I haven't looked into the default shipping option myself yet, but I wonder if this will give you a start: http://arastta.org/docs/user-manual/marketplace/shipping

For the shipping insurance I suspect you might need a extension for it.

Been there I'm afraid.

The standard approaches are:

1. flat rate (eg £1.50 per order)
2. free
3. per item
4. by weight

Each can be set for ONE geo zone only. My client wants flat rates of, say, £1.50 for UK, £2.50 for EU.

Weight based supports several zones, all added under Localisation - Geo Zones
Just sett the weight high enough and add the flat rate.

Thanks Rune. So if I set the weight of every product to say 100g, then I can set the Zone 1 charge to 100: 1.50; 200: 3.00 etc.

They also want to offer insurance for some zones and make it compulsory in others. I think that will mean charging a special shipping rate to include insurance and then have a special product 'Insurance' which people may add. Maybe someone has a better idea.

I like Arastta - chose it over several other options - but there will always be a few of these gotchas

Remember that many of the OC extensions will work fine in Arastta: http://arastta.org/forum/arastta-supports-both-vqmod-and-ocmod

So maybe this will help: http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=extension/extension/info&extension_id=13535

Else I'm quite sure there is some more advanced suiting here: http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=extension/extension&filter_search=shipping+insurance&filter_download_id=41

Agree with Rune here. In addition, here you can find the compatibility list:

http://arastta.org/docs/developers/opencart-compatibility

Regards

Thanks for the help on this.

Weight-based is the way to go - set a nominal weight to every item. (I have seen a comment somewhere on supressing the weight from the postage selection form.)

I discovered that one country can be in more than one Geo Zone with a set of prices. So if you want to offer a price without insurance and a price without, create a Geo Zone for each and add the countries to both zones.

Hope that helps someone else...

Thanks Simon for sharing the solution, appreciated

And a few more tips... (Hope this is all that is needed)

To customise the popup page where the customer selects the shopping method...

1. remove the Weight data
IN:
/catalog/model/shipping/weight.php

REPLACE:
'title' => $result['name'] . ' (' . $this->language->get('text_weight') . ' ' . $this->weight->format($weight, $this->config->get('config_weight_class_id')) . ')',

WITH:
'title' => $result['name'],


2. remove 'Weight Based Shipping' title

IN:
\catalog\view\theme\(your theme)\template\checkout\shipping.tpl ... Line 87

REPLACE

html += '

xxxx' + json['shipping_method'][i]['title'] + '

';

WITH
html += '

';

And in ...catalog\view\theme\(your template)\template\checkout\shipping_method.tpl

Line 7 - remove or comment out $shipping_method['title']