Welcome to the Address Zoo #1 | Override & underride city addresses
The benefits of reliable, easy-to-implement address data are straightforward. Actual addresses, on the other hand, aren’t always so cut and dry.
If you’re looking to become an expert in everything that begins or ends with an address, this series is for you. We’ll demystify the types of addresses that have developers scratching their heads and introduce you to the tools keeping your address data best-in-class.
Come one, come all, and enter the wonderful world of peculiar addresses! Let’s see what’s on exhibit.
Welcome to the Address Zoo #1 | Override & underride city addresses
Welcome to our first exhibit, where you’ll come face to face with lion-like carnivores—non-mailable city addresses—and docile herbivores—preferred city addresses. At Smarty, we use the slang ‘override city’ and ‘underride city’ to refer to these addresses.
Like their names suggest, override and underride city addresses are all about cities. When validating an address, Smarty’s US Address API will return two components defining the city or cities it’s associated with: city name and default city name.
While city name refers to the USPS-preferred city for a particular address, default city name refers to the USPS-preferred city for an address’s 5-digit ZIP Code.
However, it’s not always that simple. In this blog, we’ll show you a few addresses with complex city name and default city name results, and how tools like address verification and autocomplete make those complexities crystal clear.
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In this exhibit, you’ll find:
Override city addresses
When validating the address 7701 Eagle Blvd, Longmont, CO 80504, our API will return the address: 7701 Eagle Blvd, Frederick, CO 80504. While Longmont remains as the default city name of the address, its city name becomes an alternate city, Frederick.
As an alternate city, Frederick refers to a real location within the ZIP Code 80504, but it’s not Longmont, the USPS-preferred city for that ZIP Code. Typically, an alternate city like Frederick would be replaced by a default city name, like Longmont.
However, the Address Matching System API (AMS API) can deem an alternate city as more important to an address than its default city name. Rather than accepting the city provided by the user or the default city name, the AMS API forces the city name to correlate with a specific alternate city preferred by the USPS for an address.
This is the case for Frederick, leading it to be classified as an override city: an alternate city name the USPS prefers over a default city name.
Vanity cities—alternate city names used by locals to refer to specific regions within a city, such as West Chicago or Hollywood, are often input as an address’s city name and expected to behave as override cities, when the opposite is true.
Unlike override cities, vanity cities don’t refer to actual cities, meaning they’ll never return as the default city name or city name of a verified address. Instead, when a vanity city is entered, it’s used to help our API match the provided address to its correct, validated version.
Without validation, an address using an incorrect city could wreak havoc on your data quality, leading to compliance, fraud, or logistics nightmares. To ensure your data is squeaky clean, you’ll need a solution that utilizes override cities.
Ready to see an override city work its magic? Pop this address into our lightning-fast US Address Verification demo:
7701 Eagle Blvd Longmont, CO 80504
Underride city addresses
While override cities always supersede an address’s default city name with an alternate city, underride cities are always superseded by a default city name.
Let’s use the address 1660 N Baart Rd, Basin City, WA 99343 as an example. When validated, Basin City, an alternate city, corrects to Mesa.
At the ZIP Code level, the US AMS can match Basin City to 99343, but it isn’t a returnable alternate city. To verify an address, our API needs a returnable city name, so it uses the city the USPS prefers to associate with an address’s ZIP Code. In this case, that city is Mesa. Clear as the mud in a hippo’s habitat? 😅
If you’re more of a visual learner, it can help to see the change for yourself. Here’s an underride city address you can test using our US Address Verification demo:
1750 S 500 W Spring Lake, UT 84651-8700
Real-time solutions
An incorrect city entered into an address database could lead to failed deliveries, miscalculated risk assessments, or even data fraud. When incorrect alternate cities aren’t replaced by override cities, and underride cities aren’t replaced by validated default cities, your data governance suffers.
The solution? US Address Verification and US Address Autocomplete.
With verification keeping your address data squeaky clean, and autocomplete keeping incorrect cities from entering your database, you’ll avoid costly mishaps and be able to rest easy knowing your addresses are simply the best (behaved beasts at the Address Zoo. 😉)
Animals on exhibit
On this visit to the address zoo, we visited these animals…addresses:
- Override city address: An address that’s input with an acceptable alternate city, then returned with an alternate city enforced by the AMS. Outside of Smarty, these creatures are known as non-mailable city addresses.
- Underride city address: An address that’s input with a city deemed unreturnable by the AMS, then returned with the default city name in place of the city name. Outside Smarty, these creatures are known as preferred city addresses.
Next time, we’ll visit root addresses that are valid as standalone locations and also have secondary addresses associated with them. We’ll also encounter addresses that appear identical because they share the same root address and secondary number, but differ in their secondary designators. Catch you there!
