[ic] Shipping & Real-time Integration to UPS, DHL, FedEx, etc

Daniel Browning db at kavod.com
Tue Sep 13 19:51:03 EDT 2005


* Melissa <intrchng-list at outfitters.com> [2005-09-13 13:15]:
> From perusing the list archives, I gather that tying into
> the real-time shipping modules for UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc, was
> not recommended due to unreliability and slow responses from
> those systems?
> 
> Are the response times / reliability still problematic?  Is
> anyone using the real-time services?

It depends on what you consider to be reliable.  During the 2004 shopping
season (Nov-Dec), UPS slowed down considerably, and many requests errored
out over a period of several hours (on more than one occasion).

> If you're using your own shipping tables (as we are), what method do you
> use to keep up with the changes in rates & fuel surcharges?

[Warning: shameless plug follows.]

Business::Shipping comes with 2005 offline tables for UPS as well as scripts
to screen-scrape the new fuel surcharges every month.  I wrote a tool to
convert the tables when UPS updates them once per year, but I've yet to
release it (no one has asked, and I haven't gotten any round tuits).

http://search.cpan.org/dist/Business-Shipping/

-- 
Daniel Browning <db at kavod.com> - Kavod Technologies.  Random Fortune:
I can relate to that.


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