I'm not sure where this observation should go, but I'll post it here, and hope it connects with the right wizards in the development team. If this has been posted before, I couldn't seem to search it out, so forgive me if this is repetition. This may also be of current interest to anyone trying to use a shipping zone definition that includes the US Armed Forces zones. In my case, I am using the freeoptions shipping module along with Google Checkout (googlecheckout payment module).

It appears that the US Armed Forces zones as given in ver. 1.3.8a need correction before the next Zen cart release. According to the USPS web site, the correct postal abbrevations in current use are:
AE = Armed Forces Africa
AA = Armed Forces Americas
AE = Armed Forces Canada
AE = Armed Forces Europe
AE = Armed Forces Middle East
AP = Armed Forces Pacific
(see http://www.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/usp...eviations.html)

The AE abbreviation is re-used for four of these zones, but they are still separate zones with separate full names. In the table, they are given as six different abbreviations, which I assume was the previous usage: AF, AA, AC, AE, AM, and AP. It looks like these should be corrected.

This was a problem for me when I was trying to offer free shipping to US addressees, by limiting the freeoptions mod to a "United States" zone definition in which I included the 50 states plus DC plus Armed Forces. While it was using the "factory-suppplied" abbreviations already in the table, Google Checkout did not recognize the incorrect abbreviations, and would not process any orders at all using any shipping methods while I had freeoptions turned on. Then when I corrected the abbreviations to agree with the current USPS information, it worked fine.

Correction in an existing installation can be done in admin > Locations/Taxes > Zones. Select each of the United States Armed Forces zones having wrong abbreviations, and Edit to change the abbreviation to the correct current usage.