2022-03-29

 Published in the Winnipeg Free Press

29 March 2022

© Calvin J. Brown 2022

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Online shopping can be crapshoot with rural address

CALVIN BROWN

I live on an acreage in rural Manitoba, enjoying the peace and solitude of having farm fields as our nearest neighbours. However, too often that rural bliss is rattled — by online shopping.

For years, climate-change experts have been telling us to drive less to reduce our carbon footprint. More recently, pandemic experts have been advising us to minimize our human contact.

The solution: Shop online. The logic behind that solution isn't unassailable, but it can seem extremely attractive to someone who lives in a rural area, doesn't like shopping and, as a practising introvert, prefers to avoid most human contact anyway.

The process of shopping online seems elegantly simple: Want; click and type; wait; get; enjoy. It's probably designed to please.

But for some of us, that design provides more pain than pleasure. To understand why, you must first understand that rural dwellers like us have two addresses that don't interact well.

We have a postal address that directs mail to a post-office box in a nearby community. Let's call that: PO Box 999, Nearby Town, Manitoba, Z9Z 9Z9.

Like all Canadian postal addresses, it includes a postal code. We also have a home address, the place where we physically reside. Let's go with: 123 Somewhere Road, RM of Our Region, Manitoba.

Note that RM stands for Rural Municipality. We don't live in a city, a town, or a village. We live in a municipality. Also note that our home address contains no postal code. There isn't a Canada Post-assigned postal code for our home address because Canada Post doesn't deliver mail here.

The aggravating truth is that, for many shopping websites, living somewhere that has no postal code is akin to living on the moon.

If I try to buy from a store that ships products via Canada Post and is happy with our postal address, everything is fine. I enter the address, the package is mailed to us, and I pick it up at the local post office.

If our postal address is rejected, usually because it has "PO Box" in it, I must use our home address. That's when the difficulties begin.

Shopping websites love postal codes. They insist that an address include a postal code. Since our home address doesn't contain one, I've found ways to make websites happy. I use different forms of our home address, all of which are actually incorrect. One version is: 123 Somewhere Road, RM of Our Region, Manitoba, Z9Z 9Z9.

Which is wrong because that postal code isn't for our municipality, it's for Nearby Town. That sometimes angers websites, so I use: 123 Somewhere Road, Nearby Town, Manitoba, Z9Z 9Z9.

Of course, we don't live in Nearby Town. We're a few kilometres away. Sometimes, just in case the package is still sent via Canada Post, I use: Unit 999, 123 Somewhere Road, Nearby Town, Manitoba, Z9Z 9Z9.

This makes a website believe it's not a PO Box address but, if the package is mailed, might help a postal worker deduce the PO Box number. If it's sent by courier, hopefully the delivery person won't be completely befuddled.

In general, if an online-shopping website accepts our PO Box postal address, I silently cheer and move on with my day, reasonably confident the package will arrive.

If a website doesn't like that address, I colourfully condemn those responsible for the site, provide a convoluted version of our home address, and wait to see what happens.

When delivery involves a courier, online shopping is like online gambling. I don't always win. A package might be held at a courier's central distribution depot or returned there by a confused driver. A package might be dropped off at a store that's about 15 minutes from our house or, as happened recently, delivered to a depot that's two hours away.

I'm surprised and grateful when a package actually comes directly to our door.

I know my online-shopping woes aren't comparable to many problems the world is facing. However, you won't convince me of that when I'm battling a vendor's website or struggling to explain my situation to a customer-service representative.

Periodically, I wonder if life would be improved by living in a city, where addresses are better understood, where couriers are less confused, and where even restaurant food can be reliably delivered.

However, I'm not quite ready to swap our rural peace and quiet for urban bustle and noise. I live in hope that, in the future, AI systems and delivery drones will finally solve the apparently baffling mysteries of rural addresses.

Calvin Brown lives in the RM of St. Andrews