Shipping Address Instructions

Address conventions vary from place to place, and the United States Postal Service has a set way of accepting address information when the IVA prepares your shipping label online. This means that, from time to time, we receive address information written out in a way that would probably be just fine if we could write it out by hand on an envelope and send it off, but which throws us for a loop when attempting to complete the USPS form. For example, it can be unclear whether a certain location name is a city or county. This slows down the shipping process as we attempt to clarify the address. It is costly to ship oversees, and we want to make sure the package is not returned undelivered.

When sending us your shipping address, please label the information so that there will be no question as to where to include it on the form. For example, if your address is typically written out as follows, please don’t assume we’ll know where certain fields will fit in the form:

163 Bamboo St.
Melbourne, VIC 3000
Australia

If this example seems rather straightforward, we’ve had addresses in Ireland, the Middle East, and even the UK that weren’t quite so obvious. However, to keep the example simple, we will continue with breaking it out, just to give you a sense of what would be helpful:

Street Address (or Address 1): 163 Bamboo St.

Province: Victoria (or VIC)

Postal Code: 3000

Country: Australia

Again, the example seems straightforward, but there are places that don’t use postal codes, and where the town is the same name as a county, province, or territory, etc. Regardless of how your address system works, please break out every bit of address information as above to help us identify each piece of information. This will save back and forth emails for clarification. Occasionally the online form requests a phone number for customs reasons. If you know that this is common for your area, please go ahead and provide it. Otherwise we will reach out to you by email for that information.

Thanks so much for helping us to more efficiently provide this resource around the globe!

Sample Address Form