Any DIM weight shipping solutions available for Miva 9?

[gripper]

In Miva's recent blog post of June, 2014 (http://www.mivamerchant.com/blog/fed...weight-pricing) it correctly points out that both UPS & FedEx will introduce even more universal DIM weights in Jan 2015. This will affect not just air shipments, but pretty much all shipments, including ground. Basically, DIM weight means an e-commerce merchant will be penalized with a higher rating weight for "shipping air".

Are there any solutions for this DIM weight issue either now, or coming in Miva 9?

Doing a search for DIM weight brings up nothing in this forum. Ditto in Miva Central. Does anyone know of anything that might work? We are concerned because a few items that we sell in high volume are going to be affected. And currently we have no way of accounting for ground DIM weight.

[Brennan]

Re: Any DIM weight shipping solutions available for Miva 9?

The ability to get dimensional pricing is already built into Miva Merchant for all the shipping carriers we support (UPS, FedEX, USPS and Canada Post)

If you using one of those carriers to get real time rates then you already have the ability to send up the dimensions of a package using Miva's built in box sizes.

You first need to add shipping dimensions of each product in Miva. You then need to setup different box sizes your product ship in. Miva will then take all the products in the order and "allocate" them to a box for which it will fit. Miva will pack the box by weight or quantity.

You can also choose to have products ship in their own boxes.

Once you have it configured, The dimensions of the boxes in the order will be sent to your shipping carrier and the correct rate will be returned based off the dimensional weight.

The reference guide has some more information on setting up boxes and product shipping dimensions starting on page 238

http://www.mivamerchant.com/referenceguide

[Ron Frigon]

Re: Any DIM weight shipping solutions available for Miva 9?

Miva will pack the box by weight or quantity.

This is all good and fine, in some cases. What about when all of your products have irregular sizes/weights and your average order qty is 10 or more different items that all ship in the same box? Pack by weight doesn't work, neither does pack by quantity.

[Brennan]

Re: Any DIM weight shipping solutions available for Miva 9?

At the end of the day you're really just trying to give UPS (or whatever carrier you use) as much information as you can about the actual box(s) that will ship so that the price the customer pays is the same as what you pay for shipping. If pack by weight or pack by quantity does not work for your products/business you can do things like pad the rate returned to account for any discrepancies, or offer some kind of flat rate shipping so you don't need to even worry about dimensional pricing like this.

[Ron Frigon]

Re: Any DIM weight shipping solutions available for Miva 9?

offer some kind of flat rate shipping

Ya, I've been fighting for that for some time. We do offer flat rate in a couple of our companies, but not others. And Expedited always goes actual freight. We have all product weights and dimensions entered into Miva. Then use a default, "Average", box size. Sometimes we're over, sometimes we're under. We just hope it averages out in the end.

The calculations required to figure out how many different size items will fit into what size box would likely crash a web server...

[Brennan]

Re: Any DIM weight shipping solutions available for Miva 9?

The calculations required to figure out how many different size items will fit into what size box would likely crash a web server...

Sized based packing is actually a very difficult computer science problem to solve. Think of it like playing tetris with your products to pack them in a box. It would be an very complicated algorithm, and you're probably right it may crash the server to calculate all the possible combinations.

The funny thing about packing by size is even if we found a way to solve it, you the store owner have to then pack the box with such precision that all the products we said should ship in that box actually fit. This would rarely work out in reality even though all products should technically fit in the box according to some algorithm.

[Ron Frigon]

Re: Any DIM weight shipping solutions available for Miva 9?

This would rarely work out in reality even though all products should technically fit in the box according to some algorithm.

I'm not much of a Tetris player either... I better just quit while I'm ahead.