QUESTIONS & NOTES
Best Way: Laddawn dynamically determines carrier based on shippers available for a given origin/destination, and on weight or size of order. If the customer has set a blanket preference for "do not use XYZ trucking company," that carrier will be excluded from the pool of choices from which Laddawn selects Best Way.
**What happens today with customers who have a "Ship only via XYZ carrier" preference, when Laddawn is paying the freight, and that carrier is not among Laddawn's best way options? Does that ever happen? Jim thinks that Laddawn ships by the preferred carrier. Need to validate; if it is true, is this what we want to have happen going forward? Is this preference going to be discontinued, or only allowed on a case by case basis, and set by CE? If so, does this need to be in CE's web interface, or will it remain in Avante?
Carrier pick list: Is this list static or dynamically determined?
Expedited/overnight shipments – We haven't discussed yet. Is this part of the carrier pick list, or is it an additional designation? On the web, it is part of carrier pick list. This is what happens on web for prepaid ( stock over $500 ), and user chooses fed ex overnite:
According to Meme, customers often call when they get this, and requested expedited shipping; Laddawn agrees to ship expedited, and charge customers the difference (not full freight cost).
Going forward, regardless of who pays freight, we would like user to be able to select "ship to arrive on" tomorrow's date; this would lead to a popup type of warning message about an upcharge, and the ship via drop list would dynamically update to include only those shippers who can guarantee that arrival date. If this is for a freight included stock or freight paid by Laddawn MOD order, the customer would be charged only the difference in shipping cost (Laddawn would still pay the freight amount it would pay had the order been shipped at the normal rate).
Of course, we also need to get around to discussing split shipments, where all or just some items are expedited. (And define "some" - a subset of a line, or a line that's part of a bundle?).
Special delivery instructions: Do the inside delivery/tailgate delivery/ lift gate delivery instructions narrow the list of carriers? If so, should that choice be made before selection of a ship via?
Preferences will show up in bundle ship comments area; preferences that only CE can set, can be deleted on order by order basis - they cannot otherwise be modified.
12/20/12 - order tracking
Future feature request: Allow distributors with websites to pull shipment tracking info into their websites so their customers can access it directly. Via Jim Dennison & Mark Bourgeois
Associated Packaging is setting up a website and Ben Roth, the person managing the program has asked if there was some way for them to tie into our shipping system so that they can access tracking information so that their customers could track shipments coming from us.
"The goal is to be able to hook into shipment tracking info so that we can easily provide customers with a way to track Laddawn purchases without having to manually log into the Laddawn site to grab that information."
Order tracking today (dev site - 12/20/12)
| Page two of paginated list of orders, when searching on "all" in all filters | Order tracking content for an item that has shipped | Order tracking content for an item that has not shipped |
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9/20/12 - shipping and handling comments and charges
Pallet Usage Summary Notes - supporting documentation can be found in the attached Comments Analysis spreadsheet.
- A standard pallet for all warehouses except Sterling is a 40X48 4-way.
- Sterling uses various miscellaneous size and finds the best fit for the job. In Sterling, miscellaneous pallets cost about $2 as compared to $3.50 for 40X48s.
- Other popular pallet sizes are used for better product fit or better cradle pack fit: 45X48, 45x60, 40X52, 40X60, 40X86, 40X96
- Export skids are used mostly in Sterling and Dallas - Dallas gets then for about $4.10 (quite cheap), they are expensive in Sterling
The following decisions were made regarding shipping and handling comments and charges - supporting documentation can be found in the attached Comments Analysis spreadsheet.
- Poly Lining will be available for MOD items and we will continue to build an extra charge in the unit cost.
- Double Poly Lining will not be offered anymore.
- Folded in Half: From 11/1/11 - 9/14/12 we had 71 orders the asked for bags to be folded in half. We have the capability to charge for this in a table by warehouse but have not actually charged as of yet. Fro ther new site we will not charge for this service unless until the demand goes up and and it becomes meaningful.
- The user can choose 40X48 4-way pallets at check out time and, based on limited usage, will not be assessed an additional charge. This will allow us to continue to use miscellaneous pallets in Sterling and other locations f/when it makes sense. Since virtually all of our 40X48 pallets are 4-way we will offer them as a single choice.
- The user can choose Export pallets at check out time and will be assessed an additional charge. We had some preliminary conversations about how this will function and we might show this as a check box on the Freight Estimator that translates into a comment for the order and an adder to the freight charge.
- The user can choose the # of packages per pallet, max pallet height, and max pallet weight at check out time and, based on limited usage, no additional charges will be assessed. There is a operations project going on (Dave, Leo, Julie, etc) to figure out the logic for acceptable prompting and parameter and we will build the logic they define into the check out area.
- Individual Boxing will be available for MOD items and we will continue to build an extra charge in the unit cost..
- We will eliminate all Type 3 comments. The groups' feeling is that these are things that we've probably conjured up for a few difficult customers and we should eliminate them or make them extremely difficult to get.
- We should charge for Inside Delivery, Tailgate Delivery, and Liftgate Delivery. We had some preliminary conversations about how this will function and each might show as a check box on the Freight Estimator that translates into a comment for the order and an adder to the freight charge.
- We will review all 000 comments for a manageable time frame to figure out how many overlap with our "tableized" comments and to determine whether there are any items that should be added to out "tableized" list.
- Note: Meme and Tina are looking at customer comments to determine what kind of cleanup we can do. It is likely that we have a lot of ancient history and/or undesirable data in there that is worthy of cleanup.
**
Costs associated with shipping and handling that are above and beyond basic "freight."
Meeting scheduled for Weds., 9/19/12
What special shipping/handling costs does Laddawn continue to upcharge for?
- Data on current usage of these special/shipping handling options (Jim)
If we do continue to upcharge, where do these upcharges belong? (Where and when do users get to choose special shipping/handling options, and where/when/how do they see the cost?)
- Embedded in results/cart pricing for certain customers based on user preferences
- Embedded in results/cart pricing based on packaging selections (level 3 add menu)
- User selects at checkout (and alluded to in freight estimator for Cart? Share interface for items and carts?)