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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 thous

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 :)
  - mcintyre1994 10y ago
    On the plus side, if you do care about the purchase enough to give them an Email at that point you can probably abandon the cart and get a discount. :)
Spooky23 10y ago
As long as you present it as an estimation you're fine. The 12 people that you piss off are used to getting screwed and often have alternate arrangements (like a UPS Store box in the nearest big town) I used to sell recently discontinued stuff in college (mostly Sun and Apple Powerbooks) on eBay, and most of my business was to places where mainstream vendors couldn't or wouldn't ship.
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  Estimates are not okay, at least in non B2B scenarios if you have a competent lawyer advising you. At a consumer level (where you have to make very serious assumptions about the customer's level of understanding of what an estimate is), you open yourself up to bait and switch claims. Exacerbating the problem is that there is a huge variability in shipping prices. The parameter space is huge: residential vs business, single-family home vs multi-family building, location relative to shipping/sorting hubs, incidental delivery density (number of unrelated deliveries near you), handling concerns, signature requirements, size/weight X potential lane shipping options (weight dominates costs in ground lane shipping, physical dimensions dominate costs in air shipping). A 50 lb minifridge delivered to a multi-family residential building with a mail room in the same city as the origin warehouse may cost a carrier $1 to deliver. But if it is delivered to rural wyoming it may cost $40 and if it travels via air shipping you can tack on an additional $100. Estimates formed via simplistic assumptions may end up being inaccurate with standard deviations in excess of 100%. At the level of sophistication of the average customer, giving an estimate of $20 when actual costs are $100 screams bait and switch, whereas an estimate of $100 when actual costs are $20 means that the customer never makes it to checkout. If you aren't within a reasonable ~5% of actual, you can't reasonably provide estimates to the customer. There is a push by carrier customers to provide estimated estimate accuracy for this reason (businesses want to know how accurate an estimate is if they have incomplete information), but ironically that ends up putting the carriers in the same position: data-validated claims about positive/negative bias in estimate accuracy can basically be considered bait and switch in court, even for large B2B customers with very detailed contracts.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
chc 10y ago
In those cases where a postal code isn't enough, it seems like the failure case is the status quo. So those people will still have to go through the whole process to get an estimate, but most people won't. Isn't that strictly better?

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 :)
- mcintyre1994 10y ago
  On the plus side, if you do care about the purchase enough to give them an Email at that point you can probably abandon the cart and get a discount. :)

Spooky23 10y ago

As long as you present it as an estimation you're fine. The 12 people that you piss off are used to getting screwed and often have alternate arrangements (like a UPS Store box in the nearest big town) I used to sell recently discontinued stuff in college (mostly Sun and Apple Powerbooks) on eBay, and most of my business was to places where mainstream vendors couldn't or wouldn't ship.

saosebastiao 10y ago
Estimates are not okay, at least in non B2B scenarios if you have a competent lawyer advising you. At a consumer level (where you have to make very serious assumptions about the customer's level of understanding of what an estimate is), you open yourself up to bait and switch claims. Exacerbating the problem is that there is a huge variability in shipping prices. The parameter space is huge: residential vs business, single-family home vs multi-family building, location relative to shipping/sorting hubs, incidental delivery density (number of unrelated deliveries near you), handling concerns, signature requirements, size/weight X potential lane shipping options (weight dominates costs in ground lane shipping, physical dimensions dominate costs in air shipping). A 50 lb minifridge delivered to a multi-family residential building with a mail room in the same city as the origin warehouse may cost a carrier $1 to deliver. But if it is delivered to rural wyoming it may cost $40 and if it travels via air shipping you can tack on an additional $100. Estimates formed via simplistic assumptions may end up being inaccurate with standard deviations in excess of 100%. At the level of sophistication of the average customer, giving an estimate of $20 when actual costs are $100 screams bait and switch, whereas an estimate of $100 when actual costs are $20 means that the customer never makes it to checkout. If you aren't within a reasonable ~5% of actual, you can't reasonably provide estimates to the customer. There is a push by carrier customers to provide estimated estimate accuracy for this reason (businesses want to know how accurate an estimate is if they have incomplete information), but ironically that ends up putting the carriers in the same position: data-validated claims about positive/negative bias in estimate accuracy can basically be considered bait and switch in court, even for large B2B customers with very detailed contracts.
- Spooky23 10y ago

chc 10y ago

In those cases where a postal code isn't enough, it seems like the failure case is the status quo. So those people will still have to go through the whole process to get an estimate, but most people won't. Isn't that strictly better?