The larger sites that use shipping (eBay, Amazon, USPS etc.) will actually do even more than this. When you put in your address they will then also compute your ZIP+4 based on your street address. You’ll get a corrected screen and be asked to confirm if it’s right.
Redundancy for error checking. A poorly written address of “xxx Washington 71701”, while it completely defines a building in the US, may be misread as “77701” and go a few hundred miles away to Beaumont TX (instead of Camden AR) where it will never find the intended recipient, likely being misdelivered to a xxx Washington in that zip code instead.
With a human friendly redundant portion - e.g., add “xxx Washington Street, Camden, AR 71701” then (sometimes, at least) the letter is likely to get rerouted to the correct place.
Ahem. 11364 is Bayside (the Bayside post office, at least when zip codes started) and I would have been annoyed getting mail addressed to Flushing. Though it would have gotten to me since street names in Queens are unique. I’m not sure that is true for all towns under one zip code.
I’m just grateful they have a pull down so I can scroll to my state in only 30 seconds or so, instead of having to spend a whole 0.5 seconds typing in first one letter, and then a whole 'nuther letter.
But seriously, the most egregious offender of the enter zip code AND city, AND state thing is the fucking post office. On the site to have your mail held. Bonus fuck you points that their website is broken for mobile devices, cause everyone drags a laptop along when they leave town without remembering to have the mail stopped. I guess I should be grateful I don’t have to stand in line with a paper form anymore.
Yep, 11364 is Bayside and 11385 is Ridgewood/Glendale, etc And they’re somehow all “Flushing” when when it comes to certain types of mail and websites where you enter the zip code and the rest is automatically filled in, just like 11421 turns into Jamaica rather than Woodhaven. I’m not really sure why- maybe those five post offices are where the mail-sorting facilities are. And street names in Queens aren’t unique enough to prevent misdelivered mail - I’ve seen mail for 64 St in Glendale go to 164 St in actual Flushing. Not to mention all the numbers that are repeated as avenue,drive, street,road etc.
I’m going to take a guess that you left Queens before online ordering was big. Before that, “address is in Woodhaven but the mail says Jamaica only happened with junk mail”
Maybe in areas where post offices serve massive populations, but in the rest of the country you need all five digits to get the post office name.
It’s not insisting you live anywhere. It’s saying you get your mail delivered by the Lenexa post office. But yes, it could be bad customer relations.
You do realize you can keystroke in pulldowns? At least on PCs and Macs; the situation varies between brands of tablets & phones.
keystroking the pulldowns seems to work about 20% of the time.