When completing forms that ask for my personal information, I find that many forms ask for “Street Address.” I dutifully fill in my home street address. When I do this I find that, a couple of weeks later, I get a phone call asking me if I've moved because a mailing addressed to me was returned marked “unable to deliver.” I explain that I don't receive mail at my home address, and that I have a Post Office Box for that purpose. The frustrated caller then corrects the information that I provided on the form. I calmly explain that I provided the correct information that was asked for. But this wins me no points with the caller.
On other occasions, I have been able to ask someone, “Do you really want my “street address,” or would you rather have my “mailing address?” On many of these occasions I have been told, “No. We have to have your physical street address.”
So it appears that when a form says “street address,” sometimes they really want a “mailing address,” and at other times they really do want a “street address.”
Is there a general rule of thumb to decipher what people really want?
Nope. No rule of thumb. City dwellers are ignorant of RR's and PO Boxes, I guess. I go through this several times a month. It really ticks me off when they ask for both a street and a mailing address on the same form then claim that they can't ship because the addresses are different. Why do they think they should be the same? Isn't that the point of asking? Their brains actually explode when they enter my street address for my credit card company, which has my mailing address on record, and the card gets rejected.
I do both addressess and put a forward slash in between them
and hope some one picks up on it that the PO box adress is for mail only ?
I deal with this problem a lot, as I too use a PO Box.
Many forms will give two lines for the address itself (not state and such). When that happens, I put down BOTH my physical and mailing address. That way, if it's mail, they'll ignore the street address, and vice-versa if they need a physical location.
Some places don't have this option; if it's not an automated thing (like filling out a contest slip at the mall), I'll put down the physical address when asked and write next to it "not for mail", which hopefully makes them call me if they need the mailing address.
It's annoying that some sites don't allow a PO Box anywhere, especially when I know that they will be mailing me something. I usually default to my PO Box unless it blocks that, in which case I fill in the physical one and try to send them a note saying that they need to think more.
I had this problem with an ex-boss mailing me my last cheque… Ended up being a huge pain, and the guy practically yelled at me. I filled out multiple forms when I was hired including both mailing and street addresses, he mailed it to my street address.
Consider this: UPS and FedEx will not deliver to PO boxes. Sometimes when someone wants your "mailing" address, they really want your actual street address in order to send a package to be delivered to your home via a delivery service other than the post office.
I don't know, you must live in Crazyland, from my point of view.
I live in the greater metro area, and when they say Mailing Address, they mean, Where the Post Office/Government thinks you are, and when they say Street Address, they mean, We're shipping something; where do you want it to go? Everyone knows how this works, don't they? I can't imagine how your world hasn't ground to a screeching halt.
Seriously, what you are saying should be completely correct. If someone gets confused, simply be very patient with them and rest smug in your knowledge that they are complete ignoramuses.
If you can ASK questions, though, the shortest way to find out what they want is ask what they want it FOR. Good luck.
P.S.
"UPS and FedEx will not deliver to PO boxes."
Minor nit: It should be "cannot." The Post Office boxes belong to the USPS and cannot legally be put to any other use.
No, "will not" is correct. As long as the package is small enough to fit in the box they "can" deliver it. Come to think of it, even if the package is bigger than the box, the post office will still hold it for you. Even if it's illegal, or the post office is uncooperative, or the post office is on the moon, that still doesn't mean it "cannot" be done. I suppose if the post office were in another dimension… Case in point, some third party delivery services WILL deliver to post office boxes for letters and small items. I suppose they just pay the extra postage for the final leg of the delivery (and charge you accordingly). Another case in point, one of the big services, I think UPS, offers a lower cost hybrid delivery service, only for large volume customers, where they deliver to the regional post office and the USPS does the final delivery, so obviously, there's no legal, organizational, or physical reason why it's impossible. It's purely a matter of policy, or rather, a limitation on the spectrum of services they're willing to provide. Notice I said "willing", not "able". If you requested that the UPS driver dance naked and sing show tunes during the delivery they would certainly be able to accomodate you. I would doubt very much that they'd be willing.
Ok, I was speaking in the legal sense. I suppose I should have said "Are not allowed to."
And that's what I was told when I worked for one of those "hybrid" postal service places. We had to have separate forms allowing us to accept packages from other places. But we weren't USPS, so we were allowed to do so.
Wow, you folks are bigger pedants than I am.
I just make sure I know why they need my address and how they would send whatever it is they are sending.
http://language4you.wordpress.com
You sound like a difficult person.
When we take an order, my company asks for a "billing" and "shipping" address. It should be obvious which is for what. When we ask for the billing address on the phone, we actually add "…the address listed with the credit card company…" and when needed, we say that we don't ship to PO boxes. Seems pretty simple to me.
I do what Danny does. If the form is a hardcopy, I write out both addresses with a slash. But I'm a big fan of the "billing" and "shipping" system. I've had many packages go astray because of this confusion.
At one point I just put my work address on everything. That really worked out well for me.
Oh yeah, DHL will only deliver to Post Offices for delivery – another complication in the mix when you've dutifully provided your physical address only to have your package delivered to the Post Office, which will not deliver to your physical address because you have no mail box. Argh.
The house I rent has a mailbox at the sidewalk in front, which I installed when the local PO said they would no longer deliver to the mailbox mounted on the wall beside my front door. The same PO also informed me that, since I have a PO box, they would not deliver to the house at all, regardless of whether the box was on the wall or at the sidewalk.
Mail and packages are still routinely delivered to both the house and the PO box.
Wow, what a lot of "to do" about this subject. I work for the government and have been instructed that when serving someone a document via certified mail, that the Post Office can not or will not (which ever is the correct description there) deliver certified mail to a PO Box. Therefore, we have to have a physical mailing address.
Okay. I started this stream. Some of you understand what I wrote in my original post, and some do not. Of course, I am smart enough to put both my P.O. Box and street address when there is room for both. But the question remains, why would someone ask for my “Street Address” when they really want my “Mailing Address”?
Porsche thought that she was enlightening me when she said that Fed-Ex and UPS will not deliver to P.O. Boxes. Of course. I know that. I don’t receive mail at my street address. How could I NOT know this, Porsche? That is why, as I said in my original post, that when a form asks for “Street Address,” I dutifully supply my “Street Address.” I assume that they don’t WANT my P.O. Box because they only plan to use Fed-Ex or UPS, OR they plan to come and visit me. But then, often times, they go ahead and attempt to MAIL something to me using the U.S. Postal Service. (sigh) Get it now?
The point is, if you ever find yourself in the position of asking someone for their address, decide in your own mind why you are asking. If you plan to MAIL that person something, then ask for their “MAILING ADDRESS.” Otherwise, ask for their “Street Address.”
I also have a PO box because the post office does not deliver to my physical address. I always give out my address as:
123 Main Street, Box 456
Anytown, USA 12345
The post office doesn’t like the fact that I don’t write PO Box and dont put it on a seperate line but they always deliver it. UPS and Fedex rarely have a problem handling it this way, but they call If they do. This works best for me.
When I used to include both like this (what the post office wants):
123 Main Street
PO Box 456
Anytown, USA 12345
or like this:
123 Main Street, PO Box 456
Anytown, USA 12345
Occasionally, for various different reasons entities would try to drop the PO box and send mail to the physical address and it would be returned. The same would happen when I give separate mailing and physical address – occasionally someone would use the wrong one and it would get returned.
The weirdest one was Best Buy. For a time they were using the post office database to verify shipping addresses. They literally would not sell to me online (or by phone) because the post office database did not have my physical address and they did not ship to PO boxes.
Best Buy is the worst! Best Buy will not “mail” you a refund check or a rebate check to your Post Office Box. They will only mail it to a physical address! Why? Don’t ask me. I’ve tried to explain to them that I don’t receive mail at my physical address, and they just can’t wrap their tiny brains around that concept.
“…why would someone ask for my ‘Street Address’ when they really want my ‘Mailing Address’?”
For the same reason they give you ¼“ for your 3-digit area code (0.083“ per digit), but 5½“ for your 5-digit zip code (1.825“ per digit): Rank incompetance in creating forms.
We have this problem all of the time, because we get no US Post Office delivery in our neighborhood. We are forced to have a PO Box.
Many web merchandiser software packages cannot deal with a ‘PO Box ####’ in the address area. One example is NewEgg.com. If you have a PO Box in your PayPal shipping address, their web merchandising system will puke over it. I had to create a new address entry at PayPal just for NewEgg purchases, which only has my street address. As soon as Newegg starts using the USPS for delivery, it’ll be broken.
Likewise, if a shipper sends a package via USPS to my street address, and does not have the box number, the package will be returned to him as ‘undeliverable’.
It’s a pain in the rear. I wonder if I can get around this by submitting a change of address form with my street address as my old address, and my PO Box as my
new address?
Chris Shaker
Why can’t the post office have a system where they simply place the mail which has been addressed to the street address in the post office box? If I send a letter to my sister to her street address, it arrives at the post office in her town, they look at the street address and place the mail in a car. They drive to her house and they place it in a box stuck in the ground in front of her house. If they can do that, why can’t my sister send me a letter addressed to my street address, it arrives at the post office, they look at the street address and place it in a box in the post office. Is this that difficult? But nooooooo. I get a small package delivered from Hong Kong. The post office sees that it doesn’t have a PO number but rather than look up in a simple book to place it in the propper mail box, they would rather put it back into the truck, drive it 75 miles to New York City, place it on a plane and fly it thousands of miles to the other side of the world to return it. Does that make any sense?
Once I received a piece of junk mail that had my correct name on it. It had the street address from a company that I used to work for, but drastically misspelled. It also had a different city, from my current job listed. The zip code was for my HOME address. Other than my name, not one thing on the address was correct or consistent. Miraculously, the mail was successfully delivered to my home! Just for fun, I tried to mail myself something with only my name and zip code on it. Didn’t work. Surprise!
Ok – you have a physical domiciled residence that you use with the state for voter and title registration – example –
231 Lake St,
Anytown TN 3XXXX-XXXX
But your town – Anytown does not do delivery so you have
PO BOX 123
Anytown TN 3ZZZZ-ZZZZ
However the Station Address is
987 Main ST
Anytown TN 3QQQQ-QQQQ
Here it would be
987 Main ST UNIT 123
Anytown TN 3QQQQ-QQQQ
or
987 Main ST STE 123
Anytown TN 3QQQQ-QQQQ
or
987 Main ST #123
Anytown TN 3QQQQ-QQQQ
or
987 Main ST PMB 123
Anytown TN 3QQQQ-QQQQ
or
987 Main ST APT 123
Anytown TN 3QQQQ-QQQQ
verify at http://www.usps.com/zip4
I do payroll for a living. We base our tax withholding on your physical address. But I get employees that argue that they want their mailing address on their paycheck. What’s a payroll clerk to do?
Gigi: The solution sounds simple to me. You have two separate issues to deal with. So, deal with them separately and stop trying to kill two birds with one stone. On the first issue, keep a file on the employee’s physical address for determining withholding tax. Then, on the second issue, which is the employee’s mailing address, I recommend MAILING the check to the employee’s MAILING address. Get it?
Ah Pete. Fully understood. “Sounds simple”
So tell me, do you program software? Can you get our software to do that? (yes, we outsource to a big company that has many different products and various versions of each of those products.) Second, are you good at getting EMPLOYEES to understand that there’s a difference? (I can’t even begin to tell you what I see and hear.. for instance the guy whose address we looked up on google maps and saw that we was living in a strip mall.) And third, knowing when a P.O. is connected to a R.R. I have yet to figure that one out (so if you want to help, tell me how to determine if an address is just a box in a building or a real address.) (or tell me there are no longer R.R.’s!)
Dear Gigi: First: Nope – I don’t program software. And no, I can’t get your software to “do” anything. Second: You say your employees want their mailing address on their paycheck. Starting with the assumption that you know what this discussion is about (companies that send mail to “physical addresses” instead of “mailing addresses”) I must assume that the reason you included this tidbit is because employees want their “mailing address” to show through the window on the envelope. This way the Postal Service will deliver the paycheck to their “mailing address” and not to a “physical address” where they cannot receive mail. If that is the case, then it sounds like those employees already know the difference between “mailing address” and “physical address.” As for those employees who say that they live at strip malls or under bridges … well, all I can say is that the world is full of idiots and we can’t help them all. And third: I never said I wanted to help. I said I wanted people (and companies) to understand the difference between mailing addresses and physical addresses, then figure out which one they really wanted, and then ask for it. By the way, “a box in a building” IS a “real address.” Its A “MAILING ADDRESS.” If you want to know where I live, ask for my “PHYSICAL ADDRESS.”
OK. Thanks for not wanting to help.That’s all I really from your post. I’ve got W-2′s to mail, so I’m done with this discussion.
The discussion was never about how to mail W-2s. Nor was it about finding people to advise you on how to work around the peculiarities of your job. The discussion was about forms that ask for a “street address” when they should ask for a “mailing address.” And, on a much larger scale, I suppose the discussion is also about people who don’t know how to use the English language – both those who attempt to write it, and those who attempt to read it.
for those with payroll issues… it is real simple
ask the employee for an affidavit of domicile of both physical address [where do they reside] and the employee’s mailing address [where do i get mail ? ] and the employee’s package shipping address [ where do i get packages ? ]
Set up a file, database, spreadsheet, ledger, etc. with employee name, domiciled address, and mailing address.
Not too hard..
However, be more specific than stating Street Address, please
@ Pete: check out my situation…. i live in a rural area that due to some population growth was able to actually have a post office and is considered a town. ok? so now instead of receiving mail in the nearby town we have our own zip code and everything. YEAH ! for us? no! I of course sometimes have shipments come to me via UPS or Fedex and need to disclose a street address..Well unfortunately in the 30 yrs that i have lived in this exact location i have never known what my street address is. never had to since i had a PO in a different city. If I needed something shipped i would instead use cross points..hwy such and such and y street. That had worked for a while until more and more places needed an actual house number or orders would not process. Luckily i was able to call some program some years back that helped you find out your RR/street and 911 addresses to people in my situation for 911 purposes. So now, if i type in the street address they gave me and not only does in NOT register in my city, it registers in a nearby town (the area i live in is still too small that for physical address purposes i have to use a zip code pertainig to that city instead of the zip code i actually live in) but its shows me about 3 miles north of where i actuallly reside…when i tried to inform them that they had given me the wrong address they kept assuring me that they had not. ggrrr i have lost so many packages to this and most of the time i have to track my order and call them to have them notate the account that they need to call me for directions or else gps will toss them to a whole different area..if im lucky enough to get the same driver from either fed ex or ups they know where to find me BUT if not i end up having to pick up my packages 4 towns down at the main shipping offices! living in a rural area is a pain let me tell you..You (pete) can at least provide either address if properly specified. me? i’m lucky enough to have 911 find me in case of an emergency!!!!!!!!!!!! below are examples of different methods i have had to use
mailing address:
PO Box ##
This City, St 12345
shipping address:
## Lost Rd
That City, St 54321
or
## Lost Rd
This City, St 12345 <~~ rarely works
or
## Lost Rd
That City, St 34512
and in one or two occassions none of these addresses work… :-(
JWLZ: I feel your pain, but are you saying that I should just count my blessings??? All I’m asking is that people who create “fill in the blank” forms make a clear distinction between “street address” and “mailing address.” Unfortunately, that is not often the case. Most of the time when the form asks for a “street address,” what they REALLY want is a “mailing address,” which MAY be the same for some, but is not for all. However, it would be so much simpler if they would just ask for a “mailing address,” which is ALWAYS a “mailing address” for everyone. That’s why this column was started, not as a launching point for every OTHER kind of problem involving shipping and mailing addresses.
lol yes i know why ur column was started silly..what i had attempted to get acroos was that aside from sometimes not being clear on what they want on their “fill in the blank” forms the people wanting the info can sometimes cause i bigger issue especially for people in my situation because i lost a package..sorry if i rambled in my previous post but it had just so happened that i had they same issue with the whole mailing/street issue when i came across ur post. i had ordered a pillow pet for my daughter..the company shipped using fedex smartstop or something like that, which if you dont know is both fedex and usps. I had never heard of this method of shipping. So because the company didnt clearly specify what address they wanted my package got sent back to the main shipper… had they explained that they were mailing my package out to the MAILING address i wouldnt have given them my SHIPPING address which was what they stated they wanted..they were unclear! they asked for a street address (which i consider shipping) when they really wanted my mailing address..ur right they should be specific! maybe by giving an example like where you get large packages or if they are shipping to mailing they can state where you receive ur standard mail or small packages..specify! or make it simpler and ask for just mailing which as you said, ” …is always a mailing address for everyone”