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).
"Now" was 33 years ago!
What is the minimal possible UK address?
181–190 of 406 posts
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#182Some brilliant examples of postal detective work in Ireland documented here https://www.quora.com/Can-you-send-mail-in-Ireland-with-the-... . eg Petra Kindler and Donal Moore Unfortunately I forgot the street name but it's near a street named *Cul de Sac* The beautiful city of Waterford, well known for its kindly postmen IRELAND
I correctly received a similarly-addressed letter, and was fairly impressed that it made its way to me.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#183In the US, someone I know who had a Post Office box liked writing simply `box-number zip-code` as their address. It worked. Eg, if you wrote on an envelope: 1034 21240 It would get there! You might want to add a "Box" before the "1034" to be safe -- and to disambiguate between a house number, as in OP? (I'm not sure just a house number would ever work in the USA?) But it looks cooler with just two numbers. Especially…
I was excited to learn PO box numbers are unique in my city and have their own ZIP code so theoretically mail could reach me with an address of only "37939-0002" (ZIP only) or "PO Box 2, Knoxville" (no ZIP) if someone wants to test it out. I'll send something fun in reply.
No state either? Would they know which state to route that to? I think yours is the largest but apparently there are a bunch of cities in the US with that name.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not aware of any postal service that uses a method other then optical imaging for address reading. Further, in some countries such as the US, it is not legal for the postal service to "look inside" mail pieces without a warrant. While this type of 3D X-Ray technique is indeed possible it requires expensive specialized equipment and a great deal of effort, thus it being a major achievement for this university grou…
> I'm not aware of any postal service that uses a method other then optical imaging for address reading. Further, in some countries such as the US, it is not legal for the postal service to "look inside" mail pieces without a warrant. It could be hackers exploiting my lack of knowledge to social engineer me for their own criminal gain then. They even mentioned some of the old postal machines were for sale on ebay.co.…
There's a difference between spotting a bomb in a parcel and reading the instruction manual.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#185Olga 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
I once received a letter (while at Chalmers) from the US - it was addressed to S-41296
Not that I send many paper letters any more, but long ago I took to simply writing my return address as my (unique) last name and zip code which has worked a few times (not that I’d know of any failure cases).
For US post office boxes you can just write the full 9-digit zip code.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Already on it! :)
I suppose it depends on the country you post from, but I'd expect "UK" to be more universally understood than "GB".
In fact, in some European countries it was until recently general usage to prefix a postcode with the country abbreviation for cars,[0] i.e., A for Austria, B for Belgium, D for Germany, FIN for Finland, H for Hungary, NL for the Netherlands, SLO for Slovenia, etc. But I guess the ISO country codes are now at least as well recognized and will also work.
[0] http://www.columbia.edu/~fdc/postal/#europe "After World War II and up until the mid-1990s, all European postcodes included country-code prefixes. These were originally United Nations "car codes" (one, two, or three letters), kept in an annex, "Car (Or Road) Distinguishing Signs", to the 1949/68 United Nations Conventions on Road Traffic, adopted in part by the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT). These codes were not accepted by the Universal Postal Union as a world standard, but were widely used anyway."
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#187In Canada, kids can write letters to:
Santa
H0H0H0
which is valid postal code, and used to be processed by volunteers around Christmas time.
I suspect you can just write H0H0H0 and it will work.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not aware of any postal service that uses a method other then optical imaging for address reading. Further, in some countries such as the US, it is not legal for the postal service to "look inside" mail pieces without a warrant. It could be hackers exploiting my lack of knowledge to social engineer me for their own criminal gain then. They even mentioned some of the old postal machines were for sale on ebay.co.…
There's a difference between spotting a bomb in a parcel and reading the instruction manual.
The conversations I saw claimed they could read the ink on upto 4 sheets of A4 folded in an envelope. It may have been a form of social engineering, because I'm aware state hackers ignore laws and invade peoples privacy and enter their homes through the resident's internet connections.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#189In the UK there are several single-line addresses that would probably work (10 Downing St, His Majesty the King, Blenheim Palace, Chatsworth) but they all use more characters than the example presented. Could the number of characters be reduced?
'HM' ?
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was excited to learn PO box numbers are unique in my city and have their own ZIP code so theoretically mail could reach me with an address of only "37939-0002" (ZIP only) or "PO Box 2, Knoxville" (no ZIP) if someone wants to test it out. I'll send something fun in reply.
No state either? Would they know which state to route that to? I think yours is the largest but apparently there are a bunch of cities in the US with that name.
I suspect that would work for the Knoxville you are in, but not from one Knoxville to another.