Anyone ever encounter this problem?
I was preparing to ship out an order last night.
When I went to print out the shipping label I get big bold red error message
telling me that I had to change the shipping address.
At the same time it reminded me that if I change the address
I would lose my seller protection.
It said there could not be more than 40 characters in address line 1.
The customer had 54 characters in address line 1.
I ended up cancelling the order - problem with address.
Then I got into a back and fourth with the customer who is insisting it is a valid address and he's never had any trouble receiving ebay orders before.
I told him to about the 40 character limit and asked hi to correct his address and re-purchase.
He never did.
My question is this, Why would ebay allow more characters on address line 1 than the maximum amount ?
Anyone else experience this?
iamalwaysright
·2 years agoYes, this stupid eBay caused problem has been mentioned here before. But I don’t know if it’s been mentioned recently. You can probably search the archives for these threads. It’s amazing what eBay’s response is regarding this issue. Rather than just change the programming to push that same error to the buyer when they input their address, eBay says we need to communicate with the buyer to resolve this. Can anyone say overcomplication?
Your buyer is probably right that there isn’t anything wrong with their entered shipping address. Can it be truncated to under 40 characters? Probably. But leaving every character on there probably won’t faze the mail carriers in delivering it correctly. I’m sure others have already said, an easy solution is to cut off the excess characters and put it in address line 2, or even the company line (or even the recipients full name line. It all doesn’t matter to USPS what line your info is on as long as they see it.
PS. Have you guys ever seen it where the buyer entered his entire address on the first line where he’s just supposed to enter the recipient’s name? So his shipping address would be
John Dumbbuyer 123 fake st Springfield IT 11112
123 fake st
Springfield, IT 11112
dbfolks166mt
·2 years agoFYI some potentially useful information.
Most common US mailing addresses fall within the character limits of an address label used for mailing across delivery services. UPS offers up to 30 characters for address lines 1 and 2, FedEx offers up to 35 characters, and the USPS goes up to a whopping 46 characters.
dbfolks166mt
·2 years agoI have not purchased my shipping labels through eBay in a long time so not sure if this is an eBay restriction or a USPS one but I will experiment on Pirate Ship the next time I go to create a label to see if it has the same issue.
adamcartwright
·2 years agoThat's the purpose of Address Line 2 -- for long addresses.
lakefor94
·2 years agoHad to do that this morning. Changed it by moving the company name on the 2nd line. No worries.
12345jamesstamps
·2 years agoSo, I look at my eBay address on eBay site and the payment address in my inbox of emails.
Especially the International addresses are so different than eBay address site. I use the inbox of address to confirm how the address is suppose to look.
I use the inbox of address email to confirm the correct address.
And wonder why so many sellers here lose a package?
Like an address with an "apt number' after the street address...or a "PO Box Number " after a street address.
Or when eBay shows the city after the province...International address.
And then sometimes the line will have everything or too much in a line.
Which is why I use my hand to write an address on every envelope or package.
Never had anything lost last year or this year yet..."knock on wood".
caldreamer
·2 years agoYes, I usually just put some of the address on a different line (to make it fit). Silly that EBAY allows more than 40 characters when it doesn't fit.
worldcoinauctions
·2 years agoJust had to do that (split an address onto two lines) with an address in PR, also noted that when shipped that ESE got to PR faster than it would have gone across my own state. Nice.
dhbookds
·2 years agoDUH! Why didn't I think of that?
Ebay may not have faith buyers could think of that.....
vintage-camerastuff
·2 years agoI used to get those all the time when shipping international orders. I would just fix it myself. Never had a problem. No reason to cancel an order for that.
onlinecentral
·2 years agoOn dozens of occasions, I have moved some excess portion of line 1 into line 2. Moved the city, state and zip from a line into the correct input fields. I never heard from the buyers and eBay let me keep the payments.
auctiondibs
·2 years agoThe same exact thing happened to one of my BIN items. The same pop-up with the shipping name exceeding 40 characters error and warning that I could lose my seller protection if "the changes I make are substantially different from what the buyer intended". This was strike one for the buyer.
The buyer's ship to address was to a reshipper in Miami. That was also the reason why the ship to name was more than 40 characters long. It was the courier's business name, the buyer's full name, and what appears to be their account number for that reshipper. The "Address Line 1" also included the city, state, and zip code, so the shipping label would have showed the city, state, and zip twice, if I was allowed to print it that way. This was strike two for the buyer.
The buyer did have over 100 feedbacks and included a couple of received as a buyer feedbacks from the past month. I guess other sellers were able to ship packages to this buyer. I did contact the buyer twice with a screen capture of the shipping warning pop-up window the first time, and then about the double city, state, and zip, but the buyer never replied. This was strike three for this buyer.
I decided to cancel the sale due to an "issue with the buyer's shipping address". I just didn't want to take a chance of trying to correct the buyer's ship to name and address to a reshipper, and have it get lost between the reshipper and buyer.
I understand that I'm off the hook once the package is "delivered" to the reshipper's address. I've shipped multiple orders to reshippers all over the USA already with no issues. My gut told me to just cancel the order and refund the buyer.
@inhawaii So you are not the only seller that came across this 40 character issue. Your issue was with "Address Line 1" and my issue was with the "Name" field plus the double city, state and zip info. I could have corrected this myself, but it really should be on the buyer to correct this.
Problem with shipping info + shipping to a Reshipper + not replying to my messages = STRIKING OUT THE SIDE. Inning over.
slippinjimmy
·2 years agoIn what world is splitting an address over two lines "substantially different"?
Answer: There is no world!
I'm not sure why eBay limits addresses to 40 characters, the limit for USPS is 46 for address line 1 or 2.
On the other hand UPS is 30 and FedEx is 35......
https://www.serviceobjects.com/blog/character-limits-in-address-lines-for-usps-ups-and-fedex/
inhawaii
OP2 years agoThanks everyone!
Move some stuff from line 1 to line 2.
DUH! Why didn't I think of that?
I'm such a sorry excuse for a "superstar". LOL
Lost a $90 sale though.
Oh well, hopefully he'll re-purchase.
nobody*s_perfect
·2 years agoAnother strategy, if this happens again, is to purchase the label elsewhere (Pirateship, PayPal, usps.com) and then paste the tracking number into the eBay transaction. As long as the ZIP Code is the same, eBay doesn't see it as a changed address.
iamalwaysright
·2 years agoI have another solution if the address has way too many characters that it can’t fit in the multiple text fields and the buyer refuses to truncate it, but some may frown upon this because of the possibility for abuse. In cases like this or if eBay or whatever party you’re using to create the label does not recognize the address as valid thus prohibiting you to create the label, you can a label with a valid address with the same zip code as the buyer’s address. Then amend that label by using a handwritten or typed out sticker showing the address the buyer insists on using. And cover the street number and name with the sticker you made. I’ve done this about two times and both times the package arrived to the buyer safely to their satisfaction. I guess some addresses unfortunately don’t like to be accepted by USPS databases.
rockyroadtradingpost
·2 years agoMaybe you could message him that you figured out a work-around and invite him to repurchase?
toomuchstuffagain35
·2 years agoAlways worth a shot.
toysaver
·2 years agoI've had that happen. I copied and pasted the extra characters into address line 2 and deleted them from line 1. It's considered a truncated address. When viewed on the label the whole address is there in all it's glory. It is not therefore shipping to another address. The 'spirit' of not shipping to another address means not shipping to another person at another place.
I'm sure I took into consideration the value of what I sold and checked what I could learn of the buyer's history. You always have to do what you are comfortable with.
kensgiftshop
·2 years agoI get that sometimes and I just take some from the first line and put it on the second line.
You're not changing anything and you still have your protection.
Unavailable member
·2 years agoI had a similar experience a few days ago.
A buyer from Australia made a purchase from me. When I went to purchase the label I got the red over 40 character message.
The buyer added ( Fastway & Sendle won t post to my address) next to their name. I was going to put it in the line underneath, I just took that out since I wasn't using Fastway or Sendle to ship, I figured eBay shipping hub will get it without that.
pjcdn2005
·2 years agoYou could have put part of the address on the second line. That would not be considered as changing the address and you would have still had seller protection. I've done it with foreign addresses in the past and an ebay rep has confirmed on the boards that it was fine to do that.
I have no idea why ebay doesn't sent it up so that it automatically defaults to the second line when the address is more than 40 characters.
a_c_green
·2 years agoFixed it for you. 😉 Yes, correcting the address is not the same as changing the destination.
The line length issue has been a longstanding bug in eBay code (i.e. you can store an address line that's longer than the allowable length on the label), but there has been little to no interest in fixing it, possibly because the code revisions are too difficult to work out using novice or contract programmers. (I notice that they finally fixed the Euro-style format of addresses in the emailed payment notifications, only about three years after that was first reported.)
So just find a logical spot on Line 1 to break the address to a second line. It'll be fine.
pjcdn2005
·2 years agoThanks for reading my mind and making the correction. 😀
a_c_green
·2 years agoIf you haven't heard of it already, Google the "Wicked Bible" sometime... 😂
pjcdn2005
·2 years agoToo funny! I haven't heard of that before.
Thou shall not post without rereading what thou has posted.