Yet Another Gripe About Merchants and Addressing

[NinjaChick]

@Frank

New Mexico, is, of course, the only state that feels it necessary to put USA on their license plates. Perhaps, APO and FPO should add USA?

Attempted humor aside, the new folks running the web site, are, of course, idiots. They simply did not include the APO/FPO state fields in the coding.

I go to school in New Mexico. This past winter I shipped a box from home (New Jersey) to myself out at school. I had to actually argue with the FedEx guy and convince him that no, I did not need to fill out customs forms. It’s in America. Really, neither US nor Mexican customs officials care.

[Raza]

It doesn’t apply to your credit union situation, but I don’t want to leave the impression that mailing packages to an APO/FPO address is exactly like mailing to a regular US address.

Most packages to APO/FPO (as well as traditional foreign addresses) must be hand-delivered to the carrier or Post Office desk. Depending on weight and value, they may also need Customs forms, just like traditional foreign addresses.

For someone (the involved Web developer?) that has never dealt with APO/FPO, I can understand the confusion.

[kaylasdad99]

Folks in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island are always worried that Tony Blair might piss off Bush, 'cos they’re afraid he might consider a measured response to be airstrikes on New England.

No, no cite. I just made it up.

[JohnT]

@Canadjun

That could be interesting - There’s a London in England and in Canada, a Paris in France and in Canada, a Sydney in Australia and in Canada.

Drive on interstate 75 from Cincinatti to Atlanta and you’ll pass London, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Jamestown, and Athens.

[Will_Repair]

I’ve had similar problems with “Post Office Box nnnn” on web forms.

The work around is “nnnn Apastado de Correos”. Though it helps to live in a state with 20% Hispanic population.

You could leave out the FPO/APO. USPS mail routers use the zip code anyway.

[lizardling]

@Canadjun

That could be interesting - There’s a London in England and in Canada, a Paris in France and in Canada, a Sydney in Australia and in Canada. Those examples would be obvious as soon as a province or postal code was mentioned, but I wonder how many of your parcels end up a few thousand miles from their intended destination due to other twin cities? (no criticism implied - it’s just amusing to picture).

Not quite as bad, but apparently there are multiple Dallases in the US. Given that I grew up in DFW, the sight of a South Dakota plate with ‘DALLAS’ on the bottom blew my wee mind. :eek:

[Monty]

@Will Repair

You could leave out the FPO/APO. USPS mail routers use the zip code anyway.

Can’t do that. Plenty of places–including my credit union–require an entry in the street, city, state, and ZIP code fields. To their credit, the credit union did fix the problem immediately.

[Lok]

@FatBaldGuy

My bank has done this, too. You enter your login ID, then it takes you to a second page for the password. To me, this makes it less secure, because if a hacker gets to the second page, he knows he has a valid user ID, and now just has to hack the password. If you have to enter both at the same time and then submit, you don’t know if one or the other is valid or not.

Depends on how good your programmer is. I was trying to access my bank’s online center today and kept getting an incorrect input error. The password was correct, it is held in my Roboform files, I had forgotten that I had changed my ID and was using the old one. :smack: The incorrect ID got me to the password page, and after entering that, I was told that something was wrong, try again. No indication which was wrong, which meant it took me a while to figure out my mistake. :o

[scottkris]

@Monty

Why, oh why can’t people catch up at least to the 1970s? I griped in another Pit thread about it before. But this latest bit just takes the cake.

For the last two years, I’ve been accessing my credit union account online and for the same two years, the account information has had my military mailing address, an APO address listed. No problem.

Well, no problem until last night when I went to check the account. No access. So, this morning I came to work a bit early and called the credit union’s help line. Here’s what they told me:

It’s more than likely it was BS.

My online banking was screwed-up at the same time .
Coincidence?

[scottkris]

@scottkris

It’s more than likely it was BS.

My online banking was screwed-up at the same time .
Coincidence?

And that really makes me a happy camper…

Multiple online accounts, using different banks, screw-up at the same time.

yeah, that’s why I had a $70 extra charge in December…

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

[Giles]

@TheLoadedDog

Oh yeah, one more for you Canucks…

TORONTO NSW 2283

(It’s a couple of hours drive north of Sydney. I’m lead to believe it’s slightly smaller than its namesake)

I’ve been to both Torontos on several occasions. You are indeed correct.

And, while I haven’t been to Sydney NS or to Sidney OH, I once took a trip which took me through Sidney BC and Sydney NSW. (I was travelling from Victoria BC to Hamilton NSW – not to be confused with Hamilton ON – via Vancouver BC).

[PastAllReason]

@Rysto

Reminds me of the American couple who got a great deal on a pair of airline tickets to Sydney. :smack:

There’s also Ottawa, Canada and Ottawa, Kansas. I remember reading a story about a rather irate Canadian who was taken to Kansas by Greyhound.

So, OT, there is also apparently both a Redmond, Washington and a Redmond, Oregon. I used to work with someone who was going to Redmond, Washington for business. He didn’t book his own tickets and was distracted and didn’t realize 'til he was nearly there that was going to wrong place. He told me that the people in Redmond, Oregon were very friendly and helpful in getting him to Washington. They were apparently quite accustomed to this happening.