What is it with Irish customers?

[sysops]

We ship to a few EU countries, the safer ones with more reliable infrastructure. Until now, this has included the Republic of Ireland.

I've just been reviewing address data for the year, to try and reduce problems. One recurring issue with Irish customers who live in rural areas is that they seem incapable of entering a complete, correct address.

Around 20% of Irish customers in rural areas enter invalid addresses. The most common error is not entering a house name. They seem to believe that this is sufficient:

Mr A Customer
Village
Area
Ireland

Needless to say, we won't ship to an address like that. This creates a lot of extra work, where we contact the customer, get the full address etc.

In my constant effort to streamline, I am seriously considering discontinuing sales to RoI. It's only 0.5% of our turnover, but it's a much higher proportion of our customer support.

Anyone else experience this?

 

[Merchant UK]

Best bet is to make it a compulsary field to fill in when they register their address details, if they don't fill it in then they can't register - easy

 

[sysops]

Best bet is to make it a compulsary field to fill in when they register their address details, if they don't fill it in then they can't register - easy

The first 3 address fields are compulsory, and the country is picked from a drop down.

The point is they put the village name in address field 1.

 

[Dawg]

Build a premium into your Irish shipping rates to cover it? The Paddress premium.

 

[sysops]

Build a premium into your Irish shipping rates to cover it? The Paddress premium.

That's not a bad idea, we do this for a couple of the more troublesome countries (e.g. Italy, which has a higher loss rate than say France).

It might increase the number of support requests though, "why does it cost more to ship to Eire than France?"

But worth considering, thanks.

 

[deniser]

We ship to a few EU countries, the safer ones with more reliable infrastructure. Until now, this has included the Republic of Ireland.

I've just been reviewing address data for the year, to try and reduce problems. One recurring issue with Irish customers who live in rural areas is that they seem incapable of entering a complete, correct address.

Around 20% of Irish customers in rural areas enter invalid addresses. The most common error is not entering a house name. They seem to believe that this is sufficient:

Mr A Customer
Village
Area
Ireland

Needless to say, we won't ship to an address like that. This creates a lot of extra work, where we contact the customer, get the full address etc.

In my constant effort to streamline, I am seriously considering discontinuing sales to RoI. It's only 0.5% of our turnover, but it's a much higher proportion of our customer support.

Anyone else experience this?

Is this because you are sending by courier and they require those fields to be filled in?

ROI makes up a a not insignificant percentage of our turnover (not far from having to register for VAT there) and we use RM to ship to these sorts of addresses and we have never (touch wood) lost a single parcel to Ireland, nor even had one delayed!

I wouldn't bother getting the full address; send it how it is, it will find its way to the right person. The Eire post seems very efficient.

We have a bigger problem with shipping to the Middle East where the post office won't deliver to a house, only a box number, and we have to ask for the PO Box number - similar problem, also very time consuming and a nuisance but more important as customer won't receive their parcel otherwise.

 

[J-Wholesale]

Rural houses in Ireland do not always have a house name - it's actually quite rare. The locality information is usually sufficient. My brother's address is Name, Locality, Town, as is my father's. Neither of the houses have a name, and they don't require one. The local post man knows everyone who lives there, and the courier companies know enough not to expect a house name.

The locality in Irish rural areas could have as few as 20 properties. The problem is not your Irish customers failing to provide a house name, it's your order process treating Irish addresses the same as English addresses. Would you have them make up an imaginary house name to please your software? Irish people who live outside Dublin already do that with postcodes.

 

[silvermusic]

I wouldn't bother getting the full address; send it how it is, it will find its way to the right person. The Eire post seems very efficient.

Irish addresses that seem incomplete and would trouble me normally don't for exactly this reason. In rural parts everyone seems to know everyone. Once had a customer who I double checked the address with and the reason there was no house name or number is that it was the only house on that road, besides her brother being the postman.

From what I understand Ireland's postal system has very advanced character recognition systems and they're of the opinion that having post code would'nt improve anything.

 

[sysops]

Rural houses in Ireland do not always have a house name - it's actually quite rare. The locality information is usually sufficient. My brother's address is Name, Locality, Town, as is my father's. Neither of the houses have a name, and they don't require one. The local post man knows everyone who lives there, and the courier companies know enough not to expect a house name.

The locality in Irish rural areas could have as few as 20 properties. The problem is not your Irish customers failing to provide a house name, it's your order process treating Irish addresses the same as English addresses. Would you have them make up an imaginary house name to please your software? Irish people who live outside Dublin already do that with postcodes.

How are those properties identified for the purposes of utility bill?

 

[sysops]

Rural houses in Ireland do not always have a house name - it's actually quite rare. The locality information is usually sufficient. My brother's address is Name, Locality, Town, as is my father's. Neither of the houses have a name, and they don't require one. The local post man knows everyone who lives there, and the courier companies know enough not to expect a house name.

The locality in Irish rural areas could have as few as 20 properties. The problem is not your Irish customers failing to provide a house name, it's your order process treating Irish addresses the same as English addresses. Would you have them make up an imaginary house name to please your software? Irish people who live outside Dublin already do that with postcodes.

How are those properties identified for the purposes of utility bills?

 

[J-Wholesale]

How are those properties identified for the purposes of utility bills?

Gas and Electric meters have an ID number that's linked to the account. My own address is on a residential street (with a house number), but my electricity bill doesn't include the house number.

 

[mabbac]

My address is Name, townland, village, county. simple as. I do not have a house number nor house name nor a postcode. Postman knows me, nothing ever gone missing.

That said if you just put name, village, county it would get to me as the postman would know.

Relax, this is the Irish way. We don't want names or numbers so we can be hounded by marketing people

What REALLY frustrates me is when sites, which ship internationally insist on a postcode. If you are going to ship to Ireland, accept that we don't have postcodes.

 

[sysops]

My address is Name, townland, village, county. simple as. I do not have a house number nor house name nor a postcode. Postman knows me, nothing ever gone missing.

That said if you just put name, village, county it would get to me as the postman would know.

Relax, this is the Irish way. We don't want names or numbers so we can be hounded by marketing people

What REALLY frustrates me is when sites, which ship internationally insist on a postcode. If you are going to ship to Ireland, accept that we don't have postcodes.

This still doesn't make much sense.

Your house, you bought it or are renting it right? You didn't just stumble upon it and decide to live there.

How is the property referred to on your title deed, mortgage agreement or tenancy agreement?

 

[deniser]

How is the property referred to on your title deed, mortgage agreement or tenancy agreement?

Properties have title numbers and plans; that's all you need as far as registering land is concerned.

 

[mabbac]

It does make sense in Ireland, you are just trying to impose a UK system on it hence your issues.

Yes our on mortgage deeds is portfolio number or title number.

House names or numbers or postcodes do not exist for the vast majority of people who live in rural Ireland. If you live in a major city like Dublin then off course there is house numbers and Dublin has a sort of postcode system, with Dublin 4 etc. But in the countryside, townland, village, county is all there is.

In our townland there are 3 other houses.... so I guess this is 'kind' of a postcode as it refers to a specific area within a village, like postcodes. But rather than having numbers it has a name - eg Ballynowhere...

But no house numbers? a bit silly when you could well be the only house up your lane... and why no house names? Well its just not customary here.

 

[Vision]

The problem i get with customers in Ireland is they select their country as "UK Mainland" instead of Ireland or Northern Ireland at checkout which on some of the heavier things i sell (guitar amplifiers) means they pay £8 delivery rather than £20+

Mark

 

[mabbac]

Vision - could you force an automatic postcode verifier when they select UK or Northern Ireland, and have this disabled for when they select Ireland?

 

[J-Wholesale]

The problem i get with customers in Ireland is they select their country as "UK Mainland" instead of Ireland or Northern Ireland at checkout which on some of the heavier things i sell (guitar amplifiers) means they pay £8 delivery rather than £20+

Mark

Every nationality tries that. We get mainland Europe or American customers who select UK as the country too.

 

[deniser]

The problem i get with customers in Ireland is they select their country as "UK Mainland" instead of Ireland or Northern Ireland at checkout which on some of the heavier things i sell (guitar amplifiers) means they pay £8 delivery rather than £20+

Mark

Funny we get the opposite problem with NI customer selecting Ireland rather than UK. We charge the same for NI as the rest of the UK so have to issue a refund for the difference between Uk and European postage.

We also have a lot of UK addresses in Andorra!

 

[deniser]

Every nationality tries that. We get mainland Europe or American customers who select UK as the country too.

We don't at all; guess they might be worried that not choosing the correct country might mean they won't get their goods. Our problems are all with UK customers some of whom seem incapable of selecting UK - or even England, Wales, Scotland and NI as we have those too just in case they don't manage UK!

 

[silvermusic]

Relax, this is the Irish way. We don't want names or numbers so we can be hounded by marketing people

What REALLY frustrates me is when sites, which ship internationally insist on a postcode. If you are going to ship to Ireland, accept that we don't have postcodes.

I learned that lesson from a good ex-eBay customer of mine who now buys from my site.

 

[gibby]

this is a fun post.

We too have been thinking of cutting out some countries.
The biggest issue we have with Ireland is customers are unable to pay through SagePay. It just won't work for those without a postcode.
It takes up so much time but hoping this will be sorted when we move to a new gateway next year

We do get alot of Irish orders as described & we just go with them now.

Another issue with Ireland is the cost with couriers.
Interlink charges us about £14 for S Ireland & £20 for N Ireland.
Customers just don't like it so it kills off the larger orders over 2kg

G