Help with Shipping Extension

Hi

I wonder if someone is able to help.

We are in the process of setting up a pet supplies website and have had a web designer and developer deal with the front and back end using opencart.

We would like to offer our local customers a free delivery service (i.e. to specific postcodes), where we will deliver items ordered via our website directly to them ourselves for free. Also, we will be including various items on our website (such as bags of dog food and rabbit hutches) which we would only like to offer to our local customers. Our website will also offer other items to customers throughout the UK as normal, who will pay a delivery charge.

We have been told by our web designer that it will be difficult to be able to include a shipping solution which offers free delivery based on local postcodes. Further, that it is again difficult to be able to restrict the purchase of certain items and allow only local customers to place such orders (i.e. for a bag of dog food).

We have seen various shipping extensions and wonder whether these will solve our problems?

We would be very grateful for any help as our knowledge is currently limited.

Thanks.

Sheridan

There are certainly solutions for both problems. If your regular shipping charges are based on a formula (such as on weight or order total) then you could use Product-Based Shipping to give free delivery to some postcodes, and restrict when shipping rates appear based on the item in the cart. If your product types are cleanly divided into categories, then you could also use Category-Based Shipping instead, which could be easier to set up.

If you're using a live rate method (like UPS) then you would could use Restrict Shipping Methods instead. You could limit the built-in Free Shipping from appearing when outside the certain postcodes, and limit your regular shipping method from appearing when certain products are in the cart. You could then change the "no shipping methods" message (in /catalog/language/english/checkout/checkout.php) to something like, "Your cart contains items that do not ship to your area."

Feel free to take a look at the screenshots and demo site (which includes some examples of various set-ups using the "Show Examples" button), and if you're interested let me know at www.getclearthinking.com/contact if you have any further questions.

Have bought several extensions mentioned above - they are excellent quality and will do what you want