topic Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order? in Selling

Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

youraussiestore2012 — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 13:10:49 GMT

Ebay can easily validate the shipping address when buyer places order (the same they do when seller prints shipping label).

The very commin mistakes in shipping address include missing street name, incorrect suburb name or missing postcode (can provide actual address with these mistakes but not including due to privacy reasons of buyers). While priting 50+ address daily, it is not possible to check each address that everything is right with address. The result is that orders get lost, delayed and sellers are hit hard because buyer can open non-delivery case, can leave low raking for shipping time and margin for buyer is only 2% to become top-rated. Believe me this has become very common problem and I even send message to customer support but received no reply (very strange).

Funny side is this that just try putting as your shipping address and purchase will go through without any problem.

00 No Street

Without Suburb

Fulty State 9999

Please ebay validate shipping address when buyer is placing order.

Thanks.

Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

lyndal1838 — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 14:24:56 GMT

How can ebay validate any shipping address when the buyer can change the delivery address to any address that they want when they go through Checkout before paying with paypal. That is the address you have to send to, not the buyers address in ebay.

Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

youraussiestore2012 — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 20:41:39 GMT

Thanks for your reply.

Have you ever printed parcel postage label using ebay? There ebay actually validates address. You cannot print parcel postage lablel for an invalid address. The problem is with small orders which go as letters and sellers have to print itself.

Agree address can be changed during checkout but ebay gets this address anyway and can validate if they want to. But looks like that they want to transfer the this pain seller. Please try the dummy address that I mentioned in the question as shipping address.

Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

clarry100 — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 20:58:55 GMT

We get these kind of address errors all the time. We send 99.9% of our stuff by large letter so I check and validate every address as we print the labels. I make changes on the label as I'm printing it if required. Our reported item loss rate is about 1 in 1000 and only ever had two due to incorrect address. One was where the buyer had not changed their address after they had moved. The other was that the street did not exist in the suburb given. Again buyer error. I would estimate that I would use about half hour per day doing these checks but worth it for the low loss rate.

Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

clarry100 — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 21:04:47 GMT

PS. If I see an address we are unable to correct and we are sure will get lost if we send it like that I will try to call the buyer to validate it first. We have had a couple where there was a street number but no name.

Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

harley_babes_hoard — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 23:07:29 GMT

I am the same Clarry most my mail by letters.

It's not that hard to change/edit each address. But I don't use ebay labelling I use my own so I'm used to cutting and pasting then editing each address.

Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

clarry100 — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 23:23:04 GMT

Yes Harley. We do exactly the same.

Copy/Paste across to our label printer software.

Then Check/Edit the mailing address before printing the label.

Whilst its not always identical to the PayPal address, since we are (mostly) using large letter (untracked) we don't have seller protection anyway. So it doesn't really matter. By doing it this way we are looking after ourselves.

And it tells in our good loss rate. I think approx 1 in 1000 is pretty good going compared to some reports I read on here.

I would think if you were using a label printing service (like ebay or C&S) where at least the City/PostCode is x-checked you would be getting a high failure to print rate due to addressing errors. Lots of buyers put their town/suburb in line #3 and then their nearest major City in the City field. Of course then their PostCode will not match the City field. This is possibly our most common addressing fault, but its not actually a fault when you print a label as it will still arrive this way of course.

The most important parts of an address are that the PostCode is correct and that they have a street number & name. Or if they are in a unit/apartment then the correct unit number. After that all else is of little importance really.

Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

digital*ghost — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 01:45:30 GMT

@youraussiestore2012 wrote:
Ebay can easily validate the shipping address when buyer places order (the same they do when seller prints shipping label).

I wish they would do this, too, despite the fact that most of my items go as large letters as well.

If eBay want sellers to be responsible for delivery, the least they can ask of buyers is to provide a deliverable address - so many don't, it's not funny, and then the seller gets held accountable when there are delivery problems.

Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

youraussiestore2012 — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 11:37:55 GMT

So you said, "I check and validate every address as we print the labels". Very strange that you have much time to do this painful thing and do you really think it is your job to do so? When ebay can easily do this. At least they should validate when someone is opening case for non-delivery that is this case is for valid address or not.

Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

harley_babes_hoard — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 11:57:35 GMT

yes it's our job to do so, if we want the parcels to get to the destination. Yes ebay could fix it but until they do I edit each address also.

Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

lyndal1838 — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 12:02:53 GMT

And who is the ultimate authority on addresses?

I recently was asked by a seller to confirm my address as Click and Send was saying it was not a valid address. I confirmed that my address was correct in both ebay and paypal (they were the same address).

She again asked me to write it out fully, along with my postcode, which I did. Again she said it was wrong and would I please correct the street name and add the "i". I wrote back and said there was no "i" in the street name and never had been in the 44 years I had lived there.

We then argued about whether the suburb contained hyphens.....I said no, according to my local council there had never been hyphens in the suburb name. She said AP said yes.

At the end of 3 hours of constant messages, with both of us getting rather angry she ended up refusing to complete the transaction because she said I refused to confirm my address.

Needless to say she got a neg and reported to ebay.

Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

digital*ghost — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 13:10:08 GMT

@lyndal1838 wrote:
And who is the ultimate authority on addresses?

Other websites can make this nice and simple, it's a shame eBay can't seem to catch up to even the smallest of commerce sites.

Unlike the postage label system where one can't even be generated unless all the address details are verified, it would be very easy to just flag an address if it comes up as unverifiable during checkout, giving the buyer the opportunity to correct, or override the warning and confirm the original address (thus providing very specific acknowledgement and information concerning addreses which can not be verfied by AP - they deliver Australia wide, and I know that sometimes valid addresses are rejected, but at least this way more people would be alerted over common address mistakes, and it would eliminate sellers having to enter into back and forth with buyers when an address comes up as invalid on their end).

The seller would then just print out addresses as is (no error warnings in the label generation stage), the buyer taking full responsibility for the delivery address (as it should be). As it stands, every single time a buyer provides an incorrect address, they are in effect either instructing the seller / Australia Post (or whoever) specifically not to deliver an item to them, or (if the seller picks up on the error and just does a manual override), the seller compromises the small amount of protection they do have re: deliveries.

Re: Why ebay does not validate shipping address when buyer places order?

youraussiestore2012 — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 13:35:07 GMT

Agree. So raise voice to ebay that validate address on checkout and if they cannot then then do not automatically give defect score to sellers as soon as buyer opens non-delivery case because it is fairly possible that order lost/delayed/ returned due to incomplete/incorrect address.