Can Company Name be tied to shipping method?

[BestCPAPprice]

I have been having a lot of problems lately with people using the FedEx Ground (business) shipping option when they are specifying a residential address. This creates extra work (and expense) for me, because there is a surcharge from FedEx to deliver to a residence. I either have to swallow the difference, or I have to take the time to manually debit their account for the difference in shipping charges and send an email explaining why. I have already added verbage to the FedEx Ground shipping description saying it is to be used for business addresses only, but it is being repeatedly ignored. I know that I could just drop this option, or go to a flat rate for shipping, but I have received a number of favorable comments from customers saying that they liked to have a choice of shipping methods.

Is there some way to disallow them from selecting the FedEx Ground shipping method during checkout if they do not enter anything in the Company Name field of the shipping address? Jimmy or Gonzalo, would this be a relatively simple change? Seems like it might be useful for others too.

Thanks for any feedback!

Tom

[GonzaloGil]

Tom,
You could remove the HOME method and just leave the Business method, this would instead, charge everyone a few bucks more. The real solution would be to add Business/Residence option to checkout which we currently do not have. We are thinking about adding this at checkout, the only reason its currently not there is because it makes checkout 1 question longer, and could cause confusion.

[BestCPAPprice]

Thanks for the reply, Gonzalo. Seems to me that asking them if it is a home or business still would not prevent them from selecting a business delivery method for a residential delivery, either intentionally or not. Since the company name field has already been populated on the screen prior to the delivery method selection, wouldn't it be cleaner just to lock them out of delivery methods intended for businesses if that field is not populated? Of course, they could still mistakenly put something in the company name field for a residential address, but you can't account for everything.

I don't really want to drop the FedEx Ground, because some customers are sensitive to shipping prices, but at this rate it might come to that.

Thanks again for the reply!

Tom