Catch bad shipping addresses before you buy the label

Every weekday at 8am, check the shipping addresses on my unfulfilled Shopify orders before I buy labels for them, so I do not pay for a failed delivery and then a reship.

Start with Shopify List Orders to pull orders that are paid but not yet fulfilled. Only look at orders that are currently waiting on a label. Do not revalidate order history, and skip anything already fulfilled or cancelled.

Run the shipping address on each of those orders through Shippo Validate Address.

When Shippo returns a clean correction that only normalizes formatting, apply it with Shopify Update Order. That means things like a street type abbreviation (Street to St), odd casing (123 MAIN STREET to 123 Main St), a missing ZIP+4 extension, or a misspelled city that resolves to the same place. Write the corrected address onto the order and add a note recording exactly what changed, so anyone looking at the order later can see it was touched automatically and why.

When the address is genuinely undeliverable or ambiguous, do not change it. Leave it exactly as the customer entered it. This covers a missing apartment or suite number on a multi unit building, a street that does not exist at that number, and a mismatch between the city and the postal code. Instead, use Shopify Update Order to tag the order for review with a tag like address-review, and add a note explaining what Shippo flagged.

For each of those held orders, use Gmail Send a Message to email the customer a short, friendly note asking them to confirm the correct address before it ships. Quote the address we have on file, name the specific thing that is unclear, and make it easy to reply. Keep it warm and brief, and do not make the customer feel blamed.

Do not email the same customer twice about the same order. Before sending, check the order's existing tags and notes. If it is already tagged for review and we have already reached out, skip the email and just keep tracking it in the digest.

Finish with one Slack Send a Message digest to my fulfillment channel. Include how many addresses were auto corrected and which orders they were, which orders are on hold waiting for a customer reply, and a clearly separated section listing any order that has been blocked for more than two days so nothing quietly stalls. If there is nothing to report, still post a short all clear line so I know the check ran.