"Compulsory fields in Order forms" Topic

Order forms used by some miniature manufacturers include a compulsory "State/province" field which is creating confusion for some countries.

It should not apply to France; however some order forms force you to fill this field with the name of a French "département" and you can't prevent them to include it in the delivery address although it's not needed and the French post offices automatical systems don't want to see it in there.

Another problem is that the French post offices prefer the postcode to appear before the name of the town, and not below!

It can cause some delays in deliveries. Happily I didn't lose anything yet, but it often is a cause of complications.

I ran into the same problem here in the Czech Republic while ordering from em4 miniatures. However on their order form there is also a field for comments, so I wrote there asking that Bohemia not be used, as it would confuse the hell out of the post office. Doug at em4 was kind enough to remove it from the address, and all went well.

+1 Jack – having to stick Jihomoravský kraj everywhere drives me nuts.

So you're saying the field should be optional?

I imagine it does Chris! Not to mention a lot of folks at Czech post are not the sharpest tools in the shed.

So you're saying the field should be optional?

The field about "State/province", obviously, for countries where it doesn't apply. Some order forms have it optional. Some others accept that you just write a "." and they include it in the address but that's OK. But some force you to choose the name of the local département or whatever, which is not needed nor wanted by the local Post offices.
Internet providers of order forms which can cause mistakes in delivery are obviously not serious about their job and are cheating on their customers (and in our case their customers are the miniatures manufacturers).

a lot of folks at (insert name of country here) post are not the sharpest tools in the shed

I'm not blaming the staff. To reduce costs it goes first through automatic machines. If the machine cannot read it, it's handed to some staff. Who often are not trained enough to understand address errors (because they cost less wages than trained staff).

Internet providers of order forms which can cause mistakes in delivery are obviously not serious about their job

I believe it's not so much a question of "are they serious," but rather one of "are they aware of differences."

It's a problem I usually associate with Americans, to a greater or lessor degree, but it isn't exclusive to them. It's simply that the developers' ignorance that there are places where such distinctions are not necessary, but even burdensome.