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What is the minimal possible UK address?

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Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#201
post #159

A postcode and house number is all that's needed in theory in the UK, so something like `2 A12 1XY`. In reality that would be weird and people would add the street and town. One issue also is that, even though the postcode pinpoints a small group of houses, it might happen to span two streets. It also gets complicated with flats and any number of other corner cases. Addresses are complicated as anyone who has had to…

You might want to read the (short) article ;)

Ha, fair challenge. OK, turns out I was right at least. :)

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#202

At risk of sounding like a sourpuss, I can't help but think that this is something that most people who live in the UK work out simply by using web forms which autocomplete your address based on simply postcode and number.

And that reasoning of writing the form to just be postcode and flat number is why I can't get my address into forms.

There are two flat 1s in my postcode.

One place that would not work was the local council and so I could not get anything done, it took over a year of phoning up for this to be fixed. (of course the council tax database got it correct)

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#203
post #106

I 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…

When we moved into our newly built house, the USPS wasn't quite ready for us and it took a couple months for them to recognize and validate our address. Fedex and UPS had no such problem. We had to order a bunch of stuff off of Amazon, and a couple of those packages were sent back by USPS. I contacted Amazon and they set it so all packages were sent via UPS and Fedex for a while.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#204

In 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 can confirm that " New York New York, Las Vegas, Nevada 89109" doesn't work. They wanted the actual street address of the hotel. Which surprised me, as I'm used to big hotels being well-known enough that you can just write a room number, hotel name and city and have it arrive in the right place.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#205
post #39

In Ireland you can just describe the person instead of the actual address and it'll get delivered https://twitter.com/weefeargal/status/1479069076144234497?s=...

In Ireland any six digit eircode is unique to your address. You only have to put that on the envelope and it'll get delivered.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#206

Some 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

Saw someone on a canal forum in the UK recently who documented how they'd received a letter addressed simply [Name of Boat] [Name of town they were in a few weeks earlier ] via a combination of a postman and a boater who knew which direction they were headed in.

Just as well their boat wasn't called Kingfisher or Meander...

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#207
post #114

I really like the uk post code system. Most website have auto complete. So address is type in 6 digits and select flat number from drop down. I’ve even seen buildings where different floors have diff codes

And that is why I can't use some sites.

There are two number 1s in my postcode

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#208

Some 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.

Mate of mine used to have conversations with the postman on postcards that while while they were addressed to us ALL the text was directed towards the postman. It's been over 30 years. But they'd read something like; "Hi Mr.Postman, hope you're having a good day. The weather here is quite lovely. I've been drinking quite a bit. How's your rounds going? Hope it hasn't been raining too bad? Have you broken in the new boots yet? I hear you're getting new bicycles?" Then the answers would be written in tiny writing in between the questions.

Since Ireland got what we're calling eircodes (post codes for Ireland) we can now have a house level address in 7 chars. So mine is Xxx XXxx I really must try and send myself something with JUST that on the label?! With a wee apology on the back for taking the piss.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#210

A friend of mine dropped out of university and went to live the "ski-bum" lifestyle in France. His mum wasn't happy with this and eventually took to writing letters to him addressed "Joe and his stupid friends, Chamonix". They all arrived without issues. This was in the early 90's. I wonder how effective this would be now with more automated systems in use.

I have a friend in Chamonix I could try this with!
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