The other day I wanted to change my address on Aliexpress. But my city had suddenly disappeared! However, there is a trick ..

Note

I’m not sure whether it’s only in Germany that there are problems with entering addresses on Aliexpress, or in other countries too. In Germany, the „state“ always gets on our nerves, because we don’t actually have to enter it, that’s not how our post office and parcel services are organised. You are welcome to send me a letter and use the following address

Hessburg
64342
Germany

specify, it would also arrive. :-)

Anyway, I hope this article helps you.

Problem

I only wanted to change the street, the town remained the same. But suddenly Ali no longer recognised my town. When I entered the postcode, „Darmstadt-Dieburg“ appeared instead of „Seeheim-Jugenheim“, i.e. the district instead of the name of my home town.

Aliexpress suddenly no longer recognised my federal state (Hesse) either. In my case, the city, district and state were all „Damstadt-Dieburg. Great show! But my street exists several times in the district. The parcel would then make the rounds or be delivered incorrectly.

I didn’t fancy that at all. I stubbornly played around with the settings and finally found a solution.

Solution

Account –>
Settings –>
Delivery addresses.

Or the direct link to the settings –>
Manage delivery addresses.

–>
Add a new address

This screen appears:

I have entered my own real address here as an example. With fictitious addresses / postcodes, Ali completely spins its wheels and then complains in the overview of shipping addresses that the format is not correct.

We now enter the address as follows and do not care what Aliexpress has planned for the fields. In the end, the address must be legible as a German parcel carrier would expect.

Personal information:

Name and own telephone number

Address:

Postcode: your own postcode –>
Aliexpress now adds another field with the county and fills in the city incorrectly. But we leave it as it is, if it is halfway correct.

House number: Here we enter our postcode and our place of residence.

Street & flat: Here we enter our street and house number.

State: leave as is
or else:
Other: leave as is

Counties and city: are filled in automatically, cannot be changed.

Confirm and check:

That looks good!

Background

For whatever reason, Aliexpress has mixed cities, counties and federal states in a desolate and meaningless way. This is of course absolutely useless.

New address scheme

The address then appears:

First name Last name 49 Telephone number
Street House number
Postcode City
County, Other, Germany, Postcode

The parcel will arrive.

Old address scheme

The address used to be displayed like this:

First name Last name
Street 42
Your city, state, Germany, postcode

The parcels finally arrived with this formatting.

Difference

DHL doesn’t mind that the telephone number appears after the name.
County and „Other“ (or the actual federal state) also go through.

I used to send letters to friends with creatively altered addresses just for fun. They all arrived. Even in France and Italy.

The main thing is that the parcel gets to DHL in Germany, so they can see where you live.

Does that work too?

Yes, absolutely! After this change, I have received all my parcels so far.

1. China Post can’t do anything with your address anyway and sends the parcel to Germany because it says Germany on it.
2. The scanner at DHL in Germany even recognises a postcode twice. Once even with the corresponding city, once individually. So it sends the parcel to the distribution centre in your area. It is not interested in what else is written in an additional line. And even if it did, the parcel would be handed over to a person.
3. The person delivering the parcel receives it from the distribution centre – and of course they can read your name and house number. They are not interested in the telephone number as long as it is not bulky goods.

I don’t live in Seeheim-Jugenheim at all, but in Ober Beerbach – and my parcels still arrive. Because the street „Im Klingen“ in the 64342 postcode area only exists in Ober Beerbach. There are indeed other streets in the district with the name „Im Klingen“.

Did that help you?

This article also took me a lot of research and work. If you like, you can support me by adding this thermometer to your shopping basket, for example, and I will receive a small commission, but it won’t cost you anything else.

Alternatively, I am also happy to receive support via other channels.

Thank you!