Postage delema can anyone help

[Nestle]

Hi all I just wondered if anyone could help me out, at the moment I have the postage for my site at this £1-£2.20=£1 £2.20-£8.99=£2.95 , £8.99 -£74.99 £4.99.
The reason it is like this I I do not want to charge too much for my main seller, but I know myself I hate paying over the odds for postage.

So what does everyone on here charge?, I have to think hard about this as alot of my buisness is just plain place cards.

Thoughts wellcomed:kisshands:

[Sarah]

I'm not sure I understand your charges hun, sorry. I still offer free p&p on my website and just make sure I cover the postage in the item cost.

[Nestle]

sorry to be confusing, it is like this £1 postage up to £2.20 of items etc, you see if i add it on to the cost them I will loose customers I know it (or am I realy just telling myself this), I know I sometimes make a proffit but somethimes I do not with the charges I have, I get plenty orders but deep down I know myself If I was to buy something on the net I always check the P+P cost (sad I know), before I order, I hate getting to the end to find out that it is £4.99 postge for something that is only say £5.
Sorry to moan

[Chell]

I have a flat rate of £1.50 but some items have free postage if I feel that is too much. It has worked ok so far.

[Nestle]

what I am thinking is it possible to have two rates running on your site one for one lot of items and onother for something else?.
So for example one for the basic place cards and one for the dressed ones which come in a box.
Is this possible??

[Sarah]

sorry to be confusing, it is like this £1 postage up to £2.20 of items etc, you see if i add it on to the cost them I will loose customers I know it (or am I realy just telling myself this), I know I sometimes make a proffit but somethimes I do not with the charges I have, I get plenty orders but deep down I know myself If I was to buy something on the net I always check the P+P cost (sad I know), before I order, I hate getting to the end to find out that it is £4.99 postge for something that is only say £5.
Sorry to moan

I can't tell you the amount of times I've abandoned an order when I've seen the postage cost. I must admit that I will always buy from somewhere that offers free p&p if the price is reasonable - it really irritates me when I get to checkout and find that there's postage to be added and I didn't realise.

[nicholamarie]

postage costs bug me but if its free p+p then the item is not always as cheap cause thats where the p+p is.

i think your postage is fine. have you weighed the items to get a rough cost of what you will pay???

[Chell]

Is yours oscommerce? I use the table rate:

Table Rate

Enable Table Method
True

Shipping Table
5.00:0.00,10000000:1.50

Table Method
weight

Thats what is in the boxes. Anything that I want to use the £1.50 rate has a 10 in the weight box. Anything which is to be free has a number under 5 in the weight box.

If they buy a free postage and a paid one then it charges the paid rate. If I have two of the paid ones then it charges £1.50 IYSWIM.

[nicholamarie]

IYSWIM.

call me thick but what does this mean. keep seeing it in alot of posts

[Nestle]

excellent
this is perfect, so how would it work for the amount bought, say i have a customer who buys 200 place cards, and I have set the rate at free for up to 100, would it then kick in and charge say £2 for the postage on the 200.
If I could see it wrtten down I would try it out as it sound excellent.

Thanks

[Chell]

Maybe that would be the 'per item' instead of 'table rate'.

[Nestle]

Thanks, I am jumping back and forth to see what i ahve on mine, I have weight and price, nothing else!, you were right it would be better on weight I think because I know what it cost to send them.
The only thing is I need for the price thing to kick in when they get to a certain amount , as I can only justify free up to a cartain amount .
Sorry to babble on but this is a big thing for me, I have thought about making it a flat rate but when you sell card it is costly to send if in a large amount, and I could not justify 10 place cards to have a £4.99 postage rate.

[Sarah]

postage costs bug me but if its free p+p then the item is not always as cheap cause thats where the p+p is.

i think your postage is fine. have you weighed the items to get a rough cost of what you will pay???

THat's true - I always compare item prices and work out whether it can be bought cheaper with or without postage. I add on a reasonable amount to my items but not much.
Sarah

[Nestle]

It's a hard one I know, I can have free postage so far but I need to charge if they buy something that is going to cost say £5 to send

[whirl]

Personally I have no problem with paying postage, It really doesn't bother me.

I think if a site doesn't show a postage cost it has only included it in its prices. I would rather know the actual cost of the items.

I often will shop online and select to have my items sent quicker too at extra costs or by recorded delivery if thats an option.

I particularly dont mind if its a small company, people like Vistaprint have a cheek where you have to pay EXTORTIONATE postage rates but they are the only people that spring to mind.

[Nestle]

The thing is it is working what I have but you always thing there is the customer who gets to the end and says"Im not paying £4.99" and quits out of the shop.
Postage is always in the back of my mind and I ahve stated that if customers come to me I am opent to give free postage if i wish.

[Chell]

Can you not keep it as it is but put clearly on your homepage what it will cost.

[Nestle]

Yes I could do that it is an option, do you have it on your homepage?

[Tanya]

IYSWIM.

call me thick but what does this mean. keep seeing it in alot of posts

it means 'If You See What I Mean'

[nicholamarie]

it means 'If You See What I Mean'

thanks tanya, just silly little sis. no good at this abreviation thing

[HannahBanana]

Personally I have no problem with paying postage, It really doesn't bother me.

I think if a site doesn't show a postage cost it has only included it in its prices. I would rather know the actual cost of the items.

I often will shop online and select to have my items sent quicker too at extra costs or by recorded delivery if thats an option.

I particularly dont mind if its a small company, people like Vistaprint have a cheek where you have to pay EXTORTIONATE postage rates but they are the only people that spring to mind.

I'm with Jazz on this one. I think it comes from working in a sales. I wouldn't charge delivery if the order was big enough as it wouldn't matter losing a bit of my profit.

However the small orders if they had free delivery i would not make any money.

I looked around before I decided on my delivery charge to see what would be best. I wanted to do a flat rate delivery so sometimes i would need more but sometimes less so i should be covered iykwim.

Anyway I am fully prepared to pay delivery as it means i can shop from the comfort of my own home! I quite happily pay Tesco £5.99 for home shopping because it means not dragging the kids round tesco. And it means i can buy things i can't necessarily get in my town shopping centre. I also save on petrol and car parking costs! woohoo! and i'm a lazy cow! :hysterica

One thing Chell has pointed out is my delivery charge isn't stated so am going to go sort that out and I think I am going to do free delivery on big orders just need to think of what amount!! £100 sounds a bit much but i don't want to shoot myself in the foot!

Incidently Kiddicare charges £5.99 delivery (that's why I did £5.49!)

[trogette]

I think there's an oscommerce contribution somewhere for adding the postage charge to the shopping cart page and infobox so that people can see as they're going along, maybe that would work for you?

[Nestle]

thank you all you have given me something to think about, my max order is £75 then they do not pay, it used to be £100 but they orders come few and far between if you catch my drift.
Do you think it would be better if I added a postage charge rates to the home page?, would this make you the ciustomer feel better wehn purchasing an item from a shop?.

thanks

[Nestle]

this sounds perfect, but yest again my skills as a techy person would let me down I would not have a clue where to start and what to do, i would have to pay someone to do it for me( hangs head in shame).

[trogette]

any techies planning a wedding/party who you could trade with?! I'm big on bartering, lol.

[Nestle]

I would love to, good idea.
Do you know where the contribution is so I can show them it.
Thx

[trogette]

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1094 it's quite old but maybe it doesn't need fixing, also the support thread is here: http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php?showtopic=38411

[obscure]

I think there's an oscommerce contribution somewhere for adding the postage charge to the shopping cart page and infobox so that people can see as they're going along, maybe that would work for you?

I have something like this installed on Anara (http://www.anara.co.uk) it shows the postage options on the cart page in the left hand column.

It was done like that for people ordering internationally as its all weight based so not easy to setout like it is for UK postage.

:) SAdie

[Nestle]

What would you suggest then Sadie?, do you think it is posible to set something up that will allow me to charge diffrent rates for diffrent products?>

[HannahBanana]

What would you suggest then Sadie?, do you think it is posible to set something up that will allow me to charge diffrent rates for diffrent products?>

I can do this with my Mr site website its done through Paypal shopping cart not sure if that helps or not x

[obscure]

What would you suggest then Sadie?, do you think it is posible to set something up that will allow me to charge diffrent rates for diffrent products?>

How many varieties of postage costs will you be needing?

There are various options - grab me on msn and we can chat if you like?

Sadie