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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

#71

Post by gumby »

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,…

> 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.

But isn’t that what the article says? That a structured address isn’t appropriate and that other means (such as a pick up locator or, as you scribe it, some level of coordination) is what the companies should be using instead?

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

#72

Post by snuxoll »

Klathmon wrote: post #26
StavrosK wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here in Greece, all the post office needs is your street name and postcode. Not even city (the postcode defines that uniquely, same as everywhere else). I don't know why forms get hung up on those.

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.

My mother, grandmother and sister all live in Garden City, ID - which is a small little area enveloped by Boise, ID on all sides. Every piece of mail they get has Boise, ID listed on it - and any time they give someone their address they do the same.

Why on Earth we have zipcodes but still add the city/state is beyond me.

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

#73

Post by theandrewbailey »

abakker wrote: post #59
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.

Yeah. A friend of mine lives in both Long Island City and Sunnyside and Queens. If you get the zip code and the street right, it all works.

When my brother moved in, he gave the city part of the address as . I told him that I've always given the address with and I've never had problems.

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

#74

Post by Freak_NL »

majewsky wrote: post #58
baud147258 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Except that they might have addresses. This reminds me of how when the German zip codes were unified in the 1990s, they forgot about one district. > Although the Gutsbezirk Reinhardswald is officially uninhabitated, two people inhabit and operate the Tillyschanze restaurant, next to the observation tower of the same name above the city of Hann. Münden, located in Lower Saxony. The border between the states of Hesse…

According to the German Wikipedia they finally got a post code (and mail delivery!) in 2015¹:

    Bierweg 1, 34346, Hann. Münden.
Incidentally, that district apparently has a voter turn out of 100%; both Reinhold and Marlies (the two inhabitants) seem to go out and vote when called upon. I wonder if the voting results from that districts are published as-is or grouped with the neighbouring district for anonymity?

1: http://tillyschanze.de/kurioses/

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

#75

Post by ghaff »

snuxoll wrote: post #72
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.

My mother, grandmother and sister all live in Garden City, ID - which is a small little area enveloped by Boise, ID on all sides. Every piece of mail they get has Boise, ID listed on it - and any time they give someone their address they do the same. Why on Earth we have zipcodes but still add the city/state is beyond me.

Encoding redundancy in because of bad handwriting, smudged labels, etc. is generally a good idea.

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

#76

Post by jordigh »

angarg12 wrote: post #24

The first time that I went on vacation to Africa I was mindblown. The concept of city, town or even village broke down for me; one of the places where I was staying was just a streak of houses dispersed more or less close to a single road. Addresses were hardly a thing, people just knew where each one lived, so you had to ask for 'xyz house'. I don't want to sound PC but this is the kind of reasons why more diversity…

> I don't want to sound PC

Sound however you want to sound, and don't listen to those who use "PC" as a derogatory term. I personally prefer to call it "nice" instead of "PC".

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

#78

Post by Y_Y »

JeanMarcS wrote: post #16
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.

In Magento, you can choose by country if you want this field or not. So I guess it’s true for most of the online shop solutions. But as stated by others (about Ireland in their example), even companies that had their hq there asked for zip code at a time there was not any. So I guess if you start shipping internationally, it’s a big job to make a form that fits every cases. I wonder if someone have made a list of tho…

Amazon has a huge base in Ireland, but there's no amazon.ie

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

#79

Post by malyk »

Klathmon wrote: post #26
StavrosK wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here in Greece, all the post office needs is your street name and postcode. Not even city (the postcode defines that uniquely, same as everywhere else). I don't know why forms get hung up on those.

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.

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

#80

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Symbiote wrote: post #55
lagadu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for Denmark, technically we do have regions but they're not even worth writing on any address. Same goes for Portugal, where I've lived: no state/province/region exists; on forms stupid enough to require that you just end up putting the city name again. Same goes for requiring city and postcode.

But Denmark does require more than just a building number and a postcode. For the UK, "10, SW1A 2AA" is sufficient for an address [2]. To avoid mistakes, it's recommended to write "10 Downing Street, LONDON, SW1A 2AA", but this can be looked up in the database[1]. It's usual when entering an address online, or over the phone, to give the postcode, the number, and then confirm the street. The postcode for my workplace…

One of my relatives has a house with 2 postcodes unique to that house.
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