How to create a combo of two products that, if bought together, have a temporary set discount?

Question

My Magento site sells cameras, which we also push them to eBay and Amazon through a plug-in called M2E.

It is common in the camera industry to have combos like this:

SKU 12345 - Nikon D3200 18-55mm kit (black) $599.99 Has a special instant rebate of $150 off from 9/1/12-9/7/12

SKU 23456 - Nikon 55-200mm VR lens $249.99 If purchased with SKU 12345, a $100 instant rebate applies all month

Therefore presently we create a new SKU:

SKU 12345.23456 - Nikon D3200 18-55mm kit (black) with 55-200mm VR lens $849.98 Has an instant rebate of $250 from 9/1/12-9/7/12 Has an instant rebate of $150 from 9/8/12-9/30/12

That way we can push the SKU 12345.23456 out through the web via M2E to Amazon and eBay. And the price is correct.

However it's a problem because we have to manually manage the inventory levels. It's frustrating to say the least.

I have been reading about the Grouped, Bundle, and Configurable Products. But they do not do what we want. First of all they base the discount on a percentage, but we need the discount to be a set amount. Second of all they seem based around the idea of being customizable by the customer, whereas we need an individual SKU that represents each particular combination of various items, so that we can push that out to eBay and Amazon as set combos like that.

I can't rely on using shopping cart price rules for the discounts because then they won't get transmitted out through M2E, will they?

Therefore I need a solution to create a complex product in Magento that has its inventory determined by the other products. I am a developer but I'm somewhat new to Magento. Perhaps this will require a custom extension? Is there already an extension that can help with this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I needed to add a fixed discount to a bundle, but it only lets me do a percent discount. What compelled Magento’s authors to force a percent discount as the only option here, when in every other case they use a fixed sale price amount? I cannot begin to tell you how frustrating this is.

We sell cameras. If someone buys camera X together with lens Y then it needs to get an extra $100 off. That bundle needs to be its own unique SKU so we can push it like that through M2E to Amazon, eBay, etc. and have the sale price carry over correctly. However we also add various add-on items to these packs and we can’t have the “percent discount” also apply to the add-ons! Argh!

You really needed to make this ability. I’m going to have to self-mod the code now.

My "solution" (more like "hack job") is as follows:

First I copied four files into a local/ override, and did a commit to my local git repo. Here is the .diff: https://gist.github.com/gistya/11199766

Next I made the necessary changes to those four files. Obviously, changing [%] to display as [USD] is a hard-coded fix whereas ideally you’d have [USD] be a dynamically-generated property based on the store’s currency. However I don’t know how to make it dynamic and I don’t have time to find out. Plus our store is US-only anyway so whatever. Here were the changes I made as a .diff: https://gist.github.com/gistya/11199755

You’ll note that I left the code commented out that I changed, I guess to make it easier to undo what I did in case this horribly backfires. So far though it does seem to work OK in limited testing.

This patches 1.8.1.0 BTW, I wouldn’t try this on any other version.

Also this is probably a very bad idea because I don’t think this will play nice with future updates to Magento unless the same patch can be applied on those. I don’t like the idea of having to patch the code of Magento. However given the fact that in the current version of Magento, without this patch, Bundles are completely pointless for my needs due to having useless "percentage-based" discounts, this patch was a necessary measure.

I certainly hope that in future versions of Magento they will make a selectable option out of this. I’m sure some people like the percentage-based discounts.

Furthermore in order to where in certain of the combos, there is the option for accessory packs not to be present, I made one of the options for the selections "None", where "None" is a product called "None" with a SKU of "0" and a quantity in-stock of 9999.

So I was able to get M2E to synchronize two Amazon ASINs with different UPCs from the same Magento SKU using Variations of a Bundled item. I just had to manually create the ASINs and UPCs in Amazon first, and make sure the Listing Template doesn't search UPC. I also matched Seller SKU beforehand but not sure if that matters. Lastly the "None" product must have a Managed inventory with tons available and be In Stock, otherwise M2E won't Relist it.