Shipping error with Subscriptions

[Jim Cockerham]

I just noticed a shipping problem with subscriptions. When a shopper purchases products as an initial subscription they may receive free shipping because they have other products in the cart that are not subscriptions and the total qualifies for free shipping. This assigns free shipping as the shipping method for the subscription, but when the first subscription is triggered if the total of the subscription does not meet the requirement for free shipping nothing happens. There is no notification of the failure, An admin would have to catch it by looking through the list of subscriptions. Can an email be triggered to notify the Merchant and Customer of a failure due to shipping method? The same could happen with any shipping method that has specific conditions

[Brennan]

We're looking at adding a notification for this use case, but for now, the only way to see it is going to be in the admin and looking at all subscriptions in an error state.

[Jim Cockerham]

Thanks Brennan. One other related issue with shipping methods and subscriptions... A customer can not manually (in subscription management) select the Free Shipping method for a subscription in some situations. My Free Shipping is based on a basket subtotal of $60 or greater. So if a customer has 2 different product subscriptions costing $30 each for a total of $60 they can not choose free shipping because each product is considered a separate subscription and therefore the requirement is not met. It will only work if a single product subscription total is $60 or more. Is there any work around for this? This also causes a problem if a customer has previous subscriptions and wants to add a new product subscription that totals less than $60, they will not be able to select free shipping.

[Jim Cockerham]

Brennan, I just switched to a price based shipping table. Is this going to work with subscriptions? I'm using the "Price Table based shipping" module. Will I get errors when customers have more than one product subscription and the order total does not match the shipping method selected for the subscription or will the module figure it out based on the total?

[Brennan]

If a customer purchases multiple subscriptions, Miva will automatically combine them into a single order if they are set to renew on the same date, using the same saved card, and being shipped to the same address.

However if a customer originally purchased a subscription product and a non-subscription product and qualified for free shipping because it was over $60 then the subscription order would not and need to be manually given a new shipping method since it is only going to be for the 1 product and below the free shipping threshold.

The priced table based shipping will work with subscriptions. Shipping will be dynamically re-calculated at the time of the order based on the different rates you have configured.

[Jim Cockerham]

Brennan, thanks for the quick response. If I configure my free shipping method using the same price based table, can I then assign (on the back end) a customer's multiple subscriptions to the price table? For example if a customer has 2 subscription for $30 each, and I assign them to the price table method $5.99 (since each is under the $60). When the subscription processes will they get the free shipping, since the total will now be at the $60?