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If they have a functional inventory system, they know the weight and dimensions of the product, and all that's needed for destination is a box for postal code.

by hx87 10y ago

jasode 10y ago
>, and all that's needed for destination is a box for postal code. There can also be differences of shipping costs for delivering to a business vs a residential address. I've seen shipping costs go up by $3+ when shipping to a buyer's home address instead of his office. The zipcode isn't granular enough to differentiate that. I believe 2 factors contribute to the extra costs: 1) UPS trucks don't drive the residential streets as often as the main roadways where all the businesses are located and 2) many failed deliveries and repeated attempts because recipient isn't at home -- which costs more in gas, driver hours, etc
- hx87 10y ago
  In that case, add a business/home selector or checkbox to the form. It's not that complicated. After all, if the information that I enter when I actually buy the item is precise enough to price the shipping, why can't I enter the exact same info without going through all the cart & registration BS?
rz2k 10y ago
Zones for shipping costs and time estimates are pretty large, so they could even give rough estimates until you input the exact address. Sales tax can differ from street to street, but even that could probably be guessed to within 1% based on your browser's location.
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  When I lived in eastern Idaho, geolocation APIs regularly placed my location in Boise, over 300 miles away. They work fine for people in larger cities, but aren't precise outside of that. EDIT: also, internet proxies screw everything up.
  - bryondowd 10y ago
    Yeah, I live in NJ, but I work at a federal facility with an IP that geolocation places in DC. So I frequently see sites assuming I'm in DC when I access them from work rather than home, even though the two locations are actually three miles apart. So I certainly prefer when they just ask for a ZIP code.
saosebastiao 10y ago
Sometimes a postal code is enough, sometimes it will be rejected by carrier APIs, especially in less dense areas like Alaska, where a postal code can span thousands of square miles. Lower 48 should be fine for the most part outside of the Rockies and some parts of the Midwest, but it isn't always obvious to determine. Plus, you get different costs when shipping to business or residential, or single address vs building with multiple addresses, etc. And weight/dimensions can be determined from a single item but they do not add up linearly with multiple items. Once you've got a 5kg item, adding another may add 5% to the shipping cost. Adding an additional 50g item may add 0%. If it has to ship via air, it could add 5% for a small item, or 500% if it is a large item, independent of weight. Since the first item in your cart typically bears the brunt of the share of shipping cost, they tend to ask for your full cart before estimating shipping, because extrapolating from the first item alone could paint a very misleading picture of how much shipping will cost for multiple items. There are solutions out there to help with pricing transparency, but they aren't as trivial as you make them out to be and I wouldn't expect a small eCommerce company to know how to do anything outside of directly communicating with carrier APIs.
- hx87 10y ago
  You have strong points there, and it is indeed difficult or impossible for small eCommerce companies to do the calculations themselves. That being said, how much do carriers charge clients for API calls? Unless it's a ridiculous amount, if I have a complete cart, I should be able to enter the same info used for actual shipping to do a cost calculation without having to sign up for an account or actually start the checkout process.
  - saosebastiao 10y ago
    I'm not 100% sure about API pricing, but I would imagine they are free to make for businesses that actually ship things. It seems like one of those things you shouldn't skimp on as a carrier. And yes they should at least offer a no-signup in-cart shipping estimate. Most off the shelf eccommerce sites do. If not, they definitely want to spam your inbox with "come back, we miss you!" messages :)
CWuestefeld 10y ago
Believe it or not, the origin is in question as well. Until the complete order is known, we can't make an optimal choice of which warehouse to ship from. We might want to get it to you faster by fulfilling it from the nearest warehouse, but if one of your products isn't in stock there, we may need to change strategy, selecting a different warehouse. That may not be the customer's problem directly, but if we try to hide it, then the difference is going to surface in the seller's expenses, and thus in the price.
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  This is true. I actually worked with the "service" at Amazon that made these decisions. For a company with a single warehouse, or even multiple warehouses with equivalent inventory selections, you shouldn't face this problem. But with Amazon, where the entire inventory selection couldn't even fit in 20 warehouses, you end up with a terrible NP complete problem whose solution quality can make or break profitability on pretty much any product with less than a 10% gross margin. And I say "service" because you can't really fit into a service oriented architecture when you have solve times in excess of 5 minutes...the "service" is really just a way of dumping problems onto a queue to be passed downstream when done.

If they have a functional inventory system, they know the weight and dimensions of the product, and all that's needed for destination is a box for postal code.

by hx87 10y ago

If they have a functional inventory system, they know the weight and dimensions of the product, and all that's needed for destination is a box for postal code.

jasode 10y ago

>, and all that's needed for destination is a box for postal code. There can also be differences of shipping costs for delivering to a business vs a residential address. I've seen shipping costs go up by $3+ when shipping to a buyer's home address instead of his office. The zipcode isn't granular enough to differentiate that. I believe 2 factors contribute to the extra costs: 1) UPS trucks don't drive the residential streets as often as the main roadways where all the businesses are located and 2) many failed deliveries and repeated attempts because recipient isn't at home -- which costs more in gas, driver hours, etc

hx87 10y ago
In that case, add a business/home selector or checkbox to the form. It's not that complicated. After all, if the information that I enter when I actually buy the item is precise enough to price the shipping, why can't I enter the exact same info without going through all the cart & registration BS?

rz2k 10y ago

Zones for shipping costs and time estimates are pretty large, so they could even give rough estimates until you input the exact address. Sales tax can differ from street to street, but even that could probably be guessed to within 1% based on your browser's location.

saosebastiao 10y ago
When I lived in eastern Idaho, geolocation APIs regularly placed my location in Boise, over 300 miles away. They work fine for people in larger cities, but aren't precise outside of that. EDIT: also, internet proxies screw everything up.
- bryondowd 10y ago
  Yeah, I live in NJ, but I work at a federal facility with an IP that geolocation places in DC. So I frequently see sites assuming I'm in DC when I access them from work rather than home, even though the two locations are actually three miles apart. So I certainly prefer when they just ask for a ZIP code.

saosebastiao 10y ago

Sometimes a postal code is enough, sometimes it will be rejected by carrier APIs, especially in less dense areas like Alaska, where a postal code can span thousands of square miles. Lower 48 should be fine for the most part outside of the Rockies and some parts of the Midwest, but it isn't always obvious to determine. Plus, you get different costs when shipping to business or residential, or single address vs building with multiple addresses, etc. And weight/dimensions can be determined from a single item but they do not add up linearly with multiple items. Once you've got a 5kg item, adding another may add 5% to the shipping cost. Adding an additional 50g item may add 0%. If it has to ship via air, it could add 5% for a small item, or 500% if it is a large item, independent of weight. Since the first item in your cart typically bears the brunt of the share of shipping cost, they tend to ask for your full cart before estimating shipping, because extrapolating from the first item alone could paint a very misleading picture of how much shipping will cost for multiple items. There are solutions out there to help with pricing transparency, but they aren't as trivial as you make them out to be and I wouldn't expect a small eCommerce company to know how to do anything outside of directly communicating with carrier APIs.

hx87 10y ago
You have strong points there, and it is indeed difficult or impossible for small eCommerce companies to do the calculations themselves. That being said, how much do carriers charge clients for API calls? Unless it's a ridiculous amount, if I have a complete cart, I should be able to enter the same info used for actual shipping to do a cost calculation without having to sign up for an account or actually start the checkout process.
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  I'm not 100% sure about API pricing, but I would imagine they are free to make for businesses that actually ship things. It seems like one of those things you shouldn't skimp on as a carrier. And yes they should at least offer a no-signup in-cart shipping estimate. Most off the shelf eccommerce sites do. If not, they definitely want to spam your inbox with "come back, we miss you!" messages :)

CWuestefeld 10y ago

Believe it or not, the origin is in question as well. Until the complete order is known, we can't make an optimal choice of which warehouse to ship from. We might want to get it to you faster by fulfilling it from the nearest warehouse, but if one of your products isn't in stock there, we may need to change strategy, selecting a different warehouse. That may not be the customer's problem directly, but if we try to hide it, then the difference is going to surface in the seller's expenses, and thus in the price.

saosebastiao 10y ago
This is true. I actually worked with the "service" at Amazon that made these decisions. For a company with a single warehouse, or even multiple warehouses with equivalent inventory selections, you shouldn't face this problem. But with Amazon, where the entire inventory selection couldn't even fit in 20 warehouses, you end up with a terrible NP complete problem whose solution quality can make or break profitability on pretty much any product with less than a 10% gross margin. And I say "service" because you can't really fit into a service oriented architecture when you have solve times in excess of 5 minutes...the "service" is really just a way of dumping problems onto a queue to be passed downstream when done.