Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 152 posts

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

#81

Post by phil21 »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #49
sharpercoder wrote: post #12

I have also encountered web forms which must validate my address. Turns out, the backing database did not contain my address. I could not order at the store. After contacting the store, they told me that their data was always accurate and therefore I must be a fraud.

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…

> Why they have to complicate so much something that just works is beyond me.

Probably because it doesn't Just Work(tm) as well as you think. People in general are pretty bad at knowing their actual deliverable address - if you are someone as large as Amazon having even .1% of your packages returned due to user input address errors is likely quite a lot of money.

Having briefly done e-commerce stuff where we had to ship low value product en-masse I tend to think that .1% is a low estimate - but maybe people have gotten better at this since the early 00's.

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

#82

Post by FussyZeus »

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.

Confirmed, I live in a mess of various "towns" around the larger Green Bay Metro area in Wisconsin. Anyone from out of the area would say I live in Green Bay, but where I live you could say is in up to three different towns. shrug

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

#83

Post by tehwalrus »

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.

Disclosure: former employee, who wishes them all the luck in the world getting people to use it!

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

#84

Post by jstanley »

Const-me wrote: post #51
gcb0 wrote: post #33

haha. great irony: the medium.com site showed me a page with a google captcha. I clicked it, and it asked me to identify cars or something. so I just hit the back button, left this comment and realised I did not have to read such a click baity titled article. I guess captcha before showing an ad-ridden site is 70% of the reason I don't read bad articles. thanks medium-google-cloudflare.

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...

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

#85

Post by Lordarminius »

This might be a component, but it is not the real reason why online shopping is behind in Africa. That would be because purchasing power is low, exchange rates are high, and most companies don't trust the system enough to ship to Africa - even for products with relatively high demand.

Many e-commerce companies operate in my country Nigeria and I have never heard that their major complaint centered on valid shipping addresses. The problem exists true,but it is a relatively unimportant one. DHL, FEDEX and other couriers whose principal business is delivery of goods are doing just fine last time I checked.

Purchasing power and disposable income are low across the continent and for those reasons I am personally bearish about the prospects of e-commerce in Africa in the medium term.

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

#86

Post by rwallace »

Macha wrote: post #45

In Ireland we only recently got postcodes. The reason was not because the postal service or delivery companies needed them - in fact An Post (national postal service) explicitly said they did not. Instead it's because: a) enough online shops assume you have one b) advertising mail providers needed it Frankly if physical spammers need it, then that's an argument against having it to me, and it's sad that online shops…

I'm glad we finally got postcodes. Now I don't have to waste energy getting pissed off with that defect in online forms any more, and it presumably adds an extra layer of redundancy, a bit more reduction in the probability of a package being mis-delivered.

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

#87

Post by softawre »

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.

"real address" is a misnomer. There's a difference between who you pay your taxes to, and who delivers your mail. These are two different things, and when delivering mail, the latter is the one that matters.

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

#88

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#89

Post by dmix »

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…

Isn't the real problem the lack of organization at the state/city level in these African countries? Is a postal code and street address system really that impossible?

> Look at that form. It has things like street address, state/province, zip code? What is that? 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? Hell No.

I mean GPS coordinates sent by WhatsApp + name + simple description seem like a decent alternative but it too should be standardized then. But it seems bizarre to me to have local governments not attempt to set up a basic system for mail/package delivery.

It's not just bad for ecommerce but all business, law enforcement, and even democracy.

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

#90

Post by FireBeyond »

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.

You also have the concept in some situations of 'vanity addressing'.

I worked for a water utility in Melbourne Australia. There were (for but one example), two adjacent suburbs, Box Hill and Mont Albert, the latter of which had a perceived prestige.

We'd always have some people, and more so as you reached the border of the suburbs, who'd give their address as Mont Albert, but with Box Hill's post code. This allowed the system to be functional for our purposes without arguing with the customer.

Is it a problem we should have to deal with or feel compelled to? No, but that was the decision made, in this case.

Post reply on HN