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Doctor Jock
Addresses
Non-Mainland

Delivery Pains

Don't want to deliver off the mainland?

For e-commerce businesses in the UK and the USA, non-contiguous /non-mainland deliveries can be costly as well as a real admin pain. 

In the UK for example, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland all have UK Postcodes and the Royal Mail charges standard postage prices for them all. However, if you use a courier other than Royal Mail for your business, these areas can be prohibitively expensive to ship to. This can lead to difficulties for retailers, either having to contact customers post-checkout to ask for a higher shipping fee, or else to make a loss on the delivery in order to keep the customer. 

The same is true for USA-based businesses and the non-contiguous states and territories. 

Luckily, Doctor Jock is here with just the cure! 

The latest update to our international address finder, the  Address Auto-Complete API, allows you to stop customers from entering addresses off the mainland in the UK and the USA at checkout.

At the time of writing, the following area exclusions are available:  

ValueDescription
gbr_northern_irelandExcludes Northern Ireland from UK searches.
gbr_isle_of_manExcludes Isle of Man from UK searches.
gbr_isle_of_wightExcludes Isle of Wight from UK searches.
gbr_channel_islandsExcludes Channel Islands from UK searches.
gbr_all_except_northern_irelandExcludes all areas except Northern Ireland from UK searches. Only addresses in Northern Ireland will be returned.
usa_non_contiguousExcludes areas of the US that are not part of the 48 adjoining states: Alaska, American Samoa, Guam, Hawaii, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands.
usa_insular_areasExcludes any US area that is not a state or federal district: American Samoa, Guam, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands
usa_armed_forcesThis will exclude all Armed Forces Americas; Armed Forces Europe, Middle East, and Canada; and Armed Forces Pacific addresses.


These area exclusions are available on our BigCommerceMagento 2PrestaShop and our Shopify Plus plugins, plus our JS Library and  JSON API. Get in touch with our team at support@fetchify.com for more information and assistance with other platforms.

Adding area exclusions to our address autocomplete tool is free and activating it couldn’t be simpler. Make sure you are running the latest version of our integration and then it’s just a question of clicking the checkbox in your settings and you’re good to go. Further information is available in our tutorials and documentation and our support team are always happy to help with any questions you may have. 

About Fetchify

We are a pioneer in SaaS address lookup and data validation solutions. We process millions of data transactions each day for thousands of clients ranging from small e-commerce startups to large household brands such as Heinz and RBS. Our flagship products Address Auto-Complete and Postcode Lookup reduce friction on checkouts, leading to increases in conversion rate of up to 40%, and helps reduce failed deliveries by as much as 75%. Since launching in 2008, we have differentiated by our ease of integration and exceptional support.