How can I not charge shipping on soft goods (downloads) with hard goods on same order

[blubbert]

We are looking for a way to sell downloadable products on our website along with books, DVDs, CDs, etc.

However, I have run into the problem of charging shipping.

We currently use Miva's Price Table Based Shipping method which calculates shipping based on the amount of the order.

However, if a customer wants to order a downloaded file and a DVD we don't want to charge shipping on the downloaded product.

I have talked with our web host (Hostasaurus - HIGHLY RECOMMEND THEM) and with Viking Coders to see if they knew of a way to make this happen.

However, at this moment we haven't come up with a workable solution.

I would love to be able to mark products that should not be figured into the shipping calculation and continue to use a price table based shipping method.

However, as I see it there are these options:

1) Charge shipping for the downloadable products
2) Have the customer make two orders. One downloadable and one with shipping.

I am just wondering if there are any other ideas how this can be accomplished.

[d_host]

Re: How can I not charge shipping on soft goods (downloads) with hard goods on same o

You could switch to weight based shipping for physical goods (which makes a lot of sense, as USPS, FedEx and UPS all use weight to calculate shipping rates anyway), and then set all downloadable products to 0 lbs - ergo getting "free shipping" without any other changes to any other modules or settings in the store.

[blubbert]

Re: How can I not charge shipping on soft goods (downloads) with hard goods on same o

Thanks Remik,

This would take a lot of work since we don't have weights for each product at this point. A lot of weighing!

However, it is something that we have given thought to.

Brandon

[d_host]

Re: How can I not charge shipping on soft goods (downloads) with hard goods on same o

You don't have to do it one product at a time in MM admin - you can export your products to a flat file, import in Excel, then type in the product weights in a new column (I'm sure most books and CDs have similar or identical weights, you don't need exact gram weights), and then import this file back into the store while updating (or overwriting) existing products. Unless you have many thousands of products, this can be normally done within an hour or two in most stores.

[blubbert]

Re: How can I not charge shipping on soft goods (downloads) with hard goods on same o

Thanks so much Remik!

We do have 4000-5000 thousands products with quite a diversity of weights. However, this may still be something that we work toward.

Thanks also for the export idea. That will save a lot of time and effort, rather than updating each product.

We are just trying to still find a way though to do this with our current shipping program.

[eMediaSales]

Re: How can I not charge shipping on soft goods (downloads) with hard goods on same o

By the way, you should be able to get Weight Table Shipping to match the same calculation as Price Table Shipping by setting the weight = price, and setup the exact same tiers. Then for your softgoods, you set weight = 0, and you can now mix download and physical products in the same order.