> Also, if you write the country at the bottom (as you should), they will just send it to wherever that country’s postal services will pick it up without bother

> Also, if you write the country at the bottom (as you should), they will just send it to wherever that country’s postal services will pick it up without bothering to match whatever’s on top to a local place. If one is able to design a postal addressing scheme (many just evolve in an ad hoc fashion over time), being able to fail gracefully is a handy feature to have. In Canada, our postal code system was set up in the 1970s, and is reasonably rational: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_codes_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_codes_in_Canada If an international shipper can (a) get the package to Canada Post (by writing "Canada" on it), and (b) has the postal code on it, then it can be narrowed down to a fairly small geographic area: * https://www.google.com/maps/place/A1A+1A1 https://www.google.com/maps/place/A1A+1A1 * https://www.google.com/maps/place/M4A+1A1 https://www.google.com/maps/place/M4A+1A1