paypal buttons with calculated shipping price ?

Discussion in 'PayPal' started by stats, Jul 14, 2010.

  1. #1
    Hi guys

    After searching all the web and wasting countless hours with paypal's mostly unhelpful supports, i still am unable to find how can i make paypal to calculate ACTUAL shipping price based on the weight i provide and the zip code the customer provides.

    My button code is at the bottom of this message

    As you can see, i provide the item weight, quantity, and weight measure.

    Based on this, paypal calculates a ridiculously rough shipping price based on some numbers i setup in my account's preferences

    All i found so far is that place in preferences to set shipping prices based on weight range (in my case). So (according to PayPal) an item that is 2lbs for example, will ship to my neighbor next door for the same $8 USD as to someone in Hawaii (which will actually cost me some $35 USD to ship there).

    The funny part is when someone clicks this button, it asks for their ZIP code in order to calculate a shipping price, and regardless of what ZIP code you put - it will show you the exact same shipping price for any ZIP code. And this is of course WRONG.

    At other hand, when the customer is still on my website - i don't have their ZIP code to calculate the shipping price myself (i have the UPS API, can calculate that number .. if only i had their zip code). So this means i cannot send the "shipping" variable with my button to paypal, simply because i don't know it's value.


    Would someone please be so kind to show me how to make paypal to calculate the EXACT shipping price using UPS (I also have my UPS account tied up in paypal). Or maybe any other solution out of this situation ?

    Thanks



    here's the code of my button (self-generated, not saved)

    <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_blank">
    <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart" />
    <input type="hidden" name="upload" value="1" />
    <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Shopping Cart" />
    <input type="hidden" name="business" value="mymerchantidhere">
    <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US">
    <input type="hidden" name="item_name_1" value="item 1">
    <input type="hidden" name="item_number_1" value="id1">
    <input type="hidden" name="weight_1" value="5">
    <input type="hidden" name="weight_unit_1" value="lb">
    <input type="hidden" name="quantity_1" value="2">
    <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
    <input type="hidden" name="button_subtype" value="products">
    <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="0">
    <input type="hidden" name="cn" value="Add special instructions to the seller">
    <input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="2">
    <input type="hidden" name="tax_rate" value="9.000">
    <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_buynowCC_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
    <img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
    
    HTML:
     
    stats, Jul 14, 2010 IP