USPS Media Mail restrictions?

  • Resolved jlking3

    (@jlking3)


    7 years, 4 months ago

    I sell sheet music and music games on my website. Sheet music can be delivered by USPS Media Mail (and most of my customers choose that because it is cheaper and my competitors also use Media Mail). Board Games cannot legally be sent via USPS Media Mail, yet this plugin doesn’t make any distinction: either EVERYTHING has to be offered via Media Mail or nothing. If I offer EVERYTHING to be shipped by Media Mail, then I lose money, especially on large orders of board games. If I offer nothing via Media Mail, then I have to deal with irate customers who leave me for my competitor because she offers a FAR cheaper price for shipping.

    Can it be possible to have Media Mail and Library Mail shipping options available only for selected product classes?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • jessepearson

    (@jessepearson)

    Automattic Happiness Engineer

    @jlking3 Unfortunately most shipping plugins for WooCommerce (both Woo and third party) will not split the packages like you are needing without an additional plugin to do so. When doing a Google search a couple options come up.

    WooCommerce Advanced Shipping Packages, which is in the Woo marketplace and will allow you split packages according to shipping class.

    WooCommerce Advanced Shipping, which is in the Envato marketplace and appears to be able split packages like you would are looking to do. I cannot be 100% sure as it is not controlled by us.

    Hope that helps.

    I have not yet tried this plugin, so I wasn’t aware it doesn’t allow for restricting Media Mail to certain shipping classes.

    I use the WooCommerce USPS Shipping extension ($79/yr) on my live store and I have had very good luck with it. It allows me to enable/disable methods, modify method names, and add handling charges if I wish. Most important, it allows me to restrict Media Mail to certain shipping classes. If a cart contains any non-media items, then Media Mail is not offered as an option for the customer. It doesn’t offer the same option for Library Mail, but it’s my understanding that Library Mail is only supposed to be used by actual libraries, so it’s not a method I use anyway.

    There’s also a free plugin, WooCommerce USPS Shipping Method Plugin, that has similar capabilities, but the free version does not allow for order-weight cost calculation (i.e., if more than one item is in cart, the total cost is the sum of shipping for each item, rather than cost based on total order weight). The paid version works more logically (charges for entire order weight, rather than per item). The initial cost is $69 for first year; I don’t know what the renewal charge is. Like the extension discussed above, this plugin allows for the restriction of Media Mail to certain shipping classes.

    Yuvraj Vaghela

    (@deskroid)

    Automattic Happiness Engineer

    @jjbte The WooCommerce USPS Shipping extension will renew at full price i.e. $79.

    I’m aware of that, @deskroid. That’s the extension I currently use in my own store. When I purchased the extension nearly two years ago, renewal was 50% of the original purchase price. Now WooCommerce is charging full price for all renewals.

    It’s the other plugin I mentioned (WooCommerce USPS Shipping Method Plugin) I wasn’t not sure of. Its paid version is $69 for the first year. I searched “renewal” on the developer’s website and found a question/answer that states renewal is up to 50% off original price if renewed within 30 days prior to expiration.

    Plugin Contributor Jeff Stieler

    (@jeffstieler)

    I’ve created an issue on our Github repo to represent a feature request that would allow for your use case: https://github.com/Automattic/woocommerce-services/issues/1130

    I’m going to close this thread however, since it’s a bit off topic now. ??

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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