You can put just ‘HMRC’ (UK tax department) on a letter (with paid postage) and it will get to them.
I believe DVLC would work too (now DVLA, iirc).
What is the minimal possible UK address?
101–110 of 406 posts
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#102I'm sure it depends a bit on the delivery and sorting offices involved. The UK (I'm an ex-pat) seems to be WAY better than the US at this - it seems they really want to deliver the mail and make an effort to do so, vs here in the US where it's almost the opposite - like they are looking for any excuse NOT to deliver. I had one returned to sender since the post office wouldn't figure the missing town from the zip code!
I've read stories of letters to rural areas in UK where "so & so, sheepstown" is enough to get it delivered since the carrier knew who so & so was. As a kid in the UK I remember once asking for a refund on a can of hot-dogs that was one short, by sending a note on a greasy chinese take-out lid without even adding a stamp to it. The post office delivered it, and I got my refund!
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
UK is also more correct because it includes Northern Ireland and the other smaller islands (which are not in Great Britain, the main island)
Although interestingly, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands have the ISO country code GB, but Gibraltar (GI), the Isle of Man (IM), the Falklands (FK), and many others do not. Some are Crown Dependencies, which I suppose is understandable, but others are part of the UK.
Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands (among a few other places) aren't crown dependencies or part of the UK, they're the vestigial remnants of the British Empire that rejected full independence for various reasons. Until around the time of the Falklands War they were still called crown colonies but they're now called British Overseas Territories. They're not like France's equivalent where many are integral parts of France.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#104When I was a kid I had a classmate mail me a letter with only my name and postcode, i.e. going even further than OP, by omitting the house number. The letter arrived a day or two later, and I brought it to school, to his surprise. The trick? There are only 2 addresses with that postcode, and they're right next to each other.
One of Don Rosa's books has the letters he sent to a friend in college, each with a drawing on the envelope and less and less address, until finally it was all drawing and barely part of a name - they all got (eventually) delivered.
There's a specific branch of the post office that works on these - the dead letter office: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxCha4Kez9c
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#105Why would he publish his own address for the whole internet to see?
Because ?
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#106I remember CGP Grey talked about staying with his wife's family in rural Hawaii, on his Cortex podcast. His address included something like "take a left at the big tree".
The additional complication was that the USPS wouldn't deliver to the house, so they got a PO box, which is common in rural areas. But the USPS won't allow private carriers to deliver to PO boxes. So you need to use a different address depending on which carrier is taking the package. A lot of stores (Amazon!) won't tell you which carrier they're going to use!
So he would see packages slowly make their way to his island, then be marked as undeliverable, then slowly make their way back. Eventually Amazon stopped allowing him to ship packages at all.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#107Apsley House famously has (or had?) the address "Number 1, London".
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#108Olga was a famous doorkeeper at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Students used to send her postcards from their journeys. It became so popular that it was enough to write "Olga, Sweden" for her to get the letters [0] (source in swedish). [0]: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Boberg
There was a time in the 60s when letters to "Daniel, Paris" went to Daniel Filipacchi.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#109Postcodes in Poland are much less granular than the UK ones, but you can still get by in more rural areas on the assumption of local postmen knowing the people. My parents used to routinely successfully receive letters addressed just where the town has circa 3K inhabitants.
Many people don't realize that in the USA, the letters only get sorted by postal zip code (and sometimes zip+4) - everything else is sorted by the postman as he walks the streets, so if your letter gets to the right post office it will likely get to the right postman and he can often figure it out without it even having to go to the dead letter office.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#110I'm sure it depends a bit on the delivery and sorting offices involved. The UK (I'm an ex-pat) seems to be WAY better than the US at this - it seems they really want to deliver the mail and make an effort to do so, vs here in the US where it's almost the opposite - like they are looking for any excuse NOT to deliver. I had one returned to sender since the post office wouldn't figure the missing town from the zip code…
> I had one returned to sender since the post office wouldn't figure the missing town from the zip code!
Well, here in the UK the norm (for non-commercial mail) is not to include a return address on the outside of the envelope.
To return something to the sender, they have to open it and hope they find an address inside. Much easier to just deliver it!