Anyone ever encounter this problem?

[inhawaii]

I was preparing to ship out an order last night.

When I went to print out the shipping label I get  big bold red error message

telling me that I had to change the shipping address.

At the same time it reminded me that if I change the address

I would lose my seller protection.

It said there could not be more than 40 characters in address line 1.

The customer had 54 characters in address line 1.

I ended up cancelling the order - problem with address.

Then I got into a back and fourth with the customer who is insisting it is a valid address and he's never had any trouble receiving ebay orders before.

I told him to about the 40 character limit and asked hi to correct his address and re-purchase.

He never did. 

My question is this, Why would ebay allow more characters on address line 1  than the maximum amount ?

Anyone else experience this? 

[worldcoinauctions]

Just had to do that (split an address onto two lines) with an address in PR, also noted that when shipped that ESE got to PR faster than it would have gone across my own state. Nice.

[pjcdn2005]

Too funny!  I haven't heard of that before. 

Thou shall not post without rereading what thou has posted.

[caldreamer]

Yes, I usually just put some of the address on a different line (to make it fit).   Silly that EBAY allows more than 40 characters when it doesn't fit.

[rockystradingpost]

Maybe you could message him that you figured out a work-around and invite him to repurchase?

[toomuchstuffagain35]

Always worth a shot.

[12345jamesstamps]

So, I look at my eBay address on eBay site and the payment address in my inbox of emails.

Especially the International addresses are so different than eBay address site. I use the inbox of address to confirm how the address is suppose to look.

I use the inbox of address email to confirm the correct address.

And wonder why so many sellers here lose a package? 

Like an address with an "apt number' after the street address...or a "PO Box Number " after a street address.

Or when eBay shows the city after the province...International address.

And then sometimes the line will have everything or too much in a line.

Which is why I use my hand to write an address on every envelope or package.

Never had anything lost last year or this year yet..."knock on wood".

[lakefor94]

Had to do that this morning. Changed it by moving the company name on the 2nd line.   No worries.

[adamcartwright]

That's the purpose of Address Line 2 -- for long addresses.

[dbfolks166mt]

     I have not purchased my shipping labels through eBay in a long time so not sure if this is an eBay restriction or a USPS one but I will experiment on Pirate Ship the next time I go to create a label to see if it has the same issue. 

[dbfolks166mt]

FYI some potentially useful information. 

Most common US mailing addresses fall within the character limits of an address label used for mailing across delivery services. UPS offers up to 30 characters for address lines 1 and 2, FedEx offers up to 35 characters, and the USPS goes up to a whopping 46 characters.

[iamalwaysright]

---

@inhawaii wrote:

I was preparing to ship out an order last night.

When I went to print out the shipping label I get  big bold red error message

telling me that I had to change the shipping address.

At the same time it reminded me that if I change the address

I would lose my seller protection.

It said there could not be more than 40 characters in address line 1.

The customer had 54 characters in address line 1.

I ended up cancelling the order - problem with address.

Then I got into a back and fourth with the customer who is insisting it is a valid address and he's never had any trouble receiving ebay orders before.

I told him to about the 40 character limit and asked hi to correct his address and re-purchase.

He never did. 

My question is this, Why would ebay allow more characters on address line 1  than the maximum amount ?

Anyone else experience this? 

---

Yes, this stupid eBay caused problem has been mentioned here before. But I don’t know if it’s been mentioned recently. You can probably search the archives for these threads. It’s amazing what eBay’s response is regarding this issue. Rather than just change the programming to push that same error to the buyer when they input their address, eBay says we need to communicate with the buyer to resolve this. Can anyone say overcomplication? 

Your buyer is probably right that there isn’t anything wrong with their entered shipping address. Can it be truncated to under 40 characters? Probably. But leaving every character on there probably won’t faze the mail carriers in delivering it correctly. I’m sure others have already said, an easy solution is to cut off the excess characters and put it in address line 2, or even the company line (or even the recipients full name line. It all doesn’t matter to USPS what line your info is on as long as they see it.

PS. Have you guys ever seen it where the buyer entered his entire address on the first line where he’s just supposed to enter the recipient’s name? So his shipping address would be

John Dumbbuyer 123 fake st Springfield IT 11112

123 fake st

Springfield, IT 11112

[iamalwaysright]

---

@nobody*s_perfect wrote:

Another strategy, if this happens again, is to purchase the label elsewhere (Pirateship, PayPal, usps.com) and then paste the tracking number into the eBay transaction.  As long as the ZIP Code is the same, eBay doesn't see it as a changed address.

---

I have another solution if the address has way too many characters that it can’t fit in the multiple text fields and the buyer refuses to truncate it, but some may frown upon this because of the possibility for abuse. In cases like this or if eBay or whatever party you’re using to create the label does not recognize the address as valid thus prohibiting you to create the label, you can a label with a valid address with the same zip code as the buyer’s address. Then amend that label by using a handwritten or typed out sticker showing the address the buyer insists on using. And cover the street number and name with the sticker you made. I’ve done this about two times and both times the package arrived to the buyer safely to their satisfaction. I guess some addresses unfortunately don’t like to be accepted by USPS databases.