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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

#131

Post by ramses0 »

jessriedel wrote: post #120
ramses0 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the early days of the web, you used to be able to tell NY v. CA dev shops online because all the NY shops only had "search by state" while CA had "near my zip-code". When you can pass through 3 states in 3 hours, it makes sense to "search for all McDonalds in NJ". However in TX and CA, "all McDonalds in TX" is worse than useless for what the customer is actually looking for.

McDonalds is probably the wrong example here. There are of order 500 McDonalds in NJ.

500 McD's in New Jersey, a state of 8,500 sq mi, ratio of ~0.05

750 McD's in New York, a state of 55,000 sq mi, ratio of ~0.015

1,250 McD's in Texas, a state of 270,000 sq mi, ratio of ~0.0045

1,500 McD's in California, a state of 165,000 sq mi, ratio of ~0.009

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

#132

Post by buyx »

Africa is huge, complex and diverse. Gross generalizations about “Africa” even when made by Africans are not particularly useful, and mask the local problems that stymie development.

As an example, because of private courier companies, South Africa has a thriving online shopping scene, despite the South African Post Office becoming a shambles in recent years due to mismanagement. Addresses are not a huge problem for the sorts of people who would shop online in SA.

Africa is not a country, it’s a continent.

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

#133

Post by GFischer »

tehwalrus wrote: post #83

Much maligned on Hacker News though it is, this is precisely the killer application that what3words is good for. It works offline on cheap android devices with GPS for discovery, which can also be done with a satellite map. Directions via an intent into another app with nav is now built into the main apps. In fact, it's already used for doctors finding women in labour in improvised settlements in South Africa. Disclo…

Why is it maligned? First time I run across it. Sounds interesting, and being accepted by Google Maps is great.

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

#134

Post by contingencies »

crooked-v wrote: post #122

Always relevant to this kind of thing are the "falsehoods programmers believe about X" lists: https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

Came to share this too. Actually, I ran in to a new one the other day and just emailed the Address Falsehoods guy about it: Town/city names are non-numeric: There is an Australian town called '1770'. The locals have taken to writing 'Seventeen Seventy' as a government-cajoled workaround. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_with_numeric_na...

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

#135

Post by contingencies »

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

To make matters worse, in Chinese the character 楼 can mean either floor or building (though in the latter case it is often but not always prefixed with 号, eg. 3号楼).

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

#136

Post by contingencies »

neximo64 wrote: post #56

This article is a bit ignorant, typically one provides just a rough area and a phone number so the courier can call and drop it off to you at home or at work. This is why you just need a suburb or area and your cell #. You need to be available to sign for packages in African countries and they typically cannot just be dropped off on the porch. The problem with buying online is just the availability of things is poor,…

In China we always write cell numbers. Always. Otherwise stuff goes missing.

Recently a large number of urban single-use electronic lock postbox providers have emerged, which automate away the inevitable phone calls from time-poor couriers and deliverymen by SMS-ing you a code to your local single use postbox. If you go enter the code, you get your mail. Otherwise, after 24 hours or some exceedingly short time they take it away and your parcel enters no mans land, in which case you have to request redelivery.

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

#137

Post by tehwalrus »

GFischer wrote: post #133
tehwalrus wrote: post #83

Much maligned on Hacker News though it is, this is precisely the killer application that what3words is good for. It works offline on cheap android devices with GPS for discovery, which can also be done with a satellite map. Directions via an intent into another app with nav is now built into the main apps. In fact, it's already used for doctors finding women in labour in improvised settlements in South Africa. Disclo…

Why is it maligned? First time I run across it. Sounds interesting, and being accepted by Google Maps is great.

See some of the other comments on this thread. The algorithm isn't open source, seems to be the main (valid) criticism.

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

#138

Post by mc32 »

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 some places they have "townships" or "towns" (Nassau county has like three such towns, i think) which are like a subdivision of a county, and some have some political structure and officers, but for most ordinary life they are totally ignored.

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

#139

Post by ghaff »

larrik wrote: post #126
ghaff wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In New England, it's probably at least partly that there is such a strong tradition of government at the town level. (Town halls and the like.) I've had friends who moved here from overseas and some of them were really amazed how every sleepy little town has its own town office, police, fire, school etc. Sometimes towns pool some things together but lots of things are town by town.

Massachusetts does organize the judiciary (and some other things like deed registration) by county but in at least most cases, everyone is actually a state employee.

Don't really know how it works in the country as a whole. My impression is that the South generally has more of a tradition of county government.

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

#140

Post by kanyawwah »

This is an issue in Myanmar too. There are businesses in Yangon that provide ship-to locations for a fee (and usually place the orders on behalf of their customers as well since most don't have access to electronic payments). I've never seen the pulse.codes system in real life, but it looks like a very elegant solution.

Also, on the subject of online forms, a major source of annoyance/confusion is the ubiquitous first name/last name fields (most people in Myanmar have just one name since family names aren't a thing). Some split their name in half to fill the two fields, which as you can imagine doesn't work very well when formatted as "last name, first name" or Mr. Last Name, etc.. :-)

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