My buyer's shipping address is two different states
This is an older order made back in December that I thought was interesting. This address has two different states in it:
(buyer name)
(street # and name)
city#1, CT zipcode#1
city#2, FL zipcode#2
I asked the buyer what the deal was asking him to reply and type his complete address to me, and he said to use the CT one with city#1. But he didn't bother double-confirming the street# and name. I checked that in google and the street # and name with CT and zipcode#1 doesn't exist. BUT, it does exist with the FL one and sadly I believe it's a freight forwarder.
I messaged the guy back about this and told him again to type his complete address to me. Two weeks later, he replies saying he doesn't know and will find out. 10 days after that he finally comes back with a valid complete shipping address in CT. Google shows it to be a house. I'm rolling the dice to hope that the package arrives safely.
I'm just wondering still, why ebay continues to fail to prohibit buyers from entering these types of shipping addresses. A shipping address with two cities, states, and zipcodes? Come on now.
lacemaker3
·1 year agoFor what it's worth, eBay DOES do address verification at checkout. When they do, they will post their suggested address for the buyer to see, based on the USPS address lookup app, but they also allow the buyer to choose to use the original address they entered, if the buyer wants to.
So they do use address verification, but they won't stop a buyer from using an invalid address.
Which is probably how so many scam buyers get away with using Doral instead of Miami for the freight forwarders down there. They use the wrong city so they can complain later that the package was sent to the wrong address.
slippinjimmy
·1 year agoI'm with you, the verification that happens when buying shipping is not done by eBay but rather by the carrier.
When users sign up to eBay and/or change their address within Account Preferences eBay does absolutely nothing to verify the address, never mind checking the actual address they don't even make an attempt to ensure that the FORMAT is correct.
Of course the most shocking thing is that there are so many people out there that can't even enter their own address correctly, don't enter the street type (Rd. / St. / Ave. etc), don't know what a zip+4 is, not sure if they are on Main St East or Main St West.
Which is probably how so many scam buyers get away with using Doral instead of Miami for the freight forwarders down there. They use the wrong city so they can complain later that the package was sent to the wrong address.
Doral is a City within Miami-Dade County, it is NOT Miami. Miami International is located right next to Doral (in Miami) In Doral besides several golf courses there are many warehouses used by various shipping companies.
There is a large area directly adjacent to the airport full of warehouses that are actually in Miami. So some of the forwarders are in Miami and some are in Doral, there is no scam in using the correct City name.
lacemaker3
·1 year ago@slippinjimmy,
Many of the buyers appear to use Doral and Miami interchangeably when they write the address for their freight forwarder, all with the same zip code. If you look up the address in the USPS address lookup app, it will take either city (and I think there's also a third city, but I don't remember which at the moment) and correct it to Miami. I believe that means that the correct city name is Miami, for that zip code.
The scam is: If the buyer inputs one of the alternative cities, and the seller lets the autocorrect change it to Miami (which is actually correct), then the buyers will file an INR dispute because it was delivered to the wrong city.
There could be more than one freight forwarder they are doing this with, in more than one city.
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I agree, it's shocking how many people in the USA can't get their own addresses right, or don't know how zip codes and zip+4 work. But, many other parts of the world use very different systems. Some don't have street names, numbered buildings, or even addresses at all. They can't be expected to know that the USA is so much more rigid and rule-bound.
iamalwaysright
OP1 year agoYea. It's pretty clear that my buyer is international. But I've run into a ton of clearly domestic buyers who have no clue of how shipping addresses work. You'd think more people should be aware of their addresses than before since everyone orders stuff online. But it seems to have gotten worse with these numb skulls.
a_c_green
·1 year agoThat's true even of eBay's offshore contract programmers. If you take a look at your buyer's address as it's reported to you in your shipping confirmation email (the one you receive under the Subject heading of "Your shipping label is ready"), you'll see that your American buyer's mailing address is rendered in European format, with the postal code preceding the City instead of following the State, and no State abbreviation at all since of course Europe doesn't have American state abbreviations.
Thus, for example, your American buyer's address will be reported in this format by mistake:
Homer J. Simpson
742 Evergreen Terrace
12345-6789 Springfield
United States
This mistake has been in place for years now, but eBay does not want to rent a programmer to fix it, and apparently no one in-house understands the coding well enough to just patch it.
iamalwaysright
OP1 year agoYou forgot to enter which state in that address ðŸ˜
a_c_green
·1 year agoHeh... 😠I know, Homer Simpson's state has always been carefully hidden; I just used it as my fictional go-to example.
But in this case, that is one of the two screw-ups made by European programmers in this standard eBay message:
wastingtime101
·1 year agoCan you confirm if the city#1, CT zipcode#2 was entered on address line 2 in the street address section, typically used for things like apartment numbers, etc?
If the answer is yes, that explains how there were 2 different city/state/zip.
But all that does is explain how the buyer entered it. It does not justify eBay's lack of address verification at checkout which is a problem that frustrates a lot of us.
iamalwaysright
OP1 year agoYea most likely.