Billing County is not valid

Hey there!

If I am understanding it correctly, Leinster is not a county, but a province with counties in it, right?

We might need to look at how PayPal is handling Irish addresses, and what it is requiring (and then sending over to WooCommerce).

If you can shed some light on what the parts of the address you sent are, that would help us try to figure this out.

Hi,

so the address I sent breaks down as follows,

Building: Unit W4D
Estate: Toughers Business Park
Town: Naas
Provience: Leinster
Postcode: W91 HH2C

technically our address should be

Unit W4D
Toughers Business Park
Naas
Co. Kildare
Leinster
W91 HH2C

with Kildare as the county, but I put this in as a test as this is what is happening for other people,
I beleive in my case leinster is being counted as the county,
if their address from paypal doesn’t contain one of the counties of ireland in it, it won’t let it through,
and this can happen as you see in this example,

and once I get the error there is no way to change the billing address on the order,

so we need a way of maybe not making the countie’s required to be those exact counties,
or something like that,
maybe you have a suggestion,

if you need any more info on that let me know

Hi,

can I get an update on this?

this is still happening for our customers and we need a solution,

Thanks,
Gavin

Sorry about the delay.

I think this will likely end up with me asking for some developer clarity on this. I do need to get a couple things straight though.

when they try to put through an order with paypal express they get this error message ‘Billing County not valid’

Is this shown on the WooCommerce Checkout page, or on PayPal?

When you put ” Co. Kildare” in the address, it works properly, right?

Hi,

thanks for the reply,

1. Is this shown on the WooCommerce Checkout page, or on PayPal?
this is shown on the woocomerce checkout page

2. When you put ” Co. Kildare” in the address, it works properly, right?
if the address that paypal automatically takes from the persons account has the correct county in it(e.g. Co. Kildare) yes it works,
but if it doesn’t bring it across correctly you get the error, and there is no way of changing it as the address etc is locked in

yes if you could get onto your developer to have a look and sort it out,

please let me know asap as we need this working for us

still waiting for an answer on this please if you can let me know

@slash1andy Still waiting for a response on this,

can you please get back to me and let me know a solution for this?

Hey again!

Apologies on the delay. We’re working through this right now as to how to accommodate PayPal allowing county codes and WooCommerce expecting county names for Ireland.

Could we get some exact steps on reproducing this issue?

Could we see what exactly your customers are entering as shipping address on PayPal’s side when they hit PP button from the cart page?

Getting a screen recording of the whole thing (from adding the product to the cart to getting an error message) would be perfect.

Hi @slash1andy

Thanks for getting back to me

I’m not sure how to share a screen recording on here but I can walk through the steps to make this happen,

So First you go into the product page and click on pay with paypal,

you will then be redirected onto the paypal page, where they will sign in,

from here then they will already have their shipping address from paypal in there from before, and this is what is brought over into the checkout,

then you click proceed to checkout and you come back to our site where you are in the checkout,

you click pay for order and then you get the error message ‘Billing County not valid’
if the county is not correct, and you cannot edit the address at all,

as I said some users get through fine, but only by chance as their address matches up with the counties,

so as I said this format below would be fine if they happened to have it in their paypal account
Unit W4D
Toughers Business Park
Naas
Co. Kildare (This is a real County therefore no error)
Leinster
W91 HH2C

because it matches up to the checkout fields,

but if they are missing the county for example, just because that is how they entered into paypal, they will get the error message,
so for example for me I got the error when the address I brought over from paypal was as below,
it doesn’t include a county, this is just an address I had in my paypal and I can’t change it after its been entered

Unit W4D
Toughers Business Park
Naas
Leinster
W91 HH2C

if you can let me know a solution for this please?

I can send on a screen recording if you like just need to know the best way to send that through here

Thanks,
Gavin

I have the same issue (Ireland also). I am not seeing it relating to provinces, as I do not have a province in my address.

Billing County is not valid. Please enter one of the following: Carlow, Cavan, Clare, Cork, Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Louth, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary, Waterford, Westmeath, Wexford, Wicklow

I think paypal is returning two letter county codes which are generating an error? I am in Cork so the address that comes back as a two-letter country code in the line before the Postcode, ‘CK’.

Hi,

can we get an update on this please?

we are still facing this issue and we need a solution,

Thanks,
Gavin

@slash1andy
any update on this,

we need a solution for this please

I’ve been having the same issue for a year now and I’ve found no solutions. Orders first come in saying ‘Pending’ since they are not payed yet and then they change to ‘Cancelled’ because customers never managed to figure out the Irish county issue so the payment never went through.

The error that they get:
Billing County is not valid. Please enter one of the following: Carlow, Cavan, Clare, Cork, Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Louth, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary, Waterford, Westmeath, Wexford, Wicklow

This message seems to be given by Woocommerce I think because PayPal only lets you choose the county from a dropdown list and in the list all counties have ‘Co’ in front of them! So, is one system now recognising the other system even though the correct county has been chosen (there’s no other option but to choose one that’s given so how can it be wrong!?). Is there a way to take the added ‘Co’ away from PayPal or is there a way to add the missing ‘Co’ in front of all the counties in Woocommerce?

I’d really appreciate some help because we are losing money and customers during a time when absolutely every single one of them is worth gold to any company! Literally our survival depends on finding a solution for this problem. Please someone bring some clarity into this issue. I’ve checked all the settings at least 70 times now and tested every possible checkbox…

Hi, I was just about to launch an online shop and came across this issue while testing in sandbox. Does anyone know has it ever been resolved in any satisfactory way?

Hi @advantagepoint and others,

This issue is being tracked on Github here: https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-gateway-paypal-express-checkout/issues/722 – I would recommend checking there for any updates.