Re: How to handle international orders?

[Plamen Petkov <plamendp@techno-link.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from Plamen Petkov <plamendp@techno-link.com>     ******

> 
> I was wondering how people are handling international orders.
> I have a site in the US, but when getting orders from outside
> of the US, I'm having trouble with the format of the address,
> and orders not being accepted because of zip code formats, etc.
> Would somebody mind sharing their strategy for handling
> international orders?
> 

In general I would suggest removing the formatting from couple of fields
(phones, zip/postal codes, etc). Let the user be free to enter as long
answer as he wish (up to reasonable length of course):  name, country,
city, street address, etc.

For example, here in Bulgaria, our postal codes (ZIP) are always 4
digits but I never restrict the Zip to 4 digits nor do I insist user to
enter exactly 4 digits; after all he MUST enter a city and a street
address, wich is enough as a minimum to ship something. The same apply
to phone numbers (if required at all).

Also, I never make Phone and Fax to be required. E-mail is enough and is
always required.


My personal experiance shows that the following information (forget all
Formats) is completely enough to contact given person:



1.First Name  &  Last Name

2.Country:

3.City

4.Zip/Postal Code

5.Street Address

6.E-mail



However, when (if) things grew up and there is a need (for speed) for
automatic form processing followed by an immediate shipping (no human
interaction) - some kind of formatting must be applied... (oh, those
cmputers :-)

In such a case (lucky man) you have to collect information about all the
different and specific standards (or just a habbit) for addressing
around the world (please send a copy :-)... 


well, good luck :-)


bye

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