Ship to address line character limits

[sparko6079]

Perhaps someone can tell me why a buyer can have a ship to city line with 28 characters when the maximum is 25 on the seller side.

I don't wish to edit a buyer's address.  This has caused issues for me in the past.

6 eBay messages later asking my buyer to either change their ship to address or tell me exactly how it should appear with 25 characters or less per line.

[1786davycrockett]

@sparko6079 

If you click on the "Edit" option to make "Ship to" address changes, you will find that two lines are available for the street address.

Use "Address Line 2" to enter half of the buyer's city name, and put a hyphen at an appropriate syllable break in the city name; then finish up the city name on the "City" line, for example:

John Doe

1234 Main Street

South Antidisestablish-

Mentarianism

California 94565-4587

The post office is primarily concerned with the ZIP Code, and not how the wording of the city is written.

For instance, I live in Arden Hills, MN, and my ZIP Code is 55112.  But I often receive mail addressed to my correct street address, with the city written as "New Brighton, MN 55112" or "Saint Paul, MN 55112" or "St. Paul, MN 55112"  All the post office cares about is the ZIP Code.

[sparko6079]

Dear Dave,

Just before receiving your reply I had done what you suggested.  

However my question remains the same.

Why does the buyer get a message to change the ship to address?  Otherwise it implies every seller doing business with this buyer will have to do an edit before being allowed to print a shipping label.

A mistake by the seller could end up with the package being delivered to the wrong address or the package being returned to the seller.

Thank you!

[1786davycrockett]

@sparko6079 

"However my question remains the same.

Why does the buyer get a message to change the ship to address?  Otherwise it implies every seller doing business with this buyer will have to do an edit before being allowed to print a shipping label."

You're right -- it's an oversight problem on the part of eBay's techies, and should be corrected.

But, as we all should know by now, eBay finds these problems to be "low priority," and expects the sellers and buyers to work out the problems between themselves.

I had a similar problem, several years ago, with a very long business address, being sent to a foreign country, which did not fit into the narrow parameters set up by eBay.

I contacted the buyer regarding how to abbreviate his address; but the buyer either didn't comprehend the problem, or chose not to understand the problem, and simply bounced it back to me.

Rather than canceling the sale (using "Issue with buyer's shipping address," I used Google to translate the words in the address, in order to figure out which words could be abbreviated into smaller groups -- and that did the trick.  ("Strasse," for example, becomes simply "str.," or "des" becomes simply "d.," etc.)

By applying abbreviations where possible, I could still ship the item to the buyer at an address that was still comprehensible to the buyer's postal workers in that country.

Admittedly -- a lot of extra work, which eBay could solve by simple expanding the number of available spaces on the address form -- but don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen!

But for American addresses, as I stated earlier, the most important part of the address for USPS is the ZIP Code, especially if the seller knows the nine-digit ZIP Code number, which can narrow down the delivery address dramatically.  Even an abbreviated, mangled and misspelled street address should still find its way home with a nine-digit ZIP Code!

It's all about workarounds sometime, when the easiest method on eBay's part would be to simply extend the number of characters in the shipping address.

But simplicity is not the eBay way, is it?

Good luck!

[sparko6079]

"Admittedly -- a lot of extra work" for sellers.  correct! 

With the language barriers also mentioned this leave a lot of opportunity for errors.  I had one package almost come back to me from Poland.  I made a mistake on the address and customs would not release the package to my buyer.  By luck someone knew someone at the customs office and the package was released.

I worked in IT and in matters like these.  I envision it would take less than an hour for a programmer to fix this issue.  

[sparko6079]

No, I did not receive a logical answer. Work arounds yes but the root issue still persists.

I have worked in IT and been involved with maximum characters per line. Whatever the limit is that limit must be the same across all fields.

Simple thing to fix. I cannot understand the reluctance to just fixing the issue.

[1786davycrockett]

@sparko6079 

"No, I did not receive a logical answer. Work arounds yes but the root issue still persists."

I thought my solution was quite "logical."

Apparently the "logical" solution which you seek is longer character lines; but only eBay's IT people can provide the "logical answer" that you desire -- and they don't care.

Forgive me for wasting your time.

[sparko6079]

Well never give up hope.