Sold phone. What is this address number?

October 5, 2021 6:43 PM

A buyer has purchased a phone from me on Swappa. The requested name for shipping is listed in the format "First Last A01-234567". What is this number after the first name? Is it suspicious or a form of identification I've never encountered?

If it matters, the whole address is in the format:

First Last A01-234567
Street Addr
Unit Number
State, City Zip

It's standard fare, except it seems to go to a business instead of an individual.

posted by mr_bovis to Society & Culture (5 answers total)

It’s probably a package forwarding service — i.e. the buyer is located somewhere that you don’t ship to, so they’re having it shipped to a third party who will resend the package to the buyer’s actual address.

I use one of these from time to time and my reshipping address is of the following format — not exactly the same but similar.

First Last
123 Street Name
Suite 1234-567
City, State, Zip

Not necessarily suspicious. Fraudsters do use these types of services but real legitimate people use them as well. I live in Canada so I use it whenever I want to buy something from the US that doesn’t ship to Canada.
posted by mekily at 7:01 PM on October 5, 2021 [4 favorites]

It's definitely a foreign buyer using a freight forwarder in order to save money on shipping. I've been selling cell phones on eBay for a living for over 10 years. I sell about half of my phones to foreign buyers who use freight forwarders like you describe (especially with addresses in Florida and Delaware, though I'm starting to see some freight forwarders based in Portland, OR, probably because there's no sales tax in Oregon).

You have to be REALLY careful selling to someone using a freight forwarder. I will cancel any order being shipped to a freight forwarder if the buyer doesn't have a well-established feedback score. I've had too many scammers steal my phones. Don't be afraid to cancel the order, indicate that there was a problem with the address, and relist your item to sell it to either someone based in the US or a foreign buyer (using a freight forwarder) with great feedback. Believe me, it's not worth the headache if you're not careful.

Unscrupulous foreign buyers have a couple of scams. First, they file a claim on their credit card saying they never received their item. Because of communication issues between their foreign credit card company and US-based credit card companies, there's a good chance they will win their claim, and you'll be out a phone and PayPal or eBay or whoever your credit card processor is will take the money back out of your account.

Second, a buyer will open a claim saying there's a problem with the phone as soon as it has been delivered to their freight forwarder, even though they don't have the item in their country yet. You will approve the return. They'll order a cheap item on Amazon and have it shipped to your address. I've received SIM cards, SIM tray ejectors, crayons, hardware screws, etc. They will use the tracking number for the cheap item as their proof that they returned the phone to you. You'll probably get the cheap item, wonder why you received it, and throw it away, not realizing that the tracking number was being used for the scam. You'll be waiting around for the phone to show up in your mailbox, and eBay will take the money out of your account to refund the scammer because they have a Proof of Delivery. You'll call eBay to tell them that you didn't get your phone back, and they'll say that they have proof, and it's the buyer's word against yours. Again, you have no phone and no money.

It's the wild west on the internet with foreign buyers. eBay used to be very protective of sellers, but that's simply not the case any more. They're concerned only about creating a safe marketplace FOR BUYERS. So it's now "seller beware".
posted by yaquina27 at 7:46 PM on October 5, 2021 [28 favorites]

USPS has a search tool that returns information about the address, including Yes or No if the address is a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency

https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm?byaddress
posted by Homer42 at 11:25 PM on October 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

Concur with reshipping service (aka package forwarder).

Reshippers generally use 2 formats, either a "suite number" (which is their account number) or append their account number to their name. OP's case definitely sounds like the latter.

As OP said Swappa, please read the Swappa policy VERY carefully regarding Reshippers, and read the entire thing instead of the excerpt below.

When the seller ships to the reshipper's address provided by PayPal from the buyer’s PayPal account, the seller is only responsible for the device getting to the freight forwarding company. Once it is deemed delivered by the courier chosen, the responsibility of the device getting from the freight forwarding company to the buyer is on the buyer and freight forwarding company. PayPal extends their seller protections to the seller as long as the device is shipped with tracking and is deemed delivered by the chosen courier to the freight forwarding company.

So if their reshipper address doesn't match their Paypal address, you can refuse the order. And if they are the same, Paypal should NOT dispute you as long as your courier says it has delivered to the reshipper.
posted by kschang at 1:05 AM on October 6, 2021

Some people who live in large apartment complexes are forced to use package remailers, because that's what's been set up by the landlords, as a way to deter package theft. As an example, I lived in a building that required us to receive everything through Fetch Delivery.

Fetch receiving addresses are formatted like the example you gave.
posted by spinifex23 at 11:40 AM on October 7, 2021