Conditional per-item shipping charges?

[HornetNZ]

So our main products are shipping in LARGE boxes that are set to ships alone. Coordinating items, when purchased in the same order, can be stuffed inside the primary box. And since we have a negotiated rate for the large boxes, a little extra weight doesn't cost us. But, since they can buy the coordinating items separately, they all calculate shipping normally in checkout. Some potential customers are being scared off by the additional shipping charges when buying a whole package. Currently, we've been refunding the customer the extra shipping fees...but that only works if they make the order of course.

Can anyone think of a way to configure it so products x/y/z have $0 shipping when product A is also in the cart?

[cbsteven]

No great solution comes to mind. You may be able to do something with Promotions and offer a discount on X+Y with Item A is in the cart, but that would really only be workable if you don't have all that many items. How many SKUs are we talking about?

[Guest]

The only thing I can think of is going the Discount route as mentioned... Or give ASM a call. The team at ASM have a great product for advanced shipping configurations:

Advanced Shipping Manager Connector

Generally they can get some very complicated shipping situations figured out.