Address longer than 40 characters

[reallytalljon]

I am faced with having to re-do someone's shipping address because it is longer than 40 characters.  This should be a requirement that Ebay places on buyers when they set up their accounts.  This is especially troublesome for international addresses, as I have no idea how to revise these, and then face the possibility of shipping late because of time zone differences, etc.

[inhawaii]

I would ship it as-is.  Technically you're supposed to. 

Unless you cancel the transaction (problem with buyers address),

have the buyer correct the address, then re-purchase the item. 

[bigdeals.etc]

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@inhawaii wrote:

I would ship it as-is.  Technically you're supposed to. 

Unless you cancel the transaction (problem with buyers address),

have the buyer correct the address, then re-purchase the item. 

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To the OP, I’ve complained about this many many times in the forums as well to CS. I believe many or all of the complaints just get tossed into the round file. While they agree it is an issue, persuading them

to fix it is another thing. 

@inhawaii So as an example I’ve been sitting on an order that’s already late to Belarus. The address is entirely in Russian or Belarusian (I think there’s a slight difference) alphabet and is over 40 characters.

I’ve messaged the buyer a few days ago asking for the western translation to the address, because eBay will print out any foreign alphabet character as blank. I can take a stab at translating it thru online services, but there’s no reason for me to take that chance since they have a chance of not being 100% accurate. Might as well at least hear the translation directly from the buyer if possible. 

And if we technically have to ship it as addressed, and eBay won’t let you create the label “as addressed” (over 40 characters), then shouldn’t eBay not let the buyer enter that shipping address in the first place?

[anneecakes]

It's annoying, but I usually work this out on my own. I can't cite it, but I know that eBay won't ding a seller for shipping to a corrected/ slightly refined address (as long as there is no "material" change).

I have a regular customer whose address ALWAYS comes through as too long and I ALWAYS fix it-- I shorten his business name by calling it Acme Brothers (instead of Acme Brothers, Inc.) and I condense every possible item in his name and address to make it fit. 

If I get a funky international one that is not working, I usually google the address and see how it is cited online (usually I use a whole new line for some part of the address). Every once in a while I can't get comfortable and cancel the transaction for problem with buyer's address, but I can usually do some legitimate tweaking to make it fit.  VERY often (with international addresses) buyers have input some region or "county" that is really not part of their address because the eBay system wants that in the "state" field or similar.  I go ahead and take that out if I can clearly see on google that it's not used in their address.

(And yes-- eBay should alert buyers of too many characters as they input their addresses-- it's a little crazy that the alerts of problems come through to the SELLER to fix:/!)

[paulhua3]

I make use of the business name line and apartment line to split long addresses into parts that will fit the 40 character limit.

[frugality_inc · Accepted solution]

I've brought this same issue up to eBay's head of carrier relations over a year ago. eBay doesn't care if you have problems shipping to the buyer.

 You'd think eBay would be interested in an address verification system and character limits to reduce item not received cases, delivery issues related to a bad address, which in turn would reduce the work load on eBay customer support agents resolving these cases. Common sense isn't eBay's forte. 

[reallytalljon]

Well said, I know nothing about the computer science/programming effort this would take, but can't imagine that it is astronomical.  But this is how large companies roll nowadays.

[gpudoc]

Same problem here, the address exceeds 35 character limit because eBay inserted their eCP number in front of it, and it won't even let me edit the address! Had to cancel the order. Well done eBay...

[buyselljack2016]

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edited.  Never mind.

I see eBay has changed the address edit for some sales.

[kh-stanley1]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.