed. 

 

Any help, guidance or insight would really be appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

 

I'm using Prestashop 1.6.

[SirBob]

* Bump *

 

Anyone? I'm really finding it hard to believe that natively PS 1.6 cannot accommodate more than 1 delivery zone per country.

Is it at least possible to put 1 country into multiple zones? - Would this work?

 

Any assistance appreciated!

[thepan]

Want you try to archive might be able through abusing the Zones in Prestashop as your Regions, and create 4 carriers that each only work for one of those zones. Or you might want to search for a module that goes by Zipcodes or something similar. 

 

Here something I found http://addons.prestashop.com/en/shipping-logistics-delivery-prestashop-modules/5711-shipping-fees-based-on-zipcodes.html

http://addons.prestashop.com/en/shipping-logistics-delivery-prestashop-modules/48[spam-filter]postal-deliv.html

Possible better solution out there, just need to search for it.

Edited July 25, 2014 by thepan (see edit history)

[SirBob]

Hi thepan

 

Thanks for your reply. I have not been able to find a working solution using zones - most notably because it appears that I cannot add a country to more than 1 zone. It may have worked but it would have been an inelegant solution.

 

Rest assured my posting to the forum only occurred after I had exhausted all the documentation and related posts I could find.

 

I am an ecommerce newbie and I selected Prestashop after I had done the most extensive investigation that I could given my limited experience in this field.

 

Prestashop is long established, has a substantial feature set, appears to enjoy on-going development and a robust community.

 

I appear to have mistakenly assumed that shipping (which was to me a fundamental pillar of any ecommerce solution) would have been addressed and a robust and flexible solution baked right into the core. On that basis I assumed that what was lacking was not Prestashop functionality but rather my understanding on how to correctly implement the solution - hence my plea for help.

 

I had previously found the module you so kindly pointed out together with another module by Presto-Changeo and if either solution solves my problem I would be happy to pay for it, however;

 

Before doing so I wanted to first establish whether the limitation was in fact my ignorance or limited understanding or whether Prestashop was indeed deficient in this area.

 

I also struggle to believe that I would be alone in my requirement for a more granular, robust and flexible shipping solution in the core of Prestashop.

 

Finally, if the baked-in shipping solution were indeed lacking I would have expected to find dozens of modules to solve this problem (people wouldn't spend time coding solutions to non-existent problems) - yet I have only found two and these are zip (postal) code based which I'm unsure will solve my problem.

 

Can anyone educate me and point me in the right direction?

 

Thank you!