Online shopping in Africa doesn’t work because of shipping and billing forms • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by CM30 » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

niftich wrote: post #114

Blaming this on shipping and billing forms , as the headline and the article text suggests, is missing the forest for the trees. The deeper issue at play is developer and business naïveté; trying to transplant knowledge and assumptions that work fine elsewhere into a particular market where different conditions exist. It's sometimes easy to assume that if something works in sunny California, it will be applicable in…

> It's sometimes easy to assume that if something works in sunny California, it will be applicable in Michigan, or Germany, or anywhere on the globe, and for large fractions of the globe this breaks down under scrutiny.

See also the falsehoods programmers believe about various things (not even just addresses):

https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

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

#142

Post by noobermin » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

liotier wrote: post #119

noobermin wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about google map pins? Would that help?

From being an Openstreetmap evangelist and trainer, I can tell you that most people in the world (not an Africa-specific thing) have close to no idea how to position themselves on a map... Which by the way is why turn-by-turn navigation is so popular.

FWIW, if people can learn to use a cellphone and order things online, they can learn to pin themselves.

Regardless, I understand and agree with your point. I just think difficulty with pinning on maps[0] limits its adoption vs. actually eliminating it.

[0] reasoning about maps in general is difficult for many people, not everyone has well-developed spatial reasoning.

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

#143

Post by hrktb » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 10:11 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #129

rurban wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Packages that don’t fit post boxes still need to be delivered.

Also some places don’t show names for different reasons, so having accurate numbers refering to the good entities can be critical.

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

#144

Post by user5994461 » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 10:12 PM UTC

4ndrewl wrote: post #14

Doesn't what 3 words already solve this problem, and seems to have commercial momentum? http://what3words.com

This thing is beyond terrible. Just tried it. It's auto picking my browser language instead of English. The choice of words is terrible, I don't know how to spell half of them, I can't imagine anyone able to write them down or understand them over the phone.

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

#145

Post by bzbarsky » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 10:39 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #139

larrik wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jud…

For contrast, in Maryland counties are the school districts. At which point you need a county government, significant taxes, etc...

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

#146

Post by sctb » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 10:57 PM UTC

harmlessposter wrote: post #94

Interesting - nations full of low IQ people exhibit low socioeconomic outcomes, such as an inability to trust a chain of strangers to cheaply deliver packages.

We've banned this account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#147

Post by ghaff » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 11:36 PM UTC

bzbarsky wrote: post #145

ghaff wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jud…

For contrast, in Maryland counties are the school districts. At which point you need a county government, significant taxes, etc...

The organization of schools plays a big role because, at least in many areas, that where most of the property taxes go. I don't know the exact numbers in my town but I think it's 80-90%. (Where schools are a combination of by town and a regional system with a couple of adjoining towns.)

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

#148

Post by JeanMarcS » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 2:53 AM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #68

JeanMarcS wrote: post #10

In France (don’t know how it works elsewhere) shops can be a shipping point. It creates a network for transporters and it’s a must have for any online shop. If the transporter ships directly to your home, you have to be here when he comes (and in France you never really know...). If you haven’t bought large furniture or fridge or whatever, it’s simpler to go to a shop, it’s open on a wide range of hours. For the shop…

You can just make post offices hold mail for you until you come by with identification. Great for travelling! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poste_restante

Well... where I live, the post office is opened from 9am to 12pm and from 2pm to 4pm. On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Only in the morning for Wednesday.

I desperately try to send something since Monday. Without success.

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

#149

Post by starchild_3001 » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 4:13 AM UTC

This is a stupid article with a stupid title. Those who wish to sell items to those countries would do their research and consider this problem. If they don’t solve it, it’s because they don’t want to deal with all the mess of international shipping to a country without proper addresses.

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

#150

Post by etu » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 9:12 AM UTC

baud147258 wrote: post #39

liotier wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one of the places where I was staying was just a streak of houses dispersed more or less close to a single road You were in America actually...

That's not just in America, part of Europe can qualify too. Except that they might have addresses.

I think maybe many places in Europe has addresses now. When I grew up, I grew up on a gravel road not very far from a capital city.

That road did maybe have a name at that time. I don't know. But our house had a name. So we wrote our addresses like this: My Name Our house name Zip Code Region name

Then some years later EU forced us to get an address, so the gravel road became a street (according to the name) with numbers that are totally messed up and make no sense since the houses are so spread out. But I guess it somehow made something better?

I've tried to map up the house numbers on OpenStreetMap but I honestly don't know more houses than the one I grew up in and the closest neighbor.

This is like 15-20 years ago that this change happened. But if I want to be retro, I can still send snailmail to the house name. The postalservice manage to sort that out.