Or they like to produce and sell stuff not talk to salespeople all day long.
If their customers cannot contact them, then they have no customer service problems.
And it's a customer problem when they show up with an axe on your front step demanding a fix for some issue. Which may or may not be the shop's fault, at all. A customer can be tech-illiterate. Or as a webshop you rely on a manufacturer doing a proper refurb but still messes up. There are tons of legit reasons, but customers will be (sometimes stupid) customers and find reasons to be pissed off at you.
And then you still have someone with an axe on your door step.
Don't get me wrong. It indeed does sound a bit shady. But say you're an internet-only webshop. What purpose does a physical address have? Do you have a showroom?(internet-only=no) Do you have a service desk?(internet-only=no) Can gov find you?(yes, if need be) Then listing the address will only cause more problems:
- Unsolicited customer visits (legit questions or with an axe)
- Other companies trying to scam you by sending random invoices for "consultancy work" under a registered letter (e.g. claiming to have send you unsolicited advice in some other registered letter)
- etc.
Honestly I think hiding a visitor address isn't the worst. Sure, if a company is ignoring your issue, then showing up physically can make it very urgent. But that also predisposes the kind of customers you will still find at your doorstep, and since we live in 2023 where many people order crap online (through Amazon or whatever), then as a business it will only cause problems. And here I'm assuming that business is doing legit work and trying their best. It's probably better to hand money back to these kinds of customers anyway, as you don't want to have these people as your customer.
I think companies that hide all human contact information is far worse. E.g. which number to call, or mail address to send, if you have a problem with your private Facebook, Microsoft or Google account? There is none. They will have some FAQs with dummy tier troubleshooting, and a chatbot that refers to those articles. Yet I'm pretty sure that almost everyone (once had) an account at 1 or multiple of these companies. What a great way of doing business..
Then there are large physical corporations that make contact information unnecessarily hard to find, where I presume they do that to reduce costs (less people finding phone number = less calls = smaller call center). Mediamarkt in NL is a classic where it takes half a dozen 'correct' clicks to find their actual contact information, whereas on the Belgium website its literally 1 click on "contact" (maybe Belgian people like to skip BS?)
Honestly I was amazed that I could call a company like Apple the other day. I'm not trying to make out I'm a fanboy, because Apple in other ways is a horrible corporation. But when I had a problem with my (new) AppleID, they have a human chat service
plus a phone agency that called me back the same day.
Yet I think their (only) physical store in NL is a 2hr drive away from me.
E-mail is a bare minimum, phone is nice for urgent questions.