As long as we're wishing for features, here's mine: How about FEDEX shipping that actually addresses residential, rural and extended area shipping, all standard and often-changed charges for Fedex? Put in fields in the shipping configuration under the fuel surcharge for:
- signature fee
- adult signature fee
- Residential fee:
- Rural fee-residential
- Rural fee-commercial
- Extended Area-commercial:
- Extended Area-residential:
- Extended Area-Alaska-commercial:
- Extended Area-Alaska-residential:
- Extended Area-Hawaii-commercial:
- Extended Area-Hawaii-residential:
that can be updated using the admin interface. The 'rural' and 'extended area' fees would be calculated by accessing lists of zip codes provided by FedEx, and we could add a field to the customer account for residential: yes/no.
Plus an updated interface that allows for the new rates to be uploaded, since the current one won't work with the new Fedex layout.
I spent every single support point I had being told 'we're sorry, but we won't change the Fedex module so that it accurately calculates postage, but you can have that custom programmed'. The site claims 'live shipping' for Fedex.
Right now, there is no way without re-writing the module to calculate:
1) Residential vs. commercial charges
2) Rural commercial and residential charges (though there is a 'what is rural?' comment in the code)
3) Extended area charges for continental US, Hawaii and Alaska.
My client called me last week to inform me that the 'live shipping' on X-cart for Fedex undercharged by $12.00 for a Hawaii shipment, despite my having configured my shipping zones according to recommendations by X-cart.
As it stands, if you ever ship outside city, commercial locations, you run a very real risk of inaccurate shipping. My client has elected to run all their charges manually, so they can log onto FedEx to check the shipping for accuracy before billing the customer. If they have to do that, why have a Fedex shipping module at all?
Because of this, I've moved on for my future e-commerce needs to another vendor that understands that accurate shipping rates are crucial to online business. A shame, because I otherwise very much like X-cart. Their programmers are friendly and easy to work with, and their support staff was very helpful whenever I asked (except for not being able to get me to an accurate FedEx module - and that isn't supports' fault, but a programmer oversight)
I'm hoping, though that this will be addressed in this next 4.x release......
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