Summary: With auto-validation on, the background check at process time overrides what the Validate button showed. It can flip an address to residential, add a building line, and change the service. Preview it or turn off auto-validation to control it.

Problem

You press Validate and the address looks correct (for example, commercial). When you rate or ship, the address comes back different: it is marked residential, a building line is added to address line 1, and the service switches to a residential service such as FedEx Home Delivery.

Cause

When auto-validation is turned on, every shipment is validated in the background when it processes (usually against the provider's address data). Pressing Validate with a carrier like FedEx selected checks against that carrier, but the background auto-validation runs at process time and replaces that result. Because the two checks return different data, the address and service you saw after pressing Validate are not what gets used.

How to check: Switch the service to your auto-validation provider (for example a USPS service) and press Validate. That shows the address auto-validation will actually apply.

Fix

  1. Know that with auto-validation on, the background result at process time is used, not the manual Validate result.
  2. To preview what will be applied, switch the service to the auto-validation provider (for example a USPS service) and press Validate.
  3. If the address must stay commercial, correct it at the validation source (the provider's address record).
  4. If you want to keep the manual result for a workflow, turn off auto-validation for that workflow so your address and service are kept.
  5. Re-rate or reprocess the shipment and check the address and service.
  6. If you are not sure which validation source your profile uses, or you need auto-validation changed, email support@shipstore.com with your company name and an example order number.

What you should see

The address and service after processing match what your auto-validation provider returns. Previewing with the provider's service shows the same result.

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