Incomplete address

[triber]

I have a new buyer within Canada with a package that will be sent expedited, but they have the address as first name then just "R" for the surname. Would you mail it with that?

I have send a couple of messages but no reply.

[msau4301 · Accepted solution]

As long as the address itself is complete and you are sending it expedited which has tracking I think it should be okay. You've sent messages so you have done what you can.  We had a friend of my husband's stay with us for several months and a piece of mail came to us with just his first name and c/o (our address) and it made it. I don't think the post office concentrates on the name so much as the address and postal code.

Since it's expedited I would send it anyways, especially if that's the way their address is set up through eBay, you'll have your proof of delivery so should be alright. It could be an older person who is nervous about putting their whole name and info out there. (If they are like my mother who thinks the internet is full of people trying to steal your identity!)

[ricarmic]

I've had some pretty weird "names" on the addresses, things like "stamps are great".

I've always just shipped to the name on the ebay address*, I do not recall any of them having a problem.

*Note that the "new" Canada Post process (my PO just moved to the new system) won't let us use other languages like Russian for example any longer. For the first time in over 20 years I had to cancel a transaction to Russia because none of the address was in English and my PM couldn't do anything with it to generate the necessary label. In the older system days we just cut and pasted the paper version of the Russian address on the package (the label that came out of the system was "?????"s for the address, but one can't do that any more. The buyer never answered when I requesed the English version of their address.

[triber]

I am still using Paypal to ship packages and I am wondering if they will accept one letter as a surname.

[ricarmic]

Because I'm a "stamps on the box" kinda guy, and don't do labels, I don't know about that, I would be surprised if it would be a problem but others will have more experience regarding that....

[femmefan1946]

You can leave the original address untouched and add RUSSIA in bold Roman letters.

Or use Google Translate to find the Roman letter equivalent

I believe Russian is on e of the official languages of the UPU.

And given our cultural mosaic (there's a term you don't hear much anymore) R might be the whole family name. My neighbour's family name is "Ng".

You could try, since the lone letter makes you uncomfortable, extend it as Rrrrr.

This might even remind your buyer that there is a problem.

[ricarmic]

Hi @femmefan1946 is your office on the new system or the old system?

Under the new system, they can't produce a label until they get a valid address. They can override the address that I put in (an example would be an apartment number this has happened a couple times) but they can't type cryllic, so they can't put anything in, or if they did it wouldn't be whatever the cryllic said and I believe the "automation" uses the electronic stuff. At least that's what happened in my case. 

Before the new system I have tried translating cryllic addresses and too much doesn't translate into anything intelligible, at least for the ones I tried.

I might try again next time and see what happens.

[femmefan1946]

In a country that accepts 250,000 immigrants a year, mostly from Philippines, Chinas, or India, you'd think the PO might have thought about that.

Especially for the UPU languages.

Fun fact : The UPU was formed in 1874. English became an official language of the UPU in 1974.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

---

@femmefan1946 wrote:

In a country that accepts 250,000 immigrants a year, mostly from Philippines, Chinas, or India, you'd think the PO might have thought about that.

Especially for the UPU languages.

Fun fact : The UPU was formed in 1874. English became an official language of the UPU in 1974.

---

@triber 

When shipping Internationally and the address has arrived in some sort of cryptic form I've always googed first to confirm and then gone to my trusty link for country address formats and tried to generate box labels in something similar and applied as per countries requirements. (Arrangemeent can also vary for letter mail.) This way the post office at the end should in theory have no issues to actually deliver. This is another issue that ebay needs to address but seems to be low on the radar when you consider how much mail goes internationally. Valid addresses with the correct format.

-Lotz

https://bitboost.com/ref/international-address-formats.html (Not perfect but works in a pinch)

https://www.melissa.com/ca/address-verification

[pjcdn2005]

.As long as it is in Canada, I don't think that it will be a problem.  I probably wouldn't send it outside of the country though without a last name.

[triber]

She finally replied and gave me her name, I had decided to wait until tomorrow morning before I packed it up and did the label. As  I said, this was her first transaction, she maybe just made a mistake.

[msau4301]

Great news! Everybody has to have their first transaction, since she has responded I take that as a good sign!

[dinomitesales]

For future reference, the name on the parcel/letter doesn't matter at all. If it's something that can be delivered to a home or mailbox then they're just going to go entirely by the address (it's not like the mail carrier has a list of all the people that live at every address).

If it's something that needs to be picked up at the post office, you just need to be able to provide "Proof of Residence" to get it - which is why as long as your photo ID has the same address as the one on the parcel, you can pick it up regardless of what the name is.

[zee-chan]

---

@triber wrote:

 just "R" for the surname. Would you mail it with that?

---

When I shop online, I put just my initials for my name because I'm paranoid like that.

Never had issues receiving items. Like what @dinomitesales said, they only check if the address matches the photo ID, not the name. My family picks up my parcels for me often. The only issue would be if someone in the recipient's family marked it as "no such person" and bounces it back to you...... I had it happen before when my buyer used a book character name and her parents marked it as "no such person", and it bounced back to me LOL. So I asked for her real name, did charge her shipping again, and reshipped.

@femmefan1946 wrote:

And given our cultural mosaic (there's a term you don't hear much anymore) R might be the whole family name. My neighbour's family name is "Ng".

---

Yup, this is an actual family name for people from Hong Kong. 

[marnotom!]

Flogging a pretty much dead horse at this point, buuuuut. . .

If everything after the person's name checks out, you don't have an incomplete address, you have an incomplete name.

If someone asks you for your address, you don't give them your name as well.  It's something separate.  That's why the old phrase is "Name and address, please?"