Easy: don’t list APO/FPO states on an address form.
If there’s anything to be said about usability, I shouldn’t have to email you about how to enter my address merely because I’m at an FPO. Zander Insurance wouldn’t let me enter “AP” as a state, so they lost my business.
LifeLock ended up looking too creepy for me, so the safe bet was TrustedID, which listed “AP” as one of the available states. Good on them; they understand.
Unfortunately, Zander isn’t alone. For as long as forms have simply listed 50 states, military members — and often residents of U.S. territories — have been left out. Or rather, companies have unnecessarily limited their customer base by doing this.
I encountered a related problem a couple of months ago when ordering from Kashi. I emailed them to ask about entering an FPO address, and they replied that because UPS is their exclusive shipper, they can’t send products to FPOs.
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