Residential vs Business address

[CopperStar]

When my orders sync with Shipstation they are marked as either residential or business. Many residential addresses show as business addresses. How do I change this to residential?

Thanks

[timberturf]

The residential/commercial designation is set the USPS address validation database, you can't change it since it's based on whatever data USPS has on that address.

[Scott_A]

Can't change that. Depending on how much you are shipping that really only starts to factor in once you have negotiated rates with the carriers. There are some slight differences, like extra fees from USPS, but it really gets cheaper if you have negotiated commercial rates with UPS, FEDEX, etc.

[imix4u]

Depending on who your courier is, you can change the service. For example, we primarily use FedEx. So, if we get a business address that's really residential, we choose FedEx Home Delivery. If the opposite is true, we choose FedEx Ground.

Also, depending on your carrier's service agreement, it may be possible to always ship FedEx Ground and if it turns out to be residential, they tack on the service fee at the time of invoicing. Be careful with this, though, because they may charge a penalty. Again - depends on your service agreement.

[RobC]

We're looking at switching from UPS to Fedex & I really dislike the way Shipstation doesn't actually show whether the address is commercial or residential and allows you to select either Fedex Ground Home Delivery or Fedex Ground when one of the services wouldn't be valid for the address.

Also I've found when creating test orders that if I start out with a residential address then edit the shipment to change it to a completely different address that is Commercial, the rate finder still only shows Fedex Home Delivery. I can choose Fedex Ground from the Services pulldown menu in the shipment itself, but when I do so it gives me a rate that seems to be based on FedEx Ground + a residential surcharge even though it's a commercial address. In other words, if I edit the order & change it from a residential address to a completely different commercial address (or vice versa), I can't get the same rates as fedex.com to show up. It's significantly off.

I'm struggling to see how people use FedEx with Shipstation.

[CaraAdmin]

Hello @RobC!

Thank you for your post in the community, and I’m sorry for any frustration you’re experiencing. You’re currently working with support on an escalation on ticket 7303812, but I wanted to share something that might help. During address validation, we display icons to indicate whether an address is residential or business. I’ve attached a Help Center article here with more details.

I hope this helps! If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact support through your current ticket—they’ll be happy to assist you further.

We appreciate your patience while we look into this! 

-Cara