Skip to main content

Address Format Requirements

caution

Not following the address format requirements may cause a delay in your order and, in extreme cases, may cause your order to be lost.

Overview

Pawprint Press has a long history of shipping to customers all over the world. We understand that international shipping can sometimes be complicated, so we created this page as a guideline to help get your orders to your hands more smoothly.

We carefully check the address before processing any order. However, the parcel may pass through different couriers, and we cannot guarantee that the address information will be passed on correctly. Label changes happen often, and we have experienced many delivery failures because the destination address is not printed properly on the label. As a precaution, we kindly ask you to read this page carefully and follow the instructions according to your case.

General Rules

Address Character Limit

Please make sure that each line of the address is within the character limit of 45 characters. If the address is too long, it may be truncated and cause a delivery failure. You may utilize address line 2 if the street address is too long, since the courier systems don't actually differentiate between address line 1 and 2.

We have also noticed that some customers use certain tools to translate their address into English and they just pasted the whole translated address, including city, province, and sometimes even the country into the street address field. This is a bad practice and it will cause a delay in the order since we have to manually edit the address. Please make sure that you don't input redundant information into the address field.

Punctuation Marks

For punctuation marks, please only use comma (,), hyphen (-), parentheses (()) and period (.) in the address. Other special characters may cause a delivery failure. Below are some common cases that we have seen:

For Addresses in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Galician:

Please avoid using the ordinal indicator "º" (e.g. 1º) in the address. You may use "first", "primo", or even "1o" instead. This is one of the most common reasons we have seen for delivery failures in Southern Europe because, in case the couriers' system cannot parse it, the label won't be able to display the accurate floor number.

For Addresses in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean:

Be sure to use half-width numbers and punctuation marks. Full-width characters may cause a parsing error in the data transmission process and the address information may be contaminated.

Addresses in Latin-Script Alphabets

Unless it will cause ambiguity, we request customers to use only basic Latin characters (i.e. the 26 "English alphabets" from A-Z), with no diacritic, digraph, or ligature in the shipping address, including the recipient name. This is because some of the couriers' systems may be using the ASCII standard and they cannot parse any letter other than the 26 "English alphabets".

For the sake of a safe delivery, if your address contains diacritic, digraph, or ligature, you may want to either remove them or replace them with equivalents consisting of only basic Latin characters.

For example:

Address ExampleASCII DisplayRecommended Substitution
Av. RevoluciónAv. Revoluci√≥nAv. Revolucion
GörgesstraßeG√∂rgesstra√üeGorgesstrasse
Rue des ChâtaigniersRue des Ch√¢taigniersRue des Chataigniers

Addresses Not in Latin-Script Alphabets

If your address is not in Latin-script alphabets, we kindly request you to use a romanized address unless your address is in one of the following regions:


China Mainland

Please input the address in Chinese. A precise postal code is not necessary.

The storefront may ask you to input your national ID number (身份证号); however, it is not necessary for us to process your order. You may input some random numbers if you have concerns over your privacy.


Hong Kong SAR

You may input the address in either Chinese or English. Chinese address is preferred.


Japan

Please input the address in Japanese.


Korea (Republic of)

Please input the address in Korean. Please also be sure to input the Personal Customs Clearance Code (개인통관고유부호) in the given field.


Macao SAR

You may input the address in either Chinese or Portuguese. Chinese address is preferred.


Taiwan

Please input the address and the recipient name in Chinese. You must use your legal name as the recipient name; otherwise, it may delay the shipment. A precise postal code is not necessary.

Please also include your National Identification Number (身分證字號) in the address field. Though our storefront does not ask you to input it, we need it to process your order. This is a requirement from our couriers in order to comply with the regulations of the Taiwan Customs.

If you have already registered on the EZ WAY system and completed the real-identity verification, you should use the phone number associated with your EZ WAY account to avoid any potential delay at customs.

We understand that according to the laws, a customer is not required to provide their national ID number if the phone number on the package is verified via the EZ WAY system. However, our courier is still putting the ID number as a mandatory field in their system. We apologize for this inconvenience and we sincerely appreciate your understanding.


Vietnam

Please input the address in Vietnamese (Chữ Quốc ngữ). A postal code is mandatory.

Our courier runs a strict check on the address and their system is a bit stubborn. For example, only "Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh" may pass the check while "Hồ Chí Minh" and "Ho Chi Minh City" will be rejected. Their system also polices the "province-city" pair strictly, so if your address is in a municipality (thành phố trực thuộc trung ương), you may want to input the city as "province" and the district (ward/borough) as "city".

For example, for an address in District 8 of Ho Chi Minh City. The courier's system will only accept it while the "province" is "Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh" and the "city" is "Quận 8".

Please rest assured that we will check the address before processing your order since it's basically impossible to pass the system check without any "correction" to the address. However, you may help us save some time by inputting the address as complete as possible.