credit cards didn't work

@eonfifty So, is your password “incorrect”, just like the hint says? Derp!

@thismyusername I don’t think I’ve ever seen a unit number listed before the street address. It seems very European, like DD/MM/YYYY instead of MM/DD/YYYY.
/image logical defies convention

@eonfifty @thismyusername

The proper USPS format is just one line:

123 ANY ST #456

Could there be a missing ZIP+4 or are you using ZIP+4 and the bank match isn’t?

@eonfifty yea well tell that to the persons who code the meh software.

@mike808 that is great, does the meh software know that?

@thismyusername Who are they? I’d also like to tell them to try putting the zip+4 before the street address as that is the most logical order.
/image Mister zip

@eonfifty The catch I have had on occasion (although not here) is that some online programs default #8 to apt 8 - hum well what if you live in a townhouse or just put #8 like I do - and then it may not match the address on file with the credit card company. That has tripped me up more than once until I called the credit card company and asked them to change it to #8 rather than apt 8…

@eonfifty @Kidsandliz
APT, STE, and # are all valid and separate canonical USPS address formats.

To comply with PCI and privacy rules, the way these address validations work is that they convert the address to USPS canonical form, generate a hash from that, and send that to the credit/authorization/fraud scoring software so that the merchant (Meh) is not sending your personal information over the web to who knows what. The bank/fraud software did the same so if the hash matches, Meh has the same address the bank has.

@eonfifty @mike808 Interesting. That is, then, what tripped me up until I got the credit card to change it to what generally put.

@thismyusername I worked for the credit card industry for 11 years and we told our associates to enter the address in a specific way. Least significant information on the top, most significant on the bottom.

The street address is generally written on one line, however, sometimes the street address is so long, that you can exceed the character limit of that field. You then have to put the apartment or unit information on a separate line. Since Apartment or units are less significant than the physical address, it goes on the line above it.

John Smith
Apt 1234
123 Ridiculously Long Name for a Street Ave.
City, State, Zip + 4

Then, no matter how you type it in, overnight there were processes running that would standardize the addresses according to USPS rules. For example, if you spelled out Court, it would abbreviate it to Ct. That was annoying for customers complaining about not getting statements because they tell us very clearly how to write it but it eventually changes it to that standard format which may be different than the way the customer requests it. It’s done after the address is looked up to include the plus 4, because the customer never gives you that, and the post office returns the properly formatted address for that customer.

The standard format is necessary to get to presorted bulk mail rates. You need the plus 4 information plus the weird 65 bar “Intelligent Mail Barcode” that is proprietary to the postal system. That bar code contains the sender’s unique ID, a unique mail piece ID, and a lot of information about the address where it’s going.

TL;DR check with your credit card company to determine how they entered it into their system (or how it appears in the system today) and then use that exact same formatting when entering it elsewhere online.

@cengland0 I don’t have any problems. A customer here had a problem. I told them how the fix worked here at meh in the past to help them now. I have no idea why it used to work, just that it did used to work… and only at meh, not other places… I presume they goofed the code and it flipped the address lines before encoding on a couple transactions, or it did it when it hit some condition in their address… there was never an ‘oh shit’ report for it so not sure why it happened…

I was just telling the person who was having problem how it was fixed last time it happened to people when using meh… that’s all.

@thismyusername I understand that you were not the person with the issue. I responded in your thread because I agreed with your answer it was sort of a follow-up to it on the reasons why it might work.