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What is the minimal possible UK address?

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Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#301

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

simmonmt wrote: post #211
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #102

I'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…

This Tom Scott video shows some of the surprising (to me) lengths to which the USPS does go to figure out the right address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxCha4Kez9c Obviously this doesn't apply to your case, but I certainly didn't think they'd have a national center for decoding terrible handwriting.

Interesting, but you'd think that even these OCR fallout cases could be automated by neural net (I'd expect super-human performance on a task like this), especially since they have the training data right there.

It's cool how well integrated this is with the sorting centers where each mail piece actually is, so that the cases they handle essentially flow thru (with a retry attempt) as normal.

I've got to wonder why my piece with missing city but 100% legible otherwise-complete address including ZIP was still returned to sender. Seems it may have been policy for a certain class of mail (this was international registered, with a tracking number printed on it). In this case, to make matters worse, despite having themselves returned it to overseas sender, they then kept on sending me updates on their failure to locate it when I asked them to track it!

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#302

Post by jwilk »

mttch wrote: post #275
was_a_dev wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"S Pole"? Six characters for an exact point on Earth.

Possibly ambiguous by a few km, as it could be the geographic South Pole, the magnetic South Pole or even the geomagnetic South Pole.

The geographic South pole and the magnetic South pole are almost 3 thousand km apart:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_magnetic_pole

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#304

Post by photojosh »

fakedang wrote: post #284
kitd wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Duke of Wellington's address, Apsley House, was famously: 1, London Funny story: Back in the 1950s, my father went on a rugby tour to the Soviet Union. One of his team mates wrote a postcard back to his mum with an address of: Mrs Williams, Clynderwen "Clynderwen" being the little village he came from. My dad said, "You can't just put that". He, none too bright, said "Why not? There's only one Clynderwen", and po…

> 6 months later, and about 5 1/2 after the end of the tour, it arrived. All over it were notes saying things like "Unknown in Hong Kong. Try Australia". Man, that's some serious organizational ethic! If only both companies and people were as exact today...

Is this not basically once-off nerd-sniping for post workers... "ooh: here's a challenge."?

I'm sure you only hear about the success stories.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#305

Post by [deleted] »

fakedang wrote: post #284
kitd wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Duke of Wellington's address, Apsley House, was famously: 1, London Funny story: Back in the 1950s, my father went on a rugby tour to the Soviet Union. One of his team mates wrote a postcard back to his mum with an address of: Mrs Williams, Clynderwen "Clynderwen" being the little village he came from. My dad said, "You can't just put that". He, none too bright, said "Why not? There's only one Clynderwen", and po…

> 6 months later, and about 5 1/2 after the end of the tour, it arrived. All over it were notes saying things like "Unknown in Hong Kong. Try Australia". Man, that's some serious organizational ethic! If only both companies and people were as exact today...

[deleted]

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#306

Post by retrac »

dfxm12 wrote: post #197
Symbiote wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bet "Rishi Sunak" would get to 10 Downing Street. Although that's also an address with it's own postcode, so "SW1A 2AA" would also get there.

I'll bet "Rishi Sunak" would get to 10 Downing Street. I wonder if random mail sent to top level politicians actually gets to them. The intention is clear, yes, but there's probably layers of security that will prevent it from getting to its intended address...

Almost all paper mail received by politicians in Canada is read by their staffers. You'll get a form reply, at a minimum. Some actually do read a lot of it. Whether curated by staffers, or a random selection, or both. I imagine it depends on the individual politician. Some do reply.

R B Bennett, Canadian PM from 1930 - 1935, was an eager correspondent with random people across the country. He read and wrote tens of thousands of letters throughout his career. During the Depression he would include cash from his personal wealth in the envelopes if people described hardships. I wonder if that would be seen as vote-buying today but it was probably genuine charity.

I don't believe that basic tendency has really changed. Some politicians do genuinely want to be close to the people and random conversations and letters with ordinary people are one way to do that. And seeming approachable is useful politically, if nothing else. Some want nothing to do with the filthy masses, of course.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#307

Post by etothepii »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #102

I'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…

A Royal Mail letter posted without a stamp would likely lead to an insufficient postage card being delivered which would require the postage + £1 attaching to it for the letter to be released.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#308

Post by didntreadarticl »

tetris11 wrote: post #17

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.

I've always assumed it but this guy actually tested it out, and so he gets credit for that

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#309

Post by donalhunt »

wiredfool wrote: post #192
wrgef wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intriguingly, the Irish Eircode system is seemingly not used for postal deliveries by An Post (the mail service). See various contributions to the discussion here: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058233089/is-it-true-that-... Around the same time as the Eircode was introduced, water meters were installed for every property in Ireland. They have never been used, because of public outcry over the idea of being charge…

An Post is one of the intended users of the EirCode system. I'm tempted to try a letter or postcard to the eircode, just to see if it gets delivered. e.g. Name Eircode Ireland also makes it reasonably common that you won't have a number in the address. Someone Foo House Town Co Meath Ireland Is a perfectly reasonable and somewhat common address.

It's actually quite amazing that Ireland survived without postcodes for so long.

The following format is probably the most common:

  Name
  Townland
  Co. County
  Ireland
Townlands could have 200+ people. Maybe more in some areas.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#310

Post by eastbound »

dylanpyle wrote: post #256
rax0m wrote: post #88

Olga 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 spent the first couple years of my life in a small town in Ireland. Small enough that the houses had names, not numbers — my parents were Tolkien fans, and ours became "Lorien". I'm told that letters were addressed simply, "Lorien, [town name]"

I’d often send postcards to “Grandma, 14130 [Village name]”. Based on my signature, the mailman would know which grandma to distribute it too. That’s what belonging to a land is like. Our kids probably won’t be able to say which country we are from.
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