Shipping option callback

BrickMattNZ

I think it would be beneficial, If there was some sort of callback that could be used to call a script which returns a boolean on whether the shipping method is valid to the provided address.

Within New Zealand, we essentially have a two tier pricing model for shipping, urban and rural. Rural shipping is at least twice the price as an urban address. Buyers with rural addresses, often select the urban option as it is cheaper. Whilst buyers rightfully do not want to be extorted on shipping costs, sellers just as equally cant afford to eat the costs when the buyer accidentally or willfully selects a shipping option which doesn't work for their address.

Whilst I understand a NZ specific model wouldn't be economic to implement, surely similar issues exist for regional / zonal / distance based pricing issues exists within other countries.

Lawrence

We support zone based pricing for some regions. If you give us some more information we may be able to implement this for NZ

BrickMattNZ

Thanks for the response!. How are zones implemented elsewhere? In terms of NZ, the country is essentially divided into two zones urban and rural. Rural delivery attracts a significant surcharge with NZ Post and many other carriers simply will not deliver to them.

A rural address should have RD (Rural Delivery) near the postcode. If a buyer had to select their Zone in their profile, and the shipping options available to them change as a result, that would possible also help. This may be simplier than a callback.

To establish whether an address is rural or not is a actually a little messy, as even if the RD is left off the address NZ post will actually deliver it. https://support.nzpost.co.nz/s/article/Checking-if-an-address-is-rural?language=en_US#:~:text=Use Address Services.,by the rural CourierPost agent.

Lawrence

I believe I looked into this before, and it seems like it would be quite difficult to implement. We aren't able to make a webrequest everytime a user wants to get a shipping cost, it would need to be something our system can quickly calculate by looking at the zipcodes or address region.