In message <
[email protected]>, Pete Biggs
<pblackcherry{remove_fruit}@biggs.tc> writes
>Tony Raven wrote:
>
>> But how do you deal with
>>
>> House Name
>> Street
>> Village
>> Postal Town/postcode
>> County
>> Country
>>
>> which is typical of many UK addresses? Six lines into three 30
>> character lines doesn't go.
>>
>> Truncation is fine if you have an address that doesn't become
>> ambiguous
>> with truncation. The Post Office has enough trouble finding it if you
>> give the full address _and_ post code!
>
>The Royal Mail should be able to deliver using just the house number/name
>and post code. Courier firms also have access to databases to find your
>full address from this scant info.
The PO certainly can deliver using the postcode and house number, I've
both delivered (when I was a postie) and had delivered such letters.
The problem is that much sorting of mail is still done by hand - esp. at
the level of the individual area/walk etc. and postcodes aren't very
human friendly compared to using road names etc. when sorting letters
I should imagine it is easier for courier companies to automate the
process fully as they deal with a lot less stuff, deliver to a lot less
places, have control of each item right form the beginning etc. (yes I
can see how the PO process could be mostly fully automated - but it
isn't)
As has said by others , how good they are at delivering letters that
might be a bit miss addressed or incomplete seems to vary a lot around
the country, they seem tot be pretty good round here.. As long as it has
the number/name and postcode there is no excuse for not getting it
right.
County certainly is pretty redundant, village etc. probably is as well,
though for some areas might be useful if the letter is miss-addressed
-esp if it could be confused with somewhere else - say a same road name
in another village in same Postal Town area. In reality the Postal Town
often is as well I suspect but again, if the post code is in error, then
this gives the necessary info to get it to the right area at least.
It bugs me when websites insist on me giving a county name, as my
address doesn't have one anyway, Leeds is a Unitary Authority, while
surrounded by West Yorkshire we technically aren't part of it.
However, my best miss addressing tale goes to the Passport Agency (about
8 years ago - they seem to have improved somewhat since then)
My wife applied for a new passport, the postcode she had written was
unclear (surprise !!) and didn't match with the rest of the address.
Rather than phone us to check - or to use the full written address,
which would seem to be much less likely for someone to get wrong than
the postcode. The PA drone decided to send the new passport to the
address of the post code, which was the other side of town.
--
Chris French, Leeds
