More late orders come from a bad address than from weather, and it's not close. A missing apartment number, a ZIP that doesn't match the city, or a street type abbreviated wrong will send a parcel on a two week detour that no amount of expedited shipping can rescue. Weather delays a day. Address errors delay a fortnight.
The three lines that break
The apartment or unit number is the most common omission, and it's the one carriers can't fix, because there's nothing to match it against. Second is the ZIP, usually a digit transposed or a neighbouring town's code carried over from an old form. Third is the street suffix, where a parcel addressed to a Road gets delivered on a Drive three blocks away.
Autocomplete makes the first two worse. It's fast, it's confident and it fills a field you didn't check.
What actually happens after dispatch
Orders are processed within 1 business day, and standard US delivery runs 3 to 7 days with tracking emailed at dispatch. When an address is wrong, the carrier usually scans it as undeliverable and holds it, then returns it to sender. That return leg is where the time goes, and it's also where the tracking stops being useful.
We ship within the United States only, so there's no border to complicate it. The failure is almost always domestic and almost always human, and it is almost always fixable with a closer look at the second line of the address.
Fixing it in the 60 seconds that matter
Check the confirmation email, not the order page. It shows the address exactly as the label will print it, which is the version that matters. If it's wrong, reply to that email immediately. Orders that haven't been picked can usually be corrected the same day.
After dispatch, the options narrow. The carrier can sometimes redirect a parcel in transit, sometimes not, and the request has to come from the recipient. That's a phone call rather than an email, and it's worth making before the second failed delivery attempt.
What we do when a parcel comes back
We tell you rather than waiting for you to notice. The order is refunded or reshipped once the parcel is back with us, and a reship needs a corrected address before it goes out. What we can't do is absorb the return shipping on an address that was entered wrong, which is why the confirmation email exists.
If the address was ours to get wrong, that changes. Damage, a mis-pick, a label printed for the wrong unit: reported within 7 days of delivery with a photo, and we cover both legs.
The habit that prevents all of it
One line for the unit number, one for the street, one for the city, state and ZIP, and nothing else in the fields. Four fields, 60 seconds of attention, and the parcel goes where you aimed it. No delivery notes about the blue door in the address line, because the carrier's scanner reads that as part of the street and the driver's app shows a truncated version of it.
Put instructions where they belong, in the delivery notes, and check the state against the ZIP once. That's the whole fix, and it's cheaper than the 2 weeks you'd spend tracking a parcel that is coming back to us on a truck you can follow in real time.
Frequently asked questions
What detail goes missing most often?Show answerHide answer
Unit or apartment numbers, then postcode digits.
Can I change it after ordering?Show answerHide answer
Only before dispatch. Ask us immediately rather than waiting for the tracking.
What if it comes back to us?Show answerHide answer
We contact you and resend, though it adds delivery time on top.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
