weight band...aid! Shipping.citruslime not quite hitting the mark for us
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Chris
We use weight bands to restrict shipping options for the customer at the checkout. Different weight bands allow/restrict access to different postal services depending on made up weights we give items. for example flat items get access to large letter (although this service is not available on integration) and knives only have access to Age verified services (also not on integration) now that we're shipping internationally we have had to add another weight band to prevent internationally prohibited items... it's a faff and not how weight bands should be used but there's no other option as of yet. This also means we have to weigh each item when tendering for shipping... We sell a lot of the same item so it's frustrating for the staff picking and packing.
The integration for us isn't quite fit for purpose, it's a slow process since we're having to weigh each item every time and some services aren't yet on the integration like our desired international service so we're paying 30% more for our international sales postage because we're having to use an old Royal Mail Mapping Code.... so we have to still use click and drop. Large letter tracked or the additional age verification services aren't yet on the integration.
Today i was hoping to add an additional cost to a particular brand from different store as we'd be able to drop ship but the minimum order for free postage is significantly higher than ours. There is no option for this.
There's no option to simply ban certain items from international sale, a check box akin to click and collect only would be a great addition to the product card for this. So we could easily block liquids and pointy things, rather than using weight bands.
I don't believe there are any updates planned to the shipping module?? We see this as an area that could save us a huge amount of time now our volume of sales has increased, if it could be streamlined or even improved slightly.
If anyone has a better solution please let me know.
All the best
Neil McQuillan
We added support for Large Letter in March 2020, but perhaps Royal Mail have changed things. March 2020 was a tough time, as my team was all working from home and it was chaos, so maybe the documentation didn't get updated properly.
As a large letter is defined by the item size & weight (if you enter the item size in POS and we can use large letter, we pick that automatically rather than the more expensive service which allows heavier weights and item sizes).
We cannot show it as a separate service which is I think where the confusion is coming in.
Here are the dimensions and weight from the Royal Mail site.
_ Large Letters have a maximum length of 353mm x 250mm with a depth of no more than 25mm. And weigh no more than 750g. _
Our documentation, as I say above, looks limited so perhaps Royal Mail have changed something and this no longer works. We are going to do some testing.
Here is where we found it in the release notes.
https://howto.citruslime.com/en_US/141029-2020/546441-courier-integration-module-what-s-in-the-new-release-march-2020
Neil McQuillan
OK I've got to the bottom of this, we
do
support large letter, but not for tracked services as it stands. There is a post here if you wish to comment on that developmenthttps://citruslime.canny.io/courier-integration-module/p/add-royal-mail-tracked-services-for-large-letter-options-with-rm
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Chris
Neil McQuillan Thanks for looking into it. It is the Large letter tracked 48. We were hoping to send all things tracked. We're considering opening a dpd account.... might be easier and a better UX for the customer. Laura is looking into the RM postage issues this week.
Neil McQuillan
Chris I can see us adding support for the RM large letter tracked services in the new year, we’re totally focused on an overhaul of the back office at the moment.
Dpd is a good courier and worth a look. Consumer’s often upgrade to the service if offered alongside RM as a premium service.
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Chris
Neil McQuillan Thanks Neil, appreciate all the work you and your team are doing.
Neil McQuillan
Chris I cannot think of a better solution as it stands. I am however 99% sure we do now support Royal Mail Large Letter.
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Chris
Neil McQuillan Thanks for your reply. We've just tried Royal Mail Large Letter Tracked TRS (Tracked48LBT) again and sadly it does not work. The usual error message pops up. We raised the case CAS-123905-K8N5V1 and last I heard was:
"The service that you're attempting to use to generate the shipping labels is not currently supported by our Integration Partner, which is why you are receiving the error. We do have a case with our Development Team to further look into our Large Letter support, however the timescales are a while off with this task yet. "