[unconfirmed] List of UK administrative counties (States) incorrect in assets/js/StatesDropdown.js

[dflorence]

===========DESCRIPTION===========

The list of UK counties/states contained in assets/js/StatesDropdown.js is still seriously wrong, as of the latest release. Essential areas are missing, and erroneous ones are added. Using the current list is very unprofessional and no good at all for UK users who want to give a correct user experience to their customers.

 

Its very frustrating as as I have to update the .js file on every update. Please could you update this for future code releases.

 

 

=========STEPS TO REPLICATE=========

On any client information update form/page, set the country to UK and then view the dropdown list for state/county. - Compare this to similar dropdown lists on commercial sites with a UK interest e.g. paypal, etc where the correct list is given

 

 

=======ADDITIONAL INFORMATION======

 

I use the code below, it is extracted from the very helpful article at carronmedia.com/uk-postal-counties-list/

 

This will list the England Counties first, then Wales, then Scotland, then Northern Ireland. The counties are the correct ones as used on all proper websites (paypal, etc), and as a UK resident I confirm contains the correct administrative areas.

 

states['GB'] = ["Avon","Bedfordshire","Berkshire","Buckinghamshire","Cambridgeshire","Cheshire","Cleveland","Cornwall","Cumbria","Derbyshire","Devon","Dorset","Durham","East Sussex","Essex","Gloucestershire","Hampshire","Herefordshire","Hertfordshire","Isle of Wight","Kent","Lancashire","Leicestershire","Lincolnshire","London","Merseyside","Middlesex","Norfolk","Northamptonshire","Northumberland","North Humberside","North Yorkshire","Nottinghamshire","Oxfordshire","Rutland","Shropshire","Somerset","South Humberside","South Yorkshire","Staffordshire","Suffolk","Surrey","Tyne and Wear","Warwickshire","West Midlands","West Sussex","West Yorkshire","Wiltshire","Worcestershire","Clwyd","Dyfed","Gwent","Gwynedd","Mid Glamorgan","Powys","South Glamorgan","West Glamorgan","Aberdeenshire","Angus","Argyll","Ayrshire","Banffshire","Berwickshire","Bute","Caithness","Clackmannanshire","Dumfriesshire","Dunbartonshire","East Lothian","Fife","Inverness-shire",		"Kincardineshire","Kinross-shire","Kirkcudbrightshire","Lanarkshire","Midlothian","Moray","Nairnshire","Orkney","Peeblesshire","Perthshire","Renfrewshire","Ross-shire","Roxburghshire","Selkirkshire","Shetland","Stirlingshire","Sutherland","West Lothian","Wigtownshire","Antrim","Armagh","Down","Fermanagh","Londonderry","Tyrone","end"];

[WHMCS Andrew]

Hi dflorence,

 

Unfortunately, I don't think this list is entirely correct either. Just from a quick glance I can see you are missing "Greater Manchester" from your listing - I live there and it's definitely used as a county.

 

This list doesn't appear to match PayPal's list.

 

What you appear to have here is a list of postal counties historically used by Royal Mail, but hasn't been updated to include those towns/cities classed as counties such as Bristol, Manchester, Leeds etc.

 

We can open a case to review the list, but unfortunately, we couldn't use your list as it is, it does miss out those places that are used as counties and could cause other issues with address data already stored.

[Wabun]

Bristol and many others are also missing from that list, but we [uK users] really do need an up-to-date list, so there is demand for this.

[WHMCS Nate]

Hello Wabun,

 

Your reply here points to the real problem in my mind, the original bug report and your comment both don't include actionable information. Let me illustrate this with an example. I am currently in a Starbucks coffee shop. If I went to bar and said I want a drink but don't tell them which drink I want they really can't make me a drink. Telling them I really, really want a drink does not help.

 

If you, or dflorence, or anyone else wants to suggest specific things that are missing or incorrect in the current states file we can change them. We can't really take much action on: "Essential areas are missing, and erroneous ones are added." without specific concrete details. We left this thread open after an initial reply unlike most threads to solicit that kind of information. I am going to leave it open, but if the replies are just the equivalent of +1, I will close it and new threads with actionable information can be opened.

 

Have a great day,

 

Nate C

[dflorence]

Hello Nate C

 

I hope you enjoyed your coffee An interesting reply.

 

However I think your analogy is not correct.

 

To use your analogy I did not ask for a "drink". I pointed out the "Latte" served to GB users was in fact cold flat coffee. I am now being asked "Well please tell me how I can make a latte because I don't know!".

 

I appreciate this is not a straightforward issue. The administrative geography of the United Kingdom is complex and non-uniform. Not all towns in the UK are in counties, and county names are NOT used in UK addresses (http://www.royalmail.com/personal/help-and-support/find-a-postcode/counties). The use of Metropolitan Districts, geographic counties, and administrative counties, all of which are different don't help either, and it seems there is no definitive list of UK "counties" which can be appended to a UK address.

 

My difficulty with the WHMCS list is it seems to be mostly post towns, not counties. For example, Bromley is listed as a county. In fact Bromley is a town in the geographic county of Kent, but in the administrative area of Greater London.

 

You ask for specific concrete details, Here is a start: "Barking and Dagenham", "Barnet", "Barnsley", "Bexley", "Blackpool", "Bolton", "Bournemouth" ,"Bracknell Forest" ,"Bradford" ,"Brent" ,"Bridgend", "Brighton and Hove", "Bromley", "Bury", "Caerphilly" ,"Calderdale", "Camden", "Cardiff" just the first few from the list - None of these can be defined as counties. Need I go on?

 

You also say I did not provide actionable alternatives. I did, although I agree that the list I provided may not have been accurate either. I have since updated that list, which I append here, and it does now replicate the counties used by paypal at this time.

 

Your response seems to be abdicating any responsibility for the WHMCS code. If WHMCS were Open Source, I would understand such a response, and be happy to contribute time and resources to contribute to getting this issue fixed, but as a paying customer, there is some expectation that you as the supplier should be acknowledging that your current list of "counties" needs attention. The work I did to retrieve this list of counties could easily have been done by WHMCS. After all, this issue does affect all your UK based customers!

 

 

So could you please consider opening a case to review the list, as mentioned by Andrew, using the more accurate data supplied below, OR consider an implementation of allowing users to override the default counties option list in the same way that language changes can be over-ridden. Having to update core files on each upgrade to amend incorrect data is not in my opinion a good way to carry on.

 

Thanks .

 

states['GB'] = states['GB'] = [
"Avon",
"Bedfordshire",
"Berkshire",
"Bristol",
"Buckinghamshire",
"Cambridgeshire",
"Cheshire",
"Cleveland",
"Cornwall",
"Cumbria",
"Derbyshire",
"Devon",
"Dorset",
"Durham",
"East Riding of Yorkshire",
"East Sussex",
"Essex",
"Gloucestershire",
"Greater Manchester",
"Hampshire",
"Herefordshire",
"Hertfordshire",
"Isle of Wight",
"Isles of Scilly",
"Kent",
"Lancashire",
"Leicestershire",
"Lincolnshire",
"London",
"Merseyside",
"Middlesex",
"Norfolk",
"North Yorkshire",
"North East Lincolnshire",
"Northamptonshire",
"Nottinghamshire",
"Northumberland",
"Oxfordshire",
"Rutland",
"Shropshire",
"Somerset",
"South Yorkshire",
"Staffordshire",
"Suffolk",
"Surrey",
"Tyne and Wear",
"Warwickshire",
"West Midlands",
"West Sussex",
"West Yorkshire",
"Wiltshire",
"Worcestershire",
"NORTHERN IRELAND",
"Antrim",
"Armagh",
"Down",
"Fermanagh",
"Londonderry",
"Tyrone",
"SCOTLAND",
"Aberdeen City",
"Aberdeenshire",
"Angus",
"Argyll",
"Banffshire",
"Borders",
"Clackmannan",
"Dumfries and Galloway",
"East Ayrshire",
"East Dunbartonshire",
"East Lothian",
"East Renfrewshire",
"Edinburgh City",
"Falkirk",
"Fife",
"Glasgow",
"Highland",
"Inverclyde",
"Midlothian",
"Moray",
"North Ayrshire",
"North Lanarkshire",
"Orkney",
"Perthshire and Kinross",
"Renfrewshire",
"Roxburghshire",
"Shetland",
"South Ayrshire",
"South Lanarkshire",
"Stirling",
"West Dunbartonshire",
"West Lothian",
"Western Isles",
"WALES",
"Blaenau Gwent",
"Bridgend",
"Caerphilly",
"Cardiff",
"Carmarthenshire",
"Ceredigion",
"Conwy",
"Denbighshire",
"Flintshire",
"Gwynedd",
"Isle of Anglesey",
"Merthyr Tydfil",
"Monmouthshire",
"Neath Port Talbot",
"Newport",
"Pembrokeshire",
"Powys",
"Rhondda Cynon Taff",
"Swansea",
"Torfaen",
"The Vale of Glamorgan",
"Wrexham",
"OFFSHORE",
"Channel Islands",
"Isle of Man",
"end"];

[WHMCS Nate]

Hello Deflorence,

 

Thanks for your reply. As you noted in your reply this is not a simple discussion. This field is used in the product to help hold address information. The address is used for four main purposes:

 

1) Its included in every invoice and intended to make it easy to send paper copies of invoices by mail to customers.

2) The address information is sometimes sent to domain registrars to as part of the required whois information for a domain.

3) The address information is sometimes sent to a payment gateway to help identify the person making the purchase.

4) The address information is sometimes sent to a fraud check service looking to match the address of the person making the purchase to the IP address they are using and the billing address for the card in question.

 

You wrote about how this causes confusion and does damage to your reputation. Can you point about any other impacts? The addresses stored in this specific way are passed to domain registrars, are any of them rejecting your registration attempts? Some merchant gateways require you to pass in a customers billing address, are any of them rejecting valid payments because of this error?

 

One of the points of confusion for you appears to be that you expect this list to be used for counties and there are things other then counties in them. The name of the variable in that list is "state". In the admin and client interfaces we label the field: "State/Region." In the US list we include "District of Columbia" even though it is not a state, because it is used for addresses and that is more important then enforcing a ontological consistency.

 

So where do we go from here? If you can show me specific gateways, registrars, etc that require the information to meet a specific criteria I would be happy to make a case to review the UK list and make sure it confirms to that criteria. Doing a review without a specific criteria does not sound like it will produce an end result that would address your concerns. Removing all non-county entries is not a criteria I am comfortable with. It does not fit with the pattern of how I understand most UK end users would describe their address for most interactions. In the mean time I have opened CORE-9664 to look at implementing a way to override the default StatesDropDown lists.

 

Have a great day,

 

Nate C

[dflorence]

Thanks for the reply.

 

What does opening CORE-9664 mean? Is it a feature request? I hope so, as a way to edit this states/region list would be useful (or a way to disable and hide it, particularly as for a UK address the state/region is not required).

 

I take your other points, but my point is that your current GB list in StatesDropdown.js is extremley unprofessional for your GB users, and could be updated easily. I do not expect the current options would in itself cause rejection by any of the agencies you mention, but it's still embarrassingly wrong as a list of state/region equivalents for UK, and nothing like other options offered by other websites.

 

For example, if the US list included options like "Seattle, Washington, Illinois, Chicago, Los Angeles, California, Las Vegas, Nevada, " you would correctly assume that the originator did not understand US geography, as Las Vegas is actually part of Nevada and NOT a state/region in its own right.

 

This is exactly what is happening in the WHCS default UK State/region list. - Small towns and cities are being listed as well as the wider geographical regions they are part of. This leads to e.g somebody typing "Sheffield" as their town then finding that they can also (incorrectly) select "Sheffield" as their state/region when in fact they would be expecting "West Yorkshire" (also available).

 

Other examples: Southend-on-Sea is a small town on the Essex coast, to think of it as a state/region is laughable. Tower Hamlets is a suburb of London, St. Helens is a small town in Lancashire, Westminster? Surely you recognize that's a district of London? etc. None of these entries should be listed as a State/Region option, they are more correctly classified as Towns or boroughs. ANYONE from the UK would be suprised to find these as options in a "state/region" dropdown list.

 

This is not a small error, I attach a list of 53 errors of a similar nature quickly extracted from the GB list, all small towns or boroughs that have their parent State/region listed anyway. there will be more errors, I do not have time to check all entries on your list, but I have previously submitted a more correct list which is currently used by other reputable organisations, without these errors, and I wonder why you cannot use that one.

 

Personally, I don't have the energy to pursue this any further, I'm resigned to having to manually update the .js fie every update, I just think its a pity that you guys don't seem to understand how odd your default GB state/region list is for UK users.

 

Cheers,

 

dflorence

 

errors: none of these should be included in the dropdown list, they are part of wider geographical areas already in the list.

"Barnet"
"Barnsley"
"Bexley"
"Bolton"
"Bournemouth"
"Bradford"
"Brent"
"Bridgend"
"Bromley"
"Bury"
"Camden"
"Croydon"
"Doncaster"
"Dudley"
"Ealing"
"Greenwich"
"Hackney"
"Halton"
"Harrow"
"Hartlepool"
"Islington"
"Knowsley"
"Lambeth"
"Leeds"
"Lewisham"
"Luton"
"Newham"
"Oldham"
"Plymouth"
"Poole"
"Portsmouth"
"Richmond upon Thames"
"Rochdale"
"Rotherham"
"Sheffield"
"Southampton"
"Southend-on-Sea"
"Southwark"
"St. Helens"
"Swindon"
"Tower Hamlets"
"Trafford"
"Wakefield"
"Walsall"
"Waltham Forest"
"Wandsworth"
"Warrington"
"Westminster"
"Wigan"
"Windsor and Maidenhead"
"Wirral"
"Wokingham"
"Wrexham"

[WHMCS Nate]

DFlorence,

 

Opening a case is a bit of work for the release team to prioritize working on. It goes through our triage process and we decide which cases to work on from those discussions. As a general rule I don't comment on the status of internal cases, but unlike a feature request this is a issue the release team has indicated it wants to do at some point.

 

I appreciate you feedback this issue. I am going to have further conversations internally with our UK staff focused on what a workable standard for reviewing the list and making it more consistent going forward.

 

Have a great day,

 

Nate C