When you pay through Paypal, we as sellers must ship to your address generated by Paypal for our financial protection and yours. Asking a seller to ship to an alternate address is a hassle. We have to type the address in. It is not imported from the transaction record. Mistakes can happen and we as the seller no longer have any protection against a fraudulent transaction.

The solution:

You can have up to 9 "gift" addresses in your paypal account. Yes and all of them are confirmed when the primary address is confirmed. Add your work address, college student address, friends, family etc. Then when you buy something on eBay or pay online for something with Paypal, simply select that address from your list during the payment process (edit address link is there) . Then the seller gets a good address, generated by Paypal and no questions or special instructions are needed.

If your address is a dual address, 123 anywhere street, pob 456, the post office is going to deliver it to the BOX. If you don't want it to go to the box, then create an address without the post office box in it.

FYI, the postal system has a glitch. It seems that any typographic punctuation in the address will interrupt the online label generation process. You may not have been aware of this problem if the seller hand address the package or exported the information to make a label directly with another shipper. If you have #4 any street, the # sign is often not accepted, you must use APT, UNIT, ROOM, SUITE, etc.  If you type in your city and put a comma after it   Atlanta,  the label trys to do this,  Atlanta,, it puts its own comma in. Label corrupt. So... no periods, no commas, no hyphens, no stars. If you have put a space after the last word in the address, the address check function will pop up saying it is not correct even though the suggested address is identical! You don't notice the space. There is also a 40 character limit to the postal address field, but it seems Paypal allows more than 40 characters, this will stop label printing too. Move the extra information to the next address line.

Another glitch is when the seller omits their name with paypal, yes their name! Label will not print, you will get a message "cannot contact postal service at this time" message. Get their name from ebay transaction and fill it in. Label will print. No erroneous message.

If you have a post office box, you must write it this way:  pob 678, you cannot write p.o. box 678, because the periods cause a problem and the postal service recognizes POB as a box abbreviation.   You can use po box.

Even if you do not move, the postal service may change your address! Zip code areas are divided, city names have formal revisions. The postal service is constantly updating its delivery system to be computer accurate, not just hand printed casual. Electronic generated labels are computer accurate for delivery as of the date they are generated. No outdated information is accepted,  old zip codes, impropper city names, poor syntax.

For all of you who live in St Louis, St Paul, cities with abbreviated Saints are not accepted, too similar to St for Street, you have to spell Saint out. Ft is accepted for Fort.

For all of you in Puerto Rico: List your street on the first line, Calle 3  AS #22, on the 2nd line the vicinity, Garden de Apartments, do not mix information from one line to the other. No commas.

The postal service has updated thousands of addresses, check with your post office to see if your address has been changed. Las Vegas, near the strip has a new zip in the residential area to seperate it from the strip. Lots of communities like Miami are now called by their vicinity, no longer Miami, in some cases the zip stays the same but the city changes its name.

If you are one of these address change problems, the solution is easy, make a correct address in your paypal account and use that address as the PRIMARY address in all of your transactions! Paypal will not allow you to edit your primary address. No need to beat a dead horse (paypal) in trying to explain your address change situation (bang head against wall). Just make a new "gift" address and use it.

The real way to fix the problem is to update your billing address information with your creditcard associated with your paypal account. You will have to do this if you move. Then create the new address with paypal and run it through the confirmation process. Do this if your address has a different city spelling or something other than a typo. If you only have a typo, make the same address without the comma or hyphen, change St to Saint, and then run the confirmation process again. It should verify with Paypal and be just fine.

Thanks from all of us sellers out there trying to get your stuff to you the fastest and easiest way,

Mark