This is probably partly a consequence of our complicated federal system.
Municipalities are established by states but the postal system is federal. Depending on the state, it’s possible for an address to be in multiple municipalities (New York has villages inside some towns, for instance) or none. It’s not always the case that residents use the innermost municipality in their address.
Some US addresses refer to a place, sometimes called a hamlet, that may have no legally defined boundaries. Basically the equivalent of a city neighborhood, but at a rural or suburban level. Levittown, New York, is a famous example.
There are also Census-designated places, which are basically simplified versions of this weird geography used for the federal census. They won’t always match what local residents or state governments consider to be in a certain place.
This is probably partly a consequence of our complicated federal system.
I don't blame the postal system. I blame the people who made the Samsung web site.
Computers are supposed to work for people, not the other way around.
One of the more atrocious things I've noticed recently is that there's a address verification backend that more and more companies are using that is actually built on crowdsourced data. Think about that: Crowdsourced verification.
The next time you're on one of those sites where you type in the name of a city and it tries to auto-complete with a bunch of suggestions, enter "Houston" and see if it suggests "Clutch City" as an option. Yep, somehow a sports slogan from last century is considered a valid mailing address by some online stores.
I have a friend I send Christmas gifts to in Houston, and I've run into it three times so far on web sites in the U.S. and Europe, so I presume that it's some kind of back-end plug-in that multiple companies subscribe to.
Municipalities are established by states but the postal system is federal. Depending on the state, it’s possible for an address to be in multiple municipalities (New York has villages inside some towns, for instance) or none. It’s not always the case that residents use the innermost municipality in their address.
Some US addresses refer to a place, sometimes called a hamlet, that may have no legally defined boundaries. Basically the equivalent of a city neighborhood, but at a rural or suburban level. Levittown, New York, is a famous example.
There are also Census-designated places, which are basically simplified versions of this weird geography used for the federal census. They won’t always match what local residents or state governments consider to be in a certain place.