why must I always name the nearest city when I use VISA on the net

[Minotaurus]

just a trivial problem

why must I always name the nearest city when I use VISA on the net to buy things?

The thing is that this city is not a part of my address.
I live in a nearby commune that lies in the same county as this city

[gotpasswords]

The merchants probably do a match against your billing address postal code and the city that code is assigned to.

The postal service probably appreciates it as well. The local carrier probably is very familiar with your location, but at a sorting center a few hundred miles away, they probably have no clue where Minotaurus Heights is located, but adding Nearbyville to the address lets them chuck the package into the appropriate bin faster.

[Minotaurus]

@gotpasswords

The merchants probably do a match against your billing address postal code and the city that code is assigned to.

The postal service probably appreciates it as well. The local carrier probably is very familiar with your location, but at a sorting center a few hundred miles away, they probably have no clue where Minotaurus Heights is located, but adding Nearbyville to the address lets them chuck the package into the appropriate bin faster.

yes, but this was never a trouble when i used ordinary mail-order. I only wrote my exact adress and there was never any problem with it

[ZipperJJ]

Are you making purchases from US-based Web sites?

My company’s site is set up to require at the minimum that Billing Address street, city and postal code match. We also require that you fill in the State or Province - for US and Canadian customers this is no big deal. The AVS (address verification system) does require it as well and checks it. However, for non-US cards the AVS requires state/province but doesn’t actually CHECK it.

Since most of our customers are from the US, we’re too lazy to write a scheme into our form that doesn’t require state for non-US customers. So it’s required for all. Most of our overseas customers that don’t live in a “state” put whatever they think is right for that field. Perhaps in your case it’s the nearest large city?

[doreen]

@Minotaurus

yes, but this was never a trouble when i used ordinary mail-order. I only wrote my exact adress and there was never any problem with it

Whenever I order or give my address for any reason over the phone, they ask me for my zip code, which comes up Jamaica, NY. I don’t live in Jamaica, my normal written address doesn’t include Jamaica, but my local post office is essentially a sub-office of the Jamaica post office.

Some things are just handled differently online or by phone- I never had problem with a mail order being shipped to a different address, but some companieswill only ship phone orders and especially online orders credit card billing address

[GorillaMan]

@ZipperJJ

Are you making purchases from US-based Web sites?

My company’s site is set up to require at the minimum that Billing Address street, city and postal code match. We also require that you fill in the State or Province - for US and Canadian customers this is no big deal. The AVS (address verification system) does require it as well and checks it. However, for non-US cards the AVS requires state/province but doesn’t actually CHECK it.

Since most of our customers are from the US, we’re too lazy to write a scheme into our form that doesn’t require state for non-US customers. So it’s required for all. Most of our overseas customers that don’t live in a “state” put whatever they think is right for that field. Perhaps in your case it’s the nearest large city?

Sometimes I find the ‘state’ field greys out once you select a different country. Otherwise, yeah, I just put my county in there.

The compulsory zip codes (even if the system doesn’t check them) are a headache for some people, though, because it assumes that everywhere has a postal code of some kind.