Hi all - I spent many hours searching the web and the virtuemart forums trying to figure this out - and never found an answer but I found "hints" in various forum posts so finally tried some things and it worked! Virtuemart has this ability built in with no hacks or extensions needed! It's this simple:
How to offer free shipping on 1 item
VM Administration
Go to Shipping/Create Shipper
Add Shipper Called Free Shipping
Go to Shipping /Create a shipping rate
Complete all fields as follows:
Description: Free Shipping
Choose the Shipper You created (Free Shipping)
Select Countries you want to be allowed to get this rate
If you want to limit it to selected states enter start and end zip codes - I use USPS Priority mail so I left these fields bland and they were filled in with the default values 00000 and 99999
Enter Lowest weight as 0.00
Enter Highest weight as 0.01
Enter Fee as 0.00
Your Package fee 0.00
Currency: Select your currency (in my case US Dollar)
VAT ID 0 (unless you need this)
Go to Admin / Configuration
Choose the Shipping tab (make sure it is writeable)
Check "Standard Shipping module with individual configured carriers and rates. RECOMMENDED
Leave your other shipping module(s) checked as well (in our case USPS Shipping Module 4.2 as of June 2010)
Finally - go to your product and change it's weight to 0.00
That's all there is to it - no hacks needed!
