Addresses no longer auto-validate

Hello grangep,

Thank you for contacting Woo support.

To confirm, are you referring to this dialog box creating a shipping label?
Could you share a screenshot from your end for better understanding?

Looking forward to your response. ??

Best regards.

Yes. This is the dialog box:

With Shipping & Tax, the “ship to” address would automatically attempt to verify when the modal loaded. This gave us a quick view of whether the address was good or not – without having to remember to click anything.

With this update to Shipping, we must remember to click and manually verify the address in order to make sure it is correct. This is an easily forgotten step – especially since it wasn’t necessary before.

Hi @grangep,

Yes it’s likely you’ll find the unverified address warning on that final step in the new plugin. This is to make sure the address is all good, or to make fixes to it if needed. From our documentation:

…in the Ship to setting will be your customers address they’d entered at checkout. This will likely show an?Unverified address?warning, select that text to help verify this address. You can also change the shipping address in cases where a customer may request this, etc…

I understand you’d prefer to not have this extra step. We’re collecting all of our merchant’s feedbacks and our developers are actively and closely looking into the forums for this new plugin to learn more and iron out all the issues that may arise.

Thank you so much for your feedback about this user experience. We’ll keep you posted with any decisions or updates regarding this extra step.

Thanks!
-OP

I’m utterly confused as to how this plugin made it to production. Shipping & Tax was a feature-rich, fully functional extension with nearly a million active installs. How did the Woo team come to the conclusion that this version was ready, or that it should be marketed as an “upgrade”? There is not a single new feature in the plugin, and many essential functions of the old version were removed without warning. Shop owners are left to scramble to revert, or deal with it.

Betrayal of trust. Not cool.

I agree, the new plugin has added numerous extra clicks, causing more chances for error. Customers always enter addresses that need to be verified and corrected, so it has to be an automatic step. And, we still don’t have the ability to create a return label, which is absolutely necessary for an online shop. Finally, I’ll create a new ticket, since the checkbox to mark the order as complete isn’t working, while it did in the previous plugin.

Hi @grangep @harleec, sorry to hear you feel the new plugin is not meeting expectations.

Regarding address validation, in WooCommerce Shipping & Tax it was also not auto validated, it required a click to fix validation.

I do want to highlight that with WooCommerce Shipping address validation is not needed hence why it was moved to the sidebar, only if the carrier cannot figure out the address from the customer entered one will we prompt an error message that will then need your manual intervention.

I believe you will also be pleased to know that we are working on a new feature that will allow your customers to validate their addresses at checkout, this is very close to completion.

Hopefully this clarifies and changes your feelings towards the plugin.

Hello @kloon, our experience mirrors @grangep for shipping address validation. I did not experience any need for validation using WooCommerce Shipping & Tax, but with this new plugin, every new order seems to require validation now. This is a regression and less ideal UX for us trying to purchase shipping labels.

It’s hopeful to hear that you’re working on a new feature to help customers fulfill the validation on the front-end, as it’s more important that they get it correct before it submits into WooCommerce.

Thanks for your support.

Hi @micasuh, thanks for the feedback, we definitely value it and are listening.

I want to highlight that apart from the customer address validation at checkout we are in final stages of testing, the next release will also contain a new improved auto address verification process in wp-admin that requires no interaction of any kind from you as a merchant, unless there is no way to automatically verify an address.

Hey @grangep and other folks following along on this thread.

We just released version 1.1.4 of WooCommerce Shipping that has a new auto validation feature when you purchase a label.

Now when you open the label purchase modal it will automatically kick off a process to try and auto validate the customer entered address and mark it as verified without the need for the merchant to do anything.

Please give this a try and let us know your experience.