Country Based Shopper Group

[stargazer1682]

I'm upgrading a store to Virtuemart 3.  In the past versions of Virtuemart/Joomla there had been a flat rate shipping module available to install; where a flat shipping rate could be configured based on SKU, and compounded for each additional quantity, and added with other products and their respective shipping costs.  Unfortunately the developers have disbanded and have not created a version compatible with Joomla 3.4 or Virtuemart 3.  So what I'm looking at doing instead is just having the shipping cost built into the final sale price; however I need to be able to set a separate price for domestic shipping and foreign shipping, as anything shipped outside the US or Canada has an extra, fixed cost per item we need to add. 

I know there's an option in the product editor, to add separate pricing for different shopper groups, but what I haven't been able to work out or find information on, is how to create a shopper group based on any particular criteria, like the country a shopper registers an account to.  The default Shopper Groups have variations ranging from guest/not logged in, to new users who are automatically assigned to that group, but going into creating a new group, I find no options that would offer any such new distinctions, much less help me understand how those default groups are define or configured that way, that I might use that information to adapt it to my own purposes.

Basically I would just need to create two shopper groups; one domestic, which would apply to US and Canada shoppers, and then "foreign" shoppers, which would be all the other countries.  I would even be satisfied keeping the guest shopper to display prices without shipping when people aren't logged in; so that all users have to log in to see the shipping costs added to the product prices. Can someone point me to anything that would help me understand how these shopper groups are meant to be configured in a way, so that they're applied to customer accounts automatically - like the defaults do - and in particular if it's possible to create an association between new shopper groups and the account country?

An alternative for delineating different costs by country, would also be greatly appreciate.

[Milbo]

I think you should read the manual http://docs.virtuemart.net/manual/general-concepts/208-methods-shipment-and-payment.html

When I understood you right, you just need the Geolocator (free) http://extensions.virtuemart.net/tools/geolocator-for-joomla-detail

[stargazer1682]

No, I'm trying to make the configuration as simple as possible. The shipping rates are flat and fixed - For example; let's say Item A has a flat shipping rate of $5 for each quantity ordered; so if they order 2, it's $10, 3, it's $15 and so on, added to the price of the produce itself; and any other items added to the cart would have its own fixed shipping costs in kind.  To keep it simple, we were just planning on building the shipping cost into the final sale price, no shipping method or anything like that; just straight forward, the sticker price will say it all, and we'll specify as such that all final prices at checkout includes shipping and handling.  So if the sale price is $10 for product A and the flat rate shipping cost is $5, we would list the final sale price as $15.  That way we get the exponential increase for both the sale price and the shipping, for each quantity ordered; and it all be added together with any of the other products and their quantities in the shopping cart.

My question relates to foreign shipping costs - not changing the currency.  The flat shipping rates need to be different for foreign purchases, while working under the same principal as domestic shipping costs.  I already know using shopper groups will allow me to set different prices for different shopper groups.  What I want to be able to do is say, all customers registering accounts for US or Canada are assigned to Shopper Group "Domestic," while accounts registered anywhere else in the world are assigned to Shopper Group "Foreign".  Then when I go to configure the price for Product A, I can say, Shopper Group Domestic final sale price is $15, Shopper Group Foreign final sale price $25. For anyone visiting the site while not logged in would see the Guest Shopper Group, which would just be the product price without shipping, with the product description saying "login to see final sale price with shipping."

Can Geolocator do that with Shopper Groups?  How do I configure the shopper groups, so that specific types of accounts are sorted to specific shopper groups?  My impression of these shopper groups is that this should be somehow possible, when you have such default distinctions as Gold Member, guest and default - these groups can tell the difference between something, but there are no such options in the backend when creating a new group to define it as anything distinctive or automatic.

[GJC Web Design]

I think your over complicating this massively.. the std. weight shipment plugin you can filter by country

make two .. filter by US and the 2nd by Canada .. thats all thats needed

[stargazer1682]

I have tried using weight based configuration of shipping rates in the past - and I tried them again just now, in case something changed, and it hasn't.  There's an important difference between weight based shipping method, and flat shipping rates.  With weight, when the quantity of a product quantity increases, or is combined with another item in the cart; the weight changes, and is consequently applied to a different weight classification when calculating shipping.  As I said, I just tried it; I gave a product a weight, and defined a shipping method, applying the flat shipping cost I wanted assigned for that product - $6.  When I increased the quantity though, the weight grew exponentially, and no longer fell into the category of weight where I had assigned a $6 cost.  I would have to program countless combinations of weights and the pricing; and since not every product has the same shipping cost, that would have too many possible holes in for  orders to fall through, as well as take up way more time than its worth.  That's not less complicated by any shade of the imagination.  I just want to be able to set a flat shipping price for each item, and have the price, not the weight, grow exponentially with additional quantity, and added with other products configured the same way.  Way back when I was using Joomla 1.0, someone helped me "patch" the weight calculation, to turn it into something else, that basically let me do that, but any time Virtuemart updated, it got overwritten and was too much of a pain to maintain.

What's already available, seems to be all I need; I just need to bridge a gap that seems like it should already be an inherent function - I need to find a way to have shopper groups assigned automatically, based on predetermined criteria related to the account information - specifically the country the customer choses for their shipping address.
Right now, the default shopper groups can identify and differentiate between people who are not logged in (Guests) and default users who are.  However, when I go to create a new shopper group, there's no option available to configure anything, to make it specific to any particular user.  If the Guest shopper group wasn't already there, there'd be no way to configure such an option, using what's available to create a new shopper group in the backend. All logged in users are automatically assigned to the Default shopper group, but it's just an umbrella group applied to everyone; surely there's some way to make that more discerning, and do it automatically; otherwise the shopper group function is pretty useless.

[GJC Web Design]

tried the rules shipping ?

http://www.open-tools.net/virtuemart/shipping-by-rules.html

[stargazer1682]

I'll have to check with the developer to be sure, but so far as I can tell, it doesn't appear to do what I need.  There are two components with this -
First: flat shipping rates for each product; each product has it's own distinct shipping rate.  Example: Product A's shipping rate is $6, Product B has $10 shipping and Product C has $15 shipping - in addition to the sale prices. 

Second: Each product has a different foreign shipping rate, from the domestic rate.  Example: Product A sold domestically would have a $6 shipping price, global shipping price of $15. 

While this module does give the option to change shipping prices based on country, I don't see anything about assigning specific prices by product AND by country.   I either need to be able to build the shipping rates into the final sale price of the products, and list two final sale prices; or I need to be able to set two separate flat rate shipping rates, per product and location.  To date, I've only ever see one flat rate shipping module.  It allowed you to enter the product SKU, assign the base flat shipping rate, as well as the amount for each additional quantity.  And that was great, with only two drawbacks.  First, it's not available for Joomla 3.4.  Second, even for past versions, for some reason the developer did not design the foreign shipping to be configured the same way as the domestic shipping; so even then, overseas shipping gave us problems.

In previous versions of the site, my client has basically hosted two separate stores; two links on the frontpage, one for the "US Store", with their respective prices; and the World Store, with their prices. That was pre-Virtuemart, and I already know this can be simplified through the Virtuemart option to add additional prices to each product, and peg those prices to a specific shopper group.  The disconnect is that, as far I can find, any shopper group that isn't "Default" has to be manually applied to an account; I need a step somewhere in the registration process that will automatically assign each registered customer to a specific group.  Then I can have the different prices set for the different group options. 

[GJC Web Design]

ah...   

First: flat shipping rates for each product; each product has it's own distinct shipping rate.

then join this one..... 

http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=129792.0

am looking into upgrading this to J3/VM3