Quick Tips on Address Verification:
- Educate your teams on what constitutes a "good" recipient address.
- Set up Notifications to catch orders with address problems to prevent delayed shipments.
What is address verification?
Postal address verification (also known as address standardization, address validation, address verification and CASS certification) is the process used to check the validity and deliverability of a physical mailing address. For domestic address errors, it’s one of the best failsafes against undelivered packages. According to the United States Postal Service an address is valid (or mailable) if it is CASS-certified, meaning that it exists within the comprehensive list of mailable addresses in their system.
Whiplash incorporates our shipping label providers' address verification in app, and it is used for all US Domestic mailings.
It's important to note that we will flag an address as invalid, but are unable to provide auto-correction, to any address that has:
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Multiple errors in the address (e.g. invalid ZIP and invalid street name in the same address)
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Multiple address possibilities (e.g. a bad address can be interpreted to be two different verified addresses)
In short, our address verification tool will correct to a reasonable extent, but it's much safer for you if we flag these problematic addresses instead of assuming. The last thing we want to do is suggest the wrong address based on vague errors. While address correction works properly most of the time, addresses will not always be changed, and incorrect addresses coming in from your integration may still ship incorrectly. The carriers make every attempt to complete delivery. However, Whiplash is not responsible for incorrect addresses coming directly from the integration or though carrier changes.
What are the signs of a "good" address?
The system and label provider are looking for things like this upon verification:
- Streets, Roads, Drives, Avenue, and State should be abbreviated
- Apartments and Suite Numbers should be entered on address line one in most cases, with proper abbreviations. (Use this for an apartment: Apt. 3 or #3 – Or this for a Suite: Ste. 3 or #3)
- A verified address in conjunction with a phone number are also required for the purpose of a creating a return label in our platform. If you do not include a phone number, you will be unable to create a return label off the original order.
Non-English Language Characters
Certain Non-English language characters are not recognized by the label provider and must be removed. Examples of this would be quotation marks, asterisks, foreign language/text, etc.
Address Verification Statuses
Verified
The address has verified to an exact match with the Easypost Address Verification tool.
Verification Skipped
Address verification was not ran on the address provided.
Not verified
Our label providers' address verification tool was unable to find a match close enough to make corrections.
Use Notifications to be alerted to issues with orders - highly recommended
Rules can be set to notify you in the event that an address verification was skipped or was not verified, but it does not prevent a package from shipping to the address provided to Whiplash to ship the order. Please contact support@getwhiplash.com for assistance on setting a notification rule on your account if you would like to review addresses that were not verifiable.