When and why did POS start adding city and state to new customers?

[Dascalargo]

I mean, I know when it started. Based on my customer records, about three months ago, Shopify started adding our store’s city and state to customers added via POS. "What’s the problem?" I hear you ask. Oh, let me tell you...

MailChimp does not require an address (unless you mark it as required), however, it will not tolerate a partial addresses.

Still not following?

We have a workflow that syncs certain metafields from Shopify to MailChimp. I am fond of this workflow. It does wonderful things for us and we want it to continue to do so. Unfortunately, it won’t do what it once did with any customers added through POS.

Because all of these customers have a partial address—our store’s city and state—any time you try to update their MailChimp records, it tells you you must enter a complete address. When you’re in MailChimp, updating an individual record, this isn’t a big deal because you can just remove the city and state, and MailChimp unbunches its panties and relaxes. But we can’t do that with the workflow. The API rejects any updates to these records because of the partial address already in the MailChimp record.

So this workflow of which I am so fond, this workflow that does wonderful things for us, doesn’t work anymore.

Because Shopify seems to be adding our city and state to new POS customers.

Why? Why was this change necessary? Why can’t they leave good enough alone?

[Dascalargo · Accepted solution]

And THAT is what good customer service is all about.

Less than an hour after I talked to MailChimp, it appears they’ve updated their API to resolve the problem. The sync now results in a message that the address is invalid, but the rest of the sync operation is successful. Nice.