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Using negative-valued Options as upsells?


djcrom

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First, let me preface this post with: This Tuesday feels more like a Monday, so excuse that rambling post -- I will try to be as clear as possible :)

 

I am currently using OSC MS1. We need to incorporate pro-active upselling in the cart system... meaning basically we want the cart to automatically add an item related to the person's purchase and leave it up to the buyer to remove it.

 

To give you a little bit more background, and to explain why we want to do this... We are a large company that manufactures and sells spas and spa-related items (filters, chemical kits, spa pillow, spa booster seats, etc.). Basically, we have 3 options with which to group these products together or seperately. We can do 1, 2, or all of these:

 

1) Sell everything seperately. This doesn't do anything about upselling (unless I use a contribution, which I will get to in a second), except for allowing options to be added to individual items if the person so chooses.

 

2) Sell everything seperately, but also include pre-made "packages." For example, the "Gold" package (we would never use such a cliche/passe name like that for real, haha) might include a spa, filters, and a chem kit. The entire package would be cheaper than if you bought all the items seperately. However, once again it is up to the customer to choose this package, just like it is up to them to choose what options they would want if they were to buy individual products.

 

3) Sell everything individually and/or in packages, but force upsales. Like I had said, we can group our products with "related options" or "items that other customers bought" all we want, but ideally we would like to force the person to have to actively do something if they don't want to buy items that are needed with, for example, the spa they purchased.

 

I had mentioned that we are using MS1. Most of the contributions I have installed have either incomplete packages or are for older versions of OSC. In fact, I think I've gotten maybe two contributions working fully. So with that said, I set about trying to figure out a way to do upselling without a contribution, which (in a roundabout fashion) leads me to my problem:

 

I thought that a really neat way to do upselling would be to include the items in a package all together, and use options to allow the person to remove products they don't want. For example, $1500 gets you the spa, chem kit, and a box of filters. If the person ONLY wants the spa, they select the "Without chemkit" and "Without filters" options. You might have seen this on, say, Dell's website (remove the mouse from your order and it subtracts $35 from your cart total).

 

My problem happens when I try to add negative-valued options to my cart. Let's say filters cost $38. In the admin area, I set up an option called "Without Filters" with a value of "-38." However, when I check out, it ADDS $38 instead of SUBTRACTING $38.

 

Anyone know of a better way to do this? I really like the idea of using options, it really seems logical, however I don't understand why negative values wouldn't work... :shock:

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