Why are state and county mandatory

  • Resolved ulrich_nielsen

    (@szarzene)


    4 years, 2 months ago

    I know this question has been asked a thousand times before. The only thing is, i’ve never seen a satisfying answer.

    You guys choose to ignore the fact that a lot of countries of the world — most in fact — don’t use states and counties as part of a postal address. Only the largest countries do, but for the rest of world, where merchants ship domestically, this is an absolute disaster. This function is so deeply integrated into the plugin, it’s nearly impossible to get rid of. Hiding fields through CSS is a very dumb hack and doesn’t address the problem anyway.

    This is the only thing for me that plagues Woocommerce, but it’s unfortunately a deal breaker.

    Why the developers after so many years and so much complaint still insist on having those fields in all forms, instead of making it a toggle, is beyond me. I’d love to use Woocommerce, even pay for some services, but this situation is extremely disappointing.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Plugin Support Senff

    (@senff)

    Hi @szarzene

    You guys choose to ignore the fact that a lot of countries of the world — most in fact — don’t use states and counties as part of a postal address.

    Whether a state or county is required, actually depends on the country you choose when you checkout.

    It will indeed ask for a State when you select the United States, but if you select Canada for example, it will ask for a Province instead.
    If you select Germany, or the Netherlands, or many other countries, it will only ask for a city (and not a county, state, or province).

    Here is a screenshot for your reference, where you’ll see there is no mandatory County/State field:


    Image link: https://d.pr/i/GVpCBN

    Do you see the fields for County and/or State for any countries where they’re not supposed to show on your site? I’ll be happy to take a look.

    • This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Senff.
    Thread Starter ulrich_nielsen

    (@szarzene)

    Hi Senff,
    thanks for the reply. My selected country is Hungary and the state/county fields are certainly mandatory. I’m now using a plugin to get rid of them across the shop.
    The goal is not just to make them optional but to prevent them from showing anywhere. If you deliver to multiple countries it makes sense, but most small shop owners don’t, so this is a major annoyance.
    If possible pls try to make the system more flexible in upcoming releases. Thanks for all your efforts, it’s a great extension anyway!

    Plugin Support Senff

    (@senff)

    Hi @szarzene

    Note that some mandatory information is required by the credit card companies for payment. That means that if you hide certain required fields, the credit card company may decline the transaction, with the result that the payment will not go through.

    Thread Starter ulrich_nielsen

    (@szarzene)

    Thanks for the update but those fields are certainly not needed for payment, plus credit card authentication is done by the integrated payment gateway not by Woocommerce. Customers are to fill out personal data, but i set the default country to Hungary and not show it anywhere. State/county is not applicable here at all, it’s irrelevant to any fulfillment service.

    Hey @szarzene ,

    I did some more testing and I do see that the County is mandatory for Hungary, although WooCommerce doesn’t include a state for it:

    Hungary address details
    Link to image: https://d.pr/i/UCmq4g

    If the State field is showing on your site, that may be coming from another plugin or extension.

    The Hungarian counties are listed for the customers so it doesn’t need to be entered. WooCommerce uses the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository, which provides key building blocks for software to support the world’s languages, with the largest and most extensive standard repository of locale data available. It has a list of all Hungarian states to pull from.

    For many countries, the county/state is optional if it isn’t required for billing or delivery. If the county isn’t mandatory for Hungary, we can open an issue to get that updated.

    Plugin Support Missy a11n

    (@m155y5)

    Automattic Happiness Engineer

    We haven’t heard back from you in a while, so I’m going to go ahead and mark this thread as resolved. If you have any other questions please feel free to start a new thread.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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