Getting Amazon to print addresses in hanzi

[onebir]

Post offices in some parts of China aren't pinyin friendly, (eg see this thread so I (repeatedly) emailed the Amazon to complain about their inability to print out address labels in hanzi.

This is the reply I finally received:

Thanks for writing to us at Amazon.com with your comments about our

address lable on the packages.

I am sorry to say at this point of time, our printers are not

capable of reproducing the characters in Chinese.

I can understand your case and sympathize that we currently have no

way to print the lables in the Chinese characters. However, this is

something that we need to take serious consideration for change in

how this process works.

I've also passed your message on to the appropriate people in our

company. We value customer feedback such as yours as it helps us

continue to improve the service and selection we provide.

I'm not holding my breath, but if anyone else is frustrated by their inability to order from Amazon, it might be worth contacting them to add evidence that there's some repressed demand. (Just use "contact us" in their help pages.)

All they have to do is ship the books to Amazon China & let Amazon China print out the addresses...

[mr.stinky]

no problem receiving pinyin addressed mail and/or packages in kunming, having all

sent to my university address.

did you ask whether amazon is able to print out a jpg or pdf file? or maybe fax a 'lable?'

[onebir]

did you ask whether amazon is able to print out a jpg or pdf file?

Of course - their procedures can't cope with such complexities.

no problem receiving pinyin addressed mail and/or packages in kunming, having all

sent to my university address.

Can I get stuff sent to you?

[liuzhou]

I've been in China fro 11 years and had mail sent to me in little villages up mountains in the middle of nowhere and also to larger cities.

Never had a problem with Pinyin addressed mail.

Where are you?

[simonlaing]

I found in the bigger cities it can be harder to get mail sometimes than in smaller places.

I think this may be because in smaller places there are fewer westerners and they are usually concentrated in one location in the small city.

Also, there are issues if you have the right address but the post code is wrong. This can mess people up big time.

have fun,

Simon:)

[mr.stinky]

sure, onebir, as long as it's stuff i need.

[adrianlondon]

Maybe you can find some books on Amazon to recommend to Amazon's IT department ;)

Make sure you get a referral fee.

[Rincewind]

Amazon isn't the only online book shop. Have you tried their competitors? e.g. www.barnesandnoble.com

Personally, I have had no problem with addresses written in pinyin getting to me in Anshan form the UK. It takes about 2 to 3 weeks for the mail to get here (even when marked and paid for Par Avon) but it does get here.

[dalaowai]

If you have the address in Hanzi, your package will be delivered much much faster. If it only has pinyin, the package gets sent to a special processing center to "translate" it and then it gets sent out.

amazon.com won't be doing anything to help you, as the person who replied to your email has no idea how their shipping label system works. I used to work at fedex and I know for a fact that their printer can print foreign characters, it's their website that doesn't recognize them.

What I usually do with other sites is email them a jpeg image of my address and they're usually happy to comply.

[roddy]

Do you know which actual post office is doing this? I'd be inclined to go down and ask them what they're playing at - after all if you get the zip code right the rest is generally just a matter of reading the building and apartment number, you hardly even need to read the pinyin.

Something else that has been suggested is putting your phone number in as part of the address so they can phone you when they get stuck. I'm dubious about how useful that would be and if the people in question are being downright unhelpful anyway . . .

Try French, international language of the postal service

[mr.stinky]

here's amazon's response to my request to send a jpg or pdf or fax, or to have them

ship via amazon china:

Greetings from Amazon.com.

Unfortunately, our printers are not capable of reproducing the characters of Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. Once printed, your address will be completely illegible.

Therefore, your order can not be delivered and may returned to us. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Hence I request you to enter the address using English characters. We will then be able to ship the order to its destination.

I'm sorry, but we can only accept orders placed through the shopping cart on our web site--we do not accept orders via phone, e-mail, or fax. However you can place the order at Joyo.com.

Joyo.com was founded in May 2000 and today is the largest online book, music, video, and DVD store in China. Since 2004, Joyo.com has introduced more product categories at a faster rate than any of Amazon's web sites, and their buyable selection has increased 32 times in less than three years. In June 2007 the site changed its name to "Joyo Amazon."

The newly branded Joyo Amazon site offers customers hundreds of thousands of items in 20 categories including electronics, watches, mother/baby products, kitchen and health/personal care. In addition, Joyo.com now provides COD delivery to more than 330 cities in China and same-day delivery to customers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

To read our June 2007 press release about Joyo Amazon, please visit our website at: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1011217

[dalaowai]

I'm not sure which post office does this, but it was in Shanghai. I asked Bob the postman and he said it's because some of the older delivery guys can't read English. I insisted that it wasn't english, but rather pinyin, and he replied with a look of confusion.

I had my phone number printed as well, and they never called me. I guess that cause on the shipping slip it said "telephone" rather than 电话 so they didn't contact me.

Another interesting post office story was a few months back, I mailed a box to Canada, and naturally wrote the address in English and the office clerk asked me where I was sending it to. So I say "加拿大” She proceeds to write 欧洲 on the box. I looked at her and shook my head while smirking. "你真的不知道加拿大在哪里?" to which she replied, "不好意思先生，我应该写澳大利亚，对吧？” Superstar!

[imron]

I asked Bob the postman and he said it's because some of the older delivery guys can't read English. I insisted that it wasn't english, but rather pinyin, and he replied with a look of confusion.

It's a moot point anyway, because a lot of them can't read pinyin either, especially if it's in a smaller place.

[atitarev]

[off topic]

In many countries where Roman letters are not used Roman letters are associated with English. E.g. in Russia, when the address is written in Roman letters non-experts would normally say it's in English even if say a French method was used. Well, there is no official romanisation for Russian. Usually letters reach the destination when written in Roman letters in Russia but there is no guarantee.

[/off topic]

I agree, the best method is to write the address as it is accepted in a given country. Perhaps an image file with the address in Chinese is better than in Pīnyīn.

[onebir]

Do you know which actual post office is doing this? I'd be inclined to go down and ask them what they're playing at - after all if you get the zip code right the rest is generally just a matter of reading the building and apartment number, you hardly even need to read the pinyin.

No - I've never dared to actually order anything from abroad, discouraged by reports of pinyin addressed items going astray. I'm not sure you could even blame a local post office - what if the pinyin addressed stuff gets sent back before it even gets close...

[onebir]

Mr.stinky - they suggested I order from Joyo/Amazon.cn too. I clicked "no" on the "Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:" link & pointed out that Amazon.cn has a completely different product range to the US/UK Amazons, so pointing me at that website was totally stupid. In the end got the reply I posted above.

Perhaps if you make a similar point, &/ ask for the shipping procedures to be reviewed your message will get passed on to someone who can actually do something about it. Maybe Atitarev could chip in about Russia too...

It's really odd (& stupid) that their procedures allow human replies to help emails, but not human intervention anywhere in shipping process... On the other hand it does look like the help function has been outsourced to India (judging by the names on the emails)...