Customer's default address is always getting replaced with order shipping address

Customer's default address is always getting replaced with order shipping address

stuart_holley
Shopify Partner
1 0 8

Hi all, 

Shopify support has advised I post on here. 

I have an issue with Shopify transferring shipping and billing data to our backend system. Our system picks up an XML file for the default account address. If the shipping address for the customer is different to the billing address, when we import the data in to our system it changes the account address to the shipping address.

To describe from the beginning as a user - A user will buy a product as a gift for someone else. The shipping address would be different to the billing address. However, in the backend of Shopify, the account address swaps to the shipping address. Hence why this is being pulled through to our CRM systems making it complicated.

My question is, why does the account default address change when a user wants to add a different shipping address? Did this change recently?

Has anyone got any insight to this issue?

Many thanks. 

Stuart H

Replies 35 (35)

_JCC_
Shopify Staff
200 27 55

Stuart,

I just wanted to confirm this is expected behaviour. On creation of a new order if the shipping address is different than the current default address it will become the new default address on the customer account.

I can understand why the current behaviour is not ideal and if you like I can add your company to the current issue being tracked in our system. Unfortunately I don't have a timeline for a change/fix to this functionality.

Regards,

John

John C | Developer Support @ Shopify 
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JWMI
Excursionist
16 0 25

Many/most of our customers drop-ship their orders to their clients. Changing a default address to the shipping address not only is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist (customers are perfectly capable of updating their own information if they are permitted to do it), but it causes huge problems for online sellers, and especially ones who sync databases, automations, CRMs, mailing lists for printed literature. It's crazy. I see this issue has been brought up for years and no one has taken the time to fix it. Beyond frustrating. We are a B2B company where our each of our returning customers are placing custom orders for each of their clients, and now we are prevented from mailing anything to a list of our customers because most of them have shipped directly to their clients, meaning that I would inadvertently send our price list or catalog to the end-users, and not the wholesale buyers. This would be a disaster to say the least. And even after there is a fix (if ever), the prospect of trying to find a way to manually sort out who is who now is just ridiculous. We don't have 100 customers, we have thousands of contacts that are out of whack, and the problem just grows with every passing day. 

anrogers
Visitor
1 0 3

Can we get added to the enhancement notification for this issue? 

Heidi_R
Tourist
10 0 16

Have there been any updates with this? The nature of our Shopify store is 95% people sending gifts. It makes us look bad when the automatic order confirmation emails are constantly addressing our customer by the wrong name because it changes their default information every time they send a new gift. Shouldn't the default address be just that? The default?? It's really aggravating, 

TeamGifted
Shopify Partner
3 0 3

Hey ! Not sure if you've found another solution since your original post but thought I'd share that my app, Gifted , has this as one of our features. Many of the problems written about in this thread were happening with our customers so we built a solution for it!  Since our primary focus is online gifting, we know which orders are gift orders and are able to keep the gift giver's original Customer data intact. Feel free to check it out! And if you have any questions about the app I'd be happy to share more info

cc @angelinaswan @leeeee @JessicaLinnea 

landerson
Visitor
2 0 43

This just started happening in our store. I care less about the default address, the issue right now is that the wholesale accounts who drop ship to THEIR customers. The name on the Ship To is changing the entire customer account to the person the order was drop shipped to. The customer account should not change to the name of the person the order was shipped to OR billed to. The customer account name should not be changed unless the customer changes or requests it changed by one of my staff. Why is this happening now? It's creating a lot of angry confusion for the account holder because we are no longer able to search the customer by name if they didn't ship the last order to themselves. 

 

 

ShopifyDevSup
Shopify Staff
1453 238 509

Hello Everyone,

 

Thanks for posting. While many things have changed since the original post the behaviour of the customer being updated with the most recent order's shipping info as yet has not. 

 

If this behaviour is a concern for you please reach out to Support directly and mention your store or partner account and describe a little bit about the situation the behaviour causes so that your concerns can be more accurately reported on.

 

Thanks and hope you have a great day

Developer Support @ Shopify
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- Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution
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JWMI
Excursionist
16 0 25

This is so unacceptable. And the problem has grown - as many here have recently reported - starting in approximately May 2023 - it's not just the "default address" that is changing, but now the entire customer contact name is changing. The name also changes upon fulfillment. We reported to shopify, but of course, they blamed other apps. The only other app that would have any access to both new orders and shipped orders is AfterShip. I have sent them miles of screenshots and spreadsheets and data and they deny it as their problem too. This is a mess and there's no way we can continue this way. 

ThangCQ
Shopify Partner
31 3 7

Hello,

I have a question relate to the default address. I use Dawn theme, my default address is A at checkout. After that, I change default address in Customer->View Addresses-> I change Default address. But when I come back to checkout, the address which is selected in "Ship to" field isn't changed to new default address. Do you know any reason behind it?

LeeOGrady
Shopify Partner
7 0 13

BUMP! still a issue, almost 2024. maybe year 4 is the year it gets addressed?

Same issue as everyone - drop shipping/white label sending whatever you want to call it. the behaviour is unexpected. 
No such thing a 'default address' for a lot of customers.
A contact should have a billing address and a default SHIPPING address... Changing either on an order shouldn't update the contact unless explicitly asked/confirmed. I'd live with it if it was the shipping address only...
Looks bad to customers when you forget to reset their billing address which is now their last drop ship... 

menusandmusic
Visitor
2 0 3

Adding us to the voices of protest. This behavior of changing the “default address” to the last ship-to address is really unfortunate, terribly inconvenient, and potentially disastrous.

 

We are a gift catalog company with a large percentage of our orders going to gift recipients, and the majority of those orders are placed over the phone and entered through the backend by a service rep. This behavior creates an unnecessary and inconvenient step of confirming and/or changing the billing address on every order placed by customers and service reps. And of course, the additional complexity creates confusion and opportunity for error.

 

Being a catalog company, this behavior also significantly raises the chance of corrupted data in our catalog address file that is refreshed for every catalog mailing by exporting data from the platform.

 

It really is pretty unbelievable that this bug has persisted for so long on what is considered a top-tier platform. We are new to Shopify, having just completed our migration in the last couple of weeks. Had we known about this behavior, and the lack of attention from Shopify, we certainly would have gone with another platform. Unfortunately for us, it’s only come to our attention after significant work and expense to migrate.

 

For the time being, we are employing the third-party app mentioned on this thread to mitigate the problem. Sadly, Shopify may be less inclined to come up with a fix now that there is a third-party solution that Shopify profits from. We really hope that’s just a cynical take and that Shopify will do the right thing and fix the bug.

JessicaLinnea
Visitor
2 0 1

We are also a gift company with a similar set up. We only discovered the default address switch up when exporting our first catalog mailing list last year. Are you using Gifted? Right now we are using Giftship as it allows for multiple shipments in one order (on the customer end -- our call center reps still have to manually create orders for multiple address orders individually through the admin side), but I would be interested in reaching out to Gifted if you have had success in mitigating the default address chaos. Thank you! 

Heidi_R
Tourist
10 0 16

This isn't a "bug" though - why would a customer's default address change every time they place an order as a gift? The default should be just that- the DEFAULT, and it should not be changed unless someone logs in and edits their customer profile. As a company that has gifts as 90% of our sales, this is extremely frustrating. Our customers lose confidence in use every time the Shopify platform changes their default information and they receive the automated email addressed to the wrong name, or they have to re-edit their billing information every time they want to send a gift. This shouldn't need to be handled on a case by cases basis, this should be fixed. 

angelinaswan
Excursionist
13 0 29

Hi John,

This should NOT be "expected behavior". Shopify is changing the name on our customer accounts to whoever they ship a gift to. That is unacceptable. We've had Shopify for several years and this problem just started a few months ago. And it isn't across the board- it's random.

Shopify needs to fix this problem immediately. It's totally unprofessional.

angelinaswan
Excursionist
13 0 29

Hi John, it’s been YEARS. Why is this still a problem? This needs to be fixed.

brett_clark1
Tourist
3 0 4

Hi John, 

Having the standard functionality be to change the default address every time there's a new order completely defeats the purpose of a default address. This has been a known issue for at least 4 years now. Is there a fix to this? 

 

It truly baffles me that this can be standard practice in an ecommerce environment. 

brett_clark1
Tourist
3 0 4

And to anyone still looking for a solution in the meantime, I found this app. It's unfortunate we have to pay an additional $50/month to prevent something that should not be an issue in the first place, but at least it works!

 

https://apps.shopify.com/no-auto-default-address-swap

Stephen34
Shopify Partner
73 1 90

We are still having this issue. It's been going on for over 4 years. This is insane behavior and if "expected" then someone at Shopify doesn't know what to expect. The orders should not change the customer account, they should log in to do this. If ANYTHING use the billing address to change the customer account, not the shipping address, that is ludicrous. This could EASILY to changed with a simple button in the checkout settings "order information updates customer account information" with a yes/no toggle. Then everyone can have it how they want it.

 

Shopify, we all expect you to be better than this. I LITERALLY CAN NOT HAVE ACCURATE CUSTOMER ACCOUNTS. I LOOSE ALL MY CUSTOMERS BILLING ADDRESS, etc. WE DISCOVERED THIS WHEN WE MAILED ONE OF OUR WHOLESALE CUSTOMERS INVOICES TO THEIR CUSTOMER!!! THEN REALIZED WE HAVE ZERO CORRECT INFORMATION FOR OUR WHOLESALERS BECAUSE IT WAS ALL OVERWRITTEN BY SHOPIFY GENIUS EXPECTED BEHAVIOR THEY CREATED...

TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.

 

And yeah, I get there's a app for $50 a month just to keep addresses from changing. It's literally nearly as much as Shopify itself just to fix a Shopify bug.

 

I CAN'T EXPRESS TO YOU HOW BAD THIS MAKES ME WANT TO MOVE BOTH OF MY WEBSITES!

 

 

leeeee
Shopify Partner
16 0 15

At the very least, I'd like to know why this is the way it is, and why it's been abandoned by Shopify for years despite many requests. Is there any possibilities if this change affects badly to the other stores? @_JCC_ 


We have a lot of customers who order gifts in our store.
It's driving me crazy right now during the gift-giving season because there are so many customers who make their billing address the same as their shipping address.

 

Also, when I uncheck "Use the shipping address as the billing address by default" on the checkout setting page, if I remember correctly, the second option (use a different address) used to be selected by default in the checkout where you choose the billing address, and the fields were open to fill in, but I'm not sure.
And it's not now. This makes a huge difference to our gift order customers...

Heidi_R
Tourist
10 0 16

I'm in the same boat - It makes us look bad!

victorz
Shopify Partner
1 0 0

Is the "billing address" in ORDERS also changed with the shipping address?

JWMI
Excursionist
16 0 25

No. Only if they select "same as". This is why it doesn't make sense. customer sets billing, and then default account address changes to match shipping. 

Heidi_R
Tourist
10 0 16

For me yes. As soon as the order is processed and shipped, Shopify changed the default name and billing address to the last name and address shipped to. Its such a mess.

craigshop
Visitor
1 0 0

@stuart_holley  did you find a work around for this?

thanks 

JWMI
Excursionist
16 0 25

I noticed that this appears to be resolved in our shop as of a few weeks ago. It's still a problem when someone is lazy and leaves the "same as shipping" box checked, but at least the shipping address seems to have been removed from the equation. 

JWMI
Excursionist
16 0 25

AND LITERALLY 24 HOURS AFTER I SAID THIS - IT'S DOING SHIPPING ADDRESS AGAIN. it had appeared to be working properly for maybe a week or two. This revert back to the undesired behavior came the same day they deployed an update to the customer management menu where you can edit contact, manage addresses, etc - these used to be separate buttons, but today they are combined into one menu on a customer's profile page. 

LEGO1
Visitor
2 0 2

I have been having the same issue with all my stores, mostly b2b..  After some intense searching i found this and it seemed to fix it completely. 

 

No Auto Default Address Swap - Stop automatic changes to default customer address from orders | Shop...

angelinaswan
Excursionist
13 0 29

I'm glad you found an app that fixes this, but this is absolutely unacceptable. There is NO WAY we should have to purchase an app for $39 a month to fix Shopify's problem!

 

JessicaLinnea
Visitor
2 0 1

We have this App installed, however, if this is a FIRST time customer who creates an account online and ships to a different address, the default address is always set as the shipping address. When we do an export of our customers for a physical mailing of catalogs this has created a headache for our office trying to manually weed out these customers. Yikes.  (However, this App appears to work with customers who are pre-existing. We've been using shopify with this app installed for over a year, and just now are doing our first catalog mailing where we discovered the default address swap)

angelinaswan
Excursionist
13 0 29

We're experiencing the same problem and it just began a few months ago. It's terrible! Our customers earn points based on their orders and Shopify is now screwing up that system along with the problem of addressing our customers by the name of whoever they ship something to. Totally unprofessional.

Shopify- you need to solve this problem.

JWMI
Excursionist
16 0 25

Just pasting my most recent comment here too:
This is so unacceptable. And the problem has grown - as many here have recently reported - starting in approximately May 2023 - it's not just the "default address" that is changing, but now the entire customer contact name is changing. The name also changes upon fulfillment. We reported to shopify, but of course, they blamed other apps. The only other app that would have any access to both new orders and shipped orders is AfterShip. I have sent them miles of screenshots and spreadsheets and data and they deny it as their problem too. This is a mess and there's no way we can continue this way. 

TeamGifted
Shopify Partner
3 0 3

@JWMI Wanted to share my comment here too since I realized my original comment got attached to a post from a long time ago. I believe it should work for your situation as well: 

 

Hey ! Not sure if you've found another solution since your original post but thought I'd share that my app, Gifted , has this as one of our features. Many of the problems written about in this thread were happening with our customers so we built a solution for it!  Since our primary focus is online gifting, we know which orders are gift orders and are able to keep the gift giver's original Customer data intact. Feel free to check it out! And if you have any questions about the app I'd be happy to share more info

 

cc @angelinaswan @JessicaLinnea  

 

 

angelinaswan
Excursionist
13 0 29

That’s great and awesome of you, Adam, however this is a problem that Shopify should solve. I repeat that we should not have to buy an app to solve something that wasn’t a problem for years and that suddenly appears in Shopify.

Stephen34
Shopify Partner
73 1 90

Hi Adam, that's awesome you built an app for this but no one should have to pay $50 to correct this Shopify bug. Honestly, not trying to talk down but at $50 a month it seems way overpriced, it would literally be our most expensive feature based app just to fix a Shopify bug....it is nearly as expensive as Shopify itself. Maybe at some point we will be selling so much that the monthly cost of our website is irrelevant....but we aren't at that place yet lol.

LOLev
Visitor
1 0 0

June 2024 and here we are with the same issue.

We are sending physical catalogs to our customers, and this bug is completely messing up with addresses and names of receivers. 

Pay $50/m to fix it is ridiculous. $3/m would fit lol