Verify an eBay Buyer’s Address before Shipping

When you send merchandise to an eBay buyer, it is critical to have the buyer’s address correct on the label. The following ideas and practices will help you create accurate shipping labels:

  • Cut and paste the buyer’s address: The safest way to correct addressing is to cut and paste the buyer’s address information from an e-mail or the PayPal payment confirmation or download. If your buyer’s address shows as unconfirmed through PayPal, send a quick e-mail to your buyer to verify. People do make mistakes, even when writing their own addresses.

  • Don’t depend on the carrier to correct an address: No carrier is going to tell you whether the address you have is incorrect.

  • Use software or online services to check your buyer’s address: It’s good business practice to confirm the viability of an address before you send your item. Software such as DAZzle (from endicia.com) corrects most common addressing errors, such as misspelled city or street names. The following figure shows how it corrected the city and questions the address.If you have a question about a zip code, you can check it at the U.S. Postal Service Zip Code Lookup page.

    Address verification in DAZzle’s Dial-A-ZIP.
    Address verification in DAZzle’s Dial-A-ZIP.

If you have the Google toolbar, or go to the Google home page, you can type any UPS, post office, or FedEx tracking number and find the current tracking information from the carrier’s Web site. Just copy and paste the tracking number into the Google search box and start your search. You’ll come to a page that presents a link to track packages — with your number and carrier showing. Click the link and you end up at the carrier’s site with all the current tracking information! Nice!

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