Buyers with strange address name?

[alonzo916]

A few times I have had a buyer, where on their shipping address, their name will be a normal name such as "John Doe" but have some strange acronyms and numbers attached to it. Such as "John Doe XCEN-0309278". What is this supposed to be?

[simply-the-best-for-you]

It is probably a Freight Forwarder.  In other words, a no-US buyer who uses a company to ship the item to their country.  Just package & ship like usual. 

[714ricki]

My guess it's an internal order number by a shipping consolidator. I have seen it quite often over the years. Perfectly OK to ship with the reference number in the name or address field. 

[ms.rodriguez*]

It's ok to ship. There is a big company that has the name FLIGHT in it.  They ship to Japan.  They always send a nice email requesting that you pack well and write the item # on the outside of the package.  You ship to these companies and they are responsible for getting it to the buyer in their foreign country.

[maxine*j]

As others have said, probably an international freight forwarder.  

Could also be a private mail box service, which some people use in order to have a street address while keeping their actual home address private, preferring not to receive mail or packages at their homes.  The PMB addresses are never box numbers, but street addresses.  Usually, though, those PMB addresses don't have a long string if numbers like that.

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[slippinjimmy]

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@alonzo916 wrote:

A few times I have had a buyer, where on their shipping address, their name will be a normal name such as "John Doe" but have some strange acronyms and numbers attached to it. Such as "John Doe XCEN-0309278". What is this supposed to be?

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It's a reference number that a forwarder uses to identify which of their tens of thousands of customer is. The alpha characters usually (not always) identify the ultimate destination country while the numeric characters identify the specific buyer.

In most cases the shipping address will be in Oregon, Delaware or Florida, the first two because those States do not have Sales Tax and Florida because that is where the forwarders serving Central and South America are based.

[evelyb30]

Seconded - freight forwarder.  Had one today (possibly my last sale on eBoo) that seems to be eventually headed to Ukraine.   The numbers are pretty standard and most buyers using freight forwarders, other than those buying high dollar electronics,  are good folks.  It's a way around the VAT mess for some and buyers who only ship to USA addresses for others.  It can also save money on shipping, maybe, for some.  

[reallynicestamps]

Freight Forwarders are the second safest addresses you can get.

The safest being USPS mailboxes, where the owner must have a key or pickup at the counter with appropriate ID.

The seller's responsibility for delivery ends with the forwarder.

The forwarder usually deals with import fees (duty and sales tax) so there is no holdup at the customer's customs office.

If there is a Not As Described dispute, which can happen with any buyer, the seller is only required to provide Return Shipping from the address they shipped to - which is the US address of the forwarder. The overseas buyer is responsible for getting the disputed item to the forwarder and persuading them to cooperate with the return.

Here is the eBay policy and confirmation of that last point from tyler@ebay (who has since moved on).

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/ebay-money-back-guarantee-policy/ebay-money-back-guarantee-policy...

FREIGHT FORWARDERS
 
Now -- if the GSP is not involved, but the buyer uses a freight forwarder, does the seller provide Return Shipping from the forwarding address or from the buyer's address?
Oooh this is a good clarification question @femmefan1946! A seller is only required to provide return shipping from the buyer's input address at time of checkout - that goes for any return where a seller provides shipping ('free' returns, etc).
 https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/All-Items-Are-Free/m-p/31966203#M1772511
Message #20 from tyler

BUT
GSP isn't considered a 'freight forwarder' as much as a shipping service a Seller can avail themselves of. 
 
On a GSP transaction the address input by the Buyer at checkout is their address at the final destination. The Erlanger address is inserted into the transaction for the Seller. This means for Not as Described return requests a Seller would still be responsible for return shipping from the final delivery address*.  
https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Buyer-Central/Global-Shipping-program-extremely-low-efficiency/m-p/4746... - tyler Post #13.

I include the part about GSP, which is eBay's own version of freight forwarding, but with some important differences.

It will be interesting to see the further differences when GSP is dropped in favour of the new International Shipping program.