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Online shopping in Africa doesn’t work because of shipping and billing forms

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Re: Online shopping in Africa doesn’t work because of shipping and billing forms

#121

Post by sangnoir »

Delphiza wrote: post #48

Online shopping doesn't work in Africa, not because of web forms with an ability to capture localised addresses, but because of the lack of affordable, reliable logistics. Africa is vast and largely rural. You can get reliable delivery at a cost. Cheaper delivery options have a tendency for things to get lost. While I applaud OP for bringing modern tech to Africa in the 'Silicon Savannah', online shopping requires hi…

> Online shopping doesn't work in Africa... I built and operated successful online retail in Africa

Now that's a head-scratcher! Seriously though, I hate these overbroad generalisations - obviously online shopping does work for some value of Africa. I know of people in Africa who shop, pay for and arrange delivery of second-hand Japanese vehicles all online. It's a multi-million dollar industry.

>..not because of web forms with an ability to capture localised addresses, but because of the lack of affordable, reliable logistics.

Ironically, most African countries have functional postal services that are struggling because WhatsApp has replaced letters. Online shops should partner should partner with postal services instead of trying to "revolutionize logistics" unsuccessfully. Trust me, the logistics are fine: if manufacturers can get their product to even the most remote corners of a country, maybe look into how they are doing it, instead of trying to re-invent it with a phone app.

Re: Online shopping in Africa doesn’t work because of shipping and billing forms

#123

Post by niftich »

malyk wrote: post #79
Klathmon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically it's the same in the US. Street number, name, and zip code is all you need, but even the US postal service recommends keeping the city and state for redundancy. It sometimes leads to funny situations if you live near city boundaries where you can get mail sent TO multiple different cities that are all your address.

I live in a .zip code that spans eastern Emeryville and north Oakland and most web forms these days force correct my address to Emeryville and won’t let me change it to Oakland. As an engineer I get it, but damn if it isn’t annoying to not be able to have your real address on your packages...if only for aesthetic reasons.

ZIP Codes are not geographical entities and don't correspond to geographical extent; rather, they are a hybrid between a discrete number of finite delivery-points and an abstract way of capturing a postal delivery route. They are often abused as geographical entities, which the Census Bureau has tried to rectify with ZCTAs [1], but it's unclear whether most informal use of Zip Codes is haphazard, or actually conforms to ZCTAs.

However, Zip Codes directly map to one preferred place name designated by the USPS, and zero or more acceptable alternative place names. These are usually inspired by, but don't necessarily correspond to municipalities and political units that the lots in question belong under.

You're more than likely talking about Zip Code 94608, of whose preferred name is 'Emeryville', but 'Oakland' is an acceptable name [2]. There is a lot of software that takes the shortcut and autofills or autocorrects the preferred name, especially because informal lists of Zip Codes seem to be easier and/or cheaper to get a hold of than through official sources at the USPS [3].

Perhaps a nationally-known example is the Las Vegas Strip, most of whose famous casino-hotels are located in the unincorporated town and CDP of Paradise, but covered by two Zip Codes that only accept Las Vegas as the name.

In rural areas with weak local government, people develop an affinity for the preferred place name of their address' Zip Code, because it's a standardized way of referring to the locale where more specific names are not widely known.

[1] https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/zctas.html [2] https://california.hometownlocator.com/zip-codes/data,zipcod... [3] https://www.usps.com/nationalpremieraccounts/manageprocessan...

Re: Online shopping in Africa doesn’t work because of shipping and billing forms

#124

Post by gumby »

Leader2light wrote: post #96
gumby wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reading of the article is quite different from yours. The author writes, > I can only tell you that I live in Kanyanya, a Kampala suburb. If you need my exact home, then I’ll either have to send you a GPS location via apps like Whatsapp, Telegram, Google Maps or engage you in a long phone conversation in which I’ll try to describe landmarks, building and trees leading to my house. But street address, zip code? Hel…

That is all much more cost intensive. Think of a delivery guy trying to sort through all that crap. List of landmarks? What a joke.

That’s what we pay them for. And there’s no reason why waze or maps couldn’t use landmarks for navigation.

Re: Online shopping in Africa doesn’t work because of shipping and billing forms

#125

Post by lhopki01 »

liotier wrote: post #23

A friend of mine who distributes consumer goods in Congo (yes, the whole of Congo) through an online shop explained that a phone call is an essential part of the delivery process - even more important than the address because it is how the actual delivery location is negotiated. Of course, this is only a problem for valuable items (one wouldn't trust postal employees with that) - regular mail in Africa ends in a PO b…

It's not really expecting much. Most of Africa will be using phones for internet access not computer so they can just get the coordinates for that.

Re: Online shopping in Africa doesn’t work because of shipping and billing forms

#126

Post by larrik »

ghaff wrote: post #109
larrik wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the US stuff like that happens. I recently refinanced, and the lender kept getting hung up on how they needed to "contact my county" for verification. Well, in Connecticut a "county" is nothing more than a name on a map or an organizational method. It's not an actual government entity, there's no one to contact.

Heh. Yeah in New England (and I assume a lot of the rest of the US), counties are pretty vestigial. I think Massachusetts still has limited county governments in some cases but mostly they're just a legacy organizational scheme. On the other hand, when I lived in Louisiana, the parishes were an important level of government.

I'm under the impression that much of the country uses counties a lot. I know they are quite important in New York (my father owns property upstate). New England seems to be an anomaly there. Even Hawaii has county governments.

Re: Online shopping in Africa doesn’t work because of shipping and billing forms

#127

Post by Larrikin »

larrik wrote: post #98
teekert wrote: post #7

It's funny, even in the Netherlands we feel a (tiny, tiny) bit of this: all foreign websites have address entry systems that always ask for a state/province (and even faithfully produce a list of all our provinces). We indeed have them but locals ignore them entirely, city, street, number and postal code are all we, and domestic companies, use.

Even in the US stuff like that happens. I recently refinanced, and the lender kept getting hung up on how they needed to "contact my county" for verification. Well, in Connecticut a "county" is nothing more than a name on a map or an organizational method. It's not an actual government entity, there's no one to contact.

In Virginia it's even worse. There are distinct counties, but we also have cities that are legally different and not contained in counties.

Re: Online shopping in Africa doesn’t work because of shipping and billing forms

#128

Post by Const-me »

jstanley wrote: post #84
Const-me wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably, internets detected malware or spam coming from your IP. Check there: https://whatismyipaddress.com/blacklist-check

(Not the person you're replying to, but) Thanks for the link. I get CAPTCHA's all the time and it turns out my IP address is in the spfbl.net blacklist. Now to work out how to get taken off it...

You’re welcome.

My current ISP doesn’t provide me a public IP address, so I’m sharing the IP with other clients of that ISP. A month ago I also noticed captchas on google and cloudflare. Because half of the internets use cloudflare that was kinda noticeable.

I’ve searched a bit, found the cause (and a bunch of black list checks resources). I’ve e-mailed my ISP describing the issue and linking to that check page, they did something and the problem went away.

If you’re the sole user of your IP address, check the detection details. Some of these honeypots/black lists even tell you what exact malware they think is likely to cause the trouble. Then scan/update your computers (all of them that are using that IP address), and wait a bit. AFAIK, if the spam stops coming from that IP, their entries expire after a while, probably days or weeks.

Re: Online shopping in Africa doesn’t work because of shipping and billing forms

#129

Post by pas »

rurban wrote: post #57
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I ordered something from Amazon to be delivered to my workplace, I spent like half an hour trying different variations of the address so that it would pass the validation. And my workplace is a university building where 200+ people work, in a European country. Finally, I got it to work by typing "Campus of Place, Faculty of Building". It wouldn't work without the words "Place" and "Building", which we…

I guess in some Asian places the Z coordinate is also required, like Floor 24

Aren't post boxes on the ground floor with names and flat/unit numbers?

Re: Online shopping in Africa doesn’t work because of shipping and billing forms

#130

Post by chiph »

simias wrote: post #17
vezycash wrote: post #4

I checked out the linked https://plus.codes/individuals Steps for creating a Plus Code are: 1. Open the Google Maps app. 2. Touch and hold a place to drop a pin on Google Maps. 3. At the bottom, you’ll see an address or a plus code. Tap this section to find all details of the location and copy the plus code. If the primary use case is creating an address for my current location - e.g. Home. Then, the instructions are…

I agree with your feedback but even beyond that the "Enter city or plus code" form seems broken. I went to a random place in mongolia, I got a plus code of "5PJF+FJQ" and when I enter it in the form it doesn't work: https://plus.codes/5PJF+FJQ I think it's a nice concept though, I could see myself using something like that if it became more mainstream, it's a little more convenient than GPS coordinates if you want to…

I got the full code off the query string.

Southeast corner of the Texas state capitol building: 862477F6+M4X

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