Why Shipping Charges Doubling Up While Using ELEX USPS Plugin?

Customer :

If I have one product in my cart that is 6lbs the shipping to a certain location is $10.60, if I add another in the quantity the shipping doubles exactly to $21.20, which it should not go by the USPS website calculation page.

I think it is seeing the product as two separate items weighing 6lbs each, instead of seeing it as just 12lbs of weight.

Anything I can do to fix this?

Support :

If your shipping is getting doubled, that means you must have configured Parcel Packing option as “Pack Items Individually”.

Kindly read through the below text to get a full idea of the concept:
With Box Packing & Pack Items individually options dimensions & weight will be considered to calculate the shipping cost. refer the details below:
Parcel Packing: ELEX plugin provides you three options to pack a parcel(s) as given below:

• Pack Items Individually:  In this option, each item in the cart is packed separately. Total Shipping cost calculated by adding shipping cost for each item.
  For example, The shipping cost of Item X is $10. If the customer adds two quantities of Item X to the cart, the total shipping cost is $10 x 2, which is $20.
  Note: This is the default option.
• Pack into boxes with weight and dimensions: If packing items individually does not suit your business, then you can define required box sizes under Box Dimensions section. All the cart items are packed into custom boxes defined in Box Dimensions settings. The best fit box is auto chosen from the defined boxes. This is the recommended option. You can read through setting up box dimensions to understand more in detail.
• Weight-based: In this option, the weight of all the cart item is summed up and passed to UPS API to get rates.

So, if you want multiple items to be packed in one box (not individually), then kindly change the parcel packing option.

Customer :

I have tried all three “Parcel Packing Options” and the shipping exactly doubles when making the quantity 2 for each one of them.

Also, all of the bats have free shipping and when I add a bat the shipping increases even though the weight of the bat is set to “0” and the shipping class for the product is set to free shipping.

Maybe this plugin will not work with the way I have things set up?

Support :

Since you are telling that you have tried all the packing options and still not getting the correct rates, kindly provide us access so that we can check at your end.

Support :

Regarding the rate doubling issue:

We just noticed that the custom box that you defined in the plugin settings for parcel packing is of the same dimensions as that of your product ( Softballs).

This is the reason why the rates get doubled every time when you add more than two ( Softballs) in the cart, as it packs every ball in individual boxes.

We would suggest you reduce the dimensions of your product so that multiple balls can fit into custom boxes.

Let’s say if you assign Softball dimensions as 2*4*4 with weight 2lbs, then up to 7 balls can fit into the custom box of size 14*4**4 with max weight 15 lbs.

Note- kindly assign the box weight and max weight while defining the custom box.

Kindly read how to configure box dimensions.

Regarding the free shipping for certain products:

Kindly have a look at the code snippet for skipping the product while calculation of rates on the cart page.