Incomplete address

[Davey]

I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was delivered to its
address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to its address, as its
full address was missing. Did I break any rules or laws by opening
the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I obliged to deliver it? I am
not employed by Royal Mail.

[Andy Burns]

Post by Davey
what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it?

I doubt anyone could demonstrate you intended to act to the detriment of
the intended recipient? Quite the opposite ...

Postal Services Act 2000, S.84 (3)

<https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/26/part/V/crossheading/offences-of-interfering-with-the-mail/data.pdf>

[Davey]

On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 10:15:14 +0000

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Davey
what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it?

I doubt anyone could demonstrate you intended to act to the detriment
of the intended recipient? Quite the opposite ...
Postal Services Act 2000, S.84 (3)
<https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/26/part/V/crossheading/offences-of-interfering-with-the-mail/data.pdf>

Thanks. In fact, I gave her the envelope, and she was very grateful,
and did not care that I had opened it. But it is good to know the facts
behind the query. I got the feeling that this was not the first time
that this had happened.

[Roland Perry]

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it?

On the "Lord Bassam's doormat" principle, it doesn't count as
interception.

Post by Davey
It can be argued that it was delivered to its
address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to its address, as its
full address was missing. Did I break any rules or laws by opening
the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I obliged to deliver it? I am
not employed by Royal Mail.

[Adam Funk]

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it?

On the "Lord Bassam's doormat" principle, it doesn't count as
interception.

I have failed to turn up the meaning of that. What is it?

[Roland Perry]

Post by Adam Funk

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it?

On the "Lord Bassam's doormat" principle, it doesn't count as
interception.

I have failed to turn up the meaning of that. What is it?

It means that once a communication has hit your doormat, it's no longer
susceptible to the offence of Interception. Lord Bassam introduced the
analogy in the original RIPA debate, to explain how it applied to email
as well as snail mail.

[Adam Funk]

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Adam Funk

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it?

On the "Lord Bassam's doormat" principle, it doesn't count as
interception.

I have failed to turn up the meaning of that. What is it?

It means that once a communication has hit your doormat, it's no longer
susceptible to the offence of Interception. Lord Bassam introduced the
analogy in the original RIPA debate, to explain how it applied to email
as well as snail mail.

Thanks. I couldn't google that up for some reason.

[Peter Johnson]

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was delivered to its
address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to its address, as its
full address was missing. Did I break any rules or laws by opening
the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I obliged to deliver it? I am
not employed by Royal Mail.

As the envelope had the intended recipient's name on it you should not
have opened it, whatever your thoughts. Still less should you have
thought about telling the bank that you had opened it.
You are not obliged to deliver misdelivered mail but you had two
options, to discover the location of the intended recipient's address,
which is what you did, and deliver it, or to mark the envelope 'Not
known at XYZ House' and put it back in the post.

[Clive Arthur]

Post by Peter Johnson

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was delivered to its
address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to its address, as its
full address was missing. Did I break any rules or laws by opening
the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I obliged to deliver it? I am
not employed by Royal Mail.

As the envelope had the intended recipient's name on it you should not
have opened it, whatever your thoughts. Still less should you have
thought about telling the bank that you had opened it.
You are not obliged to deliver misdelivered mail but you had two
options, to discover the location of the intended recipient's address,
which is what you did, and deliver it, or to mark the envelope 'Not
known at XYZ House' and put it back in the post.

Is that just made up, or is there some legal basis which can be referenced?

[Jon Ribbens]

Post by Clive Arthur

Post by Peter Johnson

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was delivered to its
address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to its address, as its
full address was missing. Did I break any rules or laws by opening
the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I obliged to deliver it? I am
not employed by Royal Mail.

As the envelope had the intended recipient's name on it you should not
have opened it, whatever your thoughts. Still less should you have
thought about telling the bank that you had opened it.
You are not obliged to deliver misdelivered mail but you had two
options, to discover the location of the intended recipient's address,
which is what you did, and deliver it, or to mark the envelope 'Not
known at XYZ House' and put it back in the post.

Is that just made up, or is there some legal basis which can be referenced?

I think it's Peter's personal opinion rather than any legal rules.

[Mark Goodge]

On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 08:32:43 -0000 (UTC), Jon Ribbens

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Clive Arthur

Post by Peter Johnson
As the envelope had the intended recipient's name on it you should not
have opened it, whatever your thoughts. Still less should you have
thought about telling the bank that you had opened it.
You are not obliged to deliver misdelivered mail but you had two
options, to discover the location of the intended recipient's address,
which is what you did, and deliver it, or to mark the envelope 'Not
known at XYZ House' and put it back in the post.

Is that just made up, or is there some legal basis which can be referenced?

I think it's Peter's personal opinion rather than any legal rules.

There are potential GDPR issues related to opening post with someone else's
name on it, particularly if the envelope has something like "private and
confidental" printed on it, which is common for things like bank statements.
That's not to say you can't do it, but you would need to be able to justify
doing it if it ever went anywhere near a court. Not that it's likely to in
most cases, of course, but if you're a stickler for always following the
rules to the letter then you'd need to take that into account.

It is not, though, an offence under the Postal Services Act, which is what I
think the OP was primarily referring to.

Mark

[Jon Ribbens]

Post by Mark Goodge
On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 08:32:43 -0000 (UTC), Jon Ribbens

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Clive Arthur

Post by Peter Johnson
As the envelope had the intended recipient's name on it you should not
have opened it, whatever your thoughts. Still less should you have
thought about telling the bank that you had opened it.
You are not obliged to deliver misdelivered mail but you had two
options, to discover the location of the intended recipient's address,
which is what you did, and deliver it, or to mark the envelope 'Not
known at XYZ House' and put it back in the post.

Is that just made up, or is there some legal basis which can be referenced?

I think it's Peter's personal opinion rather than any legal rules.

There are potential GDPR issues related to opening post with someone else's
name on it, particularly if the envelope has something like "private and
confidental" printed on it, which is common for things like bank statements.
That's not to say you can't do it, but you would need to be able to justify
doing it if it ever went anywhere near a court. Not that it's likely to in
most cases, of course, but if you're a stickler for always following the
rules to the letter then you'd need to take that into account.

Do you mean the Data Protection Act 2018 s170? I would've thought
s170(3)(b) would provide a defence to that.

[Mark Goodge]

On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 11:47:49 -0000 (UTC), Jon Ribbens

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Mark Goodge
There are potential GDPR issues related to opening post with someone else's
name on it, particularly if the envelope has something like "private and
confidental" printed on it, which is common for things like bank statements.
That's not to say you can't do it, but you would need to be able to justify
doing it if it ever went anywhere near a court. Not that it's likely to in
most cases, of course, but if you're a stickler for always following the
rules to the letter then you'd need to take that into account.

Do you mean the Data Protection Act 2018 s170? I would've thought
s170(3)(b) would provide a defence to that.

Yes, and I agree that in most cases (3)(b) would amount to a defence. But it
probably wouldn't be if it was particularly sensitive personal data. An
envelope with an NHS logo on it could be a routine flu vaccination
appointment or an invitation to complete a survey, or it could be the
results of your STD test, your child's autism assessment or your referral to
a gender dysphoria clinic. There are very good reasons why people might not
want their neighbours opening such mail, and I don't think you could
successfully argue (3)(b) as a defence to doing so.

Mark

[Roland Perry]

Post by Mark Goodge
On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 11:47:49 -0000 (UTC), Jon Ribbens

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Mark Goodge
There are potential GDPR issues related to opening post with someone else's
name on it, particularly if the envelope has something like "private and
confidental" printed on it, which is common for things like bank statements.
That's not to say you can't do it, but you would need to be able to justify
doing it if it ever went anywhere near a court. Not that it's likely to in
most cases, of course, but if you're a stickler for always following the
rules to the letter then you'd need to take that into account.

Do you mean the Data Protection Act 2018 s170? I would've thought
s170(3)(b) would provide a defence to that.

Yes, and I agree that in most cases (3)(b) would amount to a defence. But it
probably wouldn't be if it was particularly sensitive personal data.

I'm not aware that GDPR has separate categories of "data", "sensitive
data" and "particularly sensitive data".

Post by Mark Goodge
An envelope with an NHS logo on it could be a routine flu vaccination
appointment or an invitation to complete a survey, or it could be the
results of your STD test, your child's autism assessment or your
referral to a gender dysphoria clinic.

The one which arrived here today was a letter nagging the intended
recipient to book a mammogram. My late wife died from breast cancer
which the consultants said would *NOT* have shown up on one.

Sending such a deceased person that letter has all kinds of other
reasons for being somewhere between wrong and crassly insensitive.

Post by Mark Goodge
There are very good reasons why people might not want their neighbours
opening such mail, and I don't think you could successfully argue
(3)(b) as a defence to doing so.
Mark

[Roland Perry]

Post by Peter Johnson

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was delivered to its
address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to its address, as its
full address was missing. Did I break any rules or laws by opening
the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I obliged to deliver it? I am
not employed by Royal Mail.

As the envelope had the intended recipient's name on it you should not
have opened it, whatever your thoughts. Still less should you have
thought about telling the bank that you had opened it.
You are not obliged to deliver misdelivered mail but you had two
options, to discover the location of the intended recipient's address,
which is what you did, and deliver it, or to mark the envelope 'Not
known at XYZ House' and put it back in the post.

It's often not as simple as that, being a last-resort postal sorting
person that is.

Twice last week I ended up with parcels for two different neighbours,
delivered in error to me by DPD (rang doorbell and handed it to me) and
Amazon (rang doorbell, left it on doorstep, and ran away).

Because I was expecting something, the first thing I normally do is open
it and see if it's intact. In both cases it was something I didn't
recognise ordering. Only then looking at the address label (where
current practice is often to have a very large barcode but the
human-readable information very small).

[Davey]

On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 05:45:45 +0000

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Peter Johnson

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house
is at one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry,
are lazy. Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed
to somebody whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ
Lane". I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in
fact it was a nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until
Monday at the earliest before I could contact it to find out who
the intended recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me
on the basis of "GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the
middle of the Lane, and she told me who it is, and where her house
is. I will take it to her house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the
letter, to find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was
delivered to its address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to
its address, as its full address was missing. Did I break any rules
or laws by opening the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I
obliged to deliver it? I am not employed by Royal Mail.

As the envelope had the intended recipient's name on it you should
not have opened it, whatever your thoughts. Still less should you
have thought about telling the bank that you had opened it.
You are not obliged to deliver misdelivered mail but you had two
options, to discover the location of the intended recipient's
address, which is what you did, and deliver it, or to mark the
envelope 'Not known at XYZ House' and put it back in the post.

It's often not as simple as that, being a last-resort postal sorting
person that is.
Twice last week I ended up with parcels for two different neighbours,
delivered in error to me by DPD (rang doorbell and handed it to me)
and Amazon (rang doorbell, left it on doorstep, and ran away).
Because I was expecting something, the first thing I normally do is
open it and see if it's intact. In both cases it was something I
didn't recognise ordering. Only then looking at the address label
(where current practice is often to have a very large barcode but the
human-readable information very small).

On that last item, see where I have learned to check the label before
accepting it, if possible, if the driver is still here. It's easier to
then hand it back to the delivery person, and tell him/her/it/(unknown
pronoun) that it is the wrong address.

[Roland Perry]

Post by Davey
On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 05:45:45 +0000

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Peter Johnson

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house
is at one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry,
are lazy. Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed
to somebody whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ
Lane". I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in
fact it was a nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until
Monday at the earliest before I could contact it to find out who
the intended recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me
on the basis of "GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the
middle of the Lane, and she told me who it is, and where her house
is. I will take it to her house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the
letter, to find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was
delivered to its address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to
its address, as its full address was missing. Did I break any rules
or laws by opening the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I
obliged to deliver it? I am not employed by Royal Mail.

As the envelope had the intended recipient's name on it you should
not have opened it, whatever your thoughts. Still less should you
have thought about telling the bank that you had opened it.
You are not obliged to deliver misdelivered mail but you had two
options, to discover the location of the intended recipient's
address, which is what you did, and deliver it, or to mark the
envelope 'Not known at XYZ House' and put it back in the post.

It's often not as simple as that, being a last-resort postal sorting
person that is.
Twice last week I ended up with parcels for two different neighbours,
delivered in error to me by DPD (rang doorbell and handed it to me)
and Amazon (rang doorbell, left it on doorstep, and ran away).
Because I was expecting something, the first thing I normally do is
open it and see if it's intact. In both cases it was something I
didn't recognise ordering. Only then looking at the address label
(where current practice is often to have a very large barcode but the
human-readable information very small).

On that last item, see where I have learned to check the label before
accepting it, if possible, if the driver is still here. It's easier to
then hand it back to the delivery person, and tell him/her/it/(unknown
pronoun) that it is the wrong address.

Depends how fast they run away, compared to how quickly I can get to the
front door.

[Davey]

On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 15:12:36 +0000

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Davey
On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 05:45:45 +0000

14:02:36 on Sun, 27 Oct 2024, Peter Johnson

Post by Peter Johnson

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often,
even when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries
come to me, because the name of the house is prominently
displayed, the house is at one end of the Lane, and people,
especially those in a hurry, are lazy. Yesterday, Royal Mail
delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody whom I do not
know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane". I had to open it
to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a nationwide
bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the earliest
before I could contact it to find out who the intended recipient
was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the
Lane, and she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will
take it to her house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the
letter, to find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was
delivered to its address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered
to its address, as its full address was missing. Did I break any
rules or laws by opening the letter, to find out who sent it? Am
I obliged to deliver it? I am not employed by Royal Mail.

As the envelope had the intended recipient's name on it you should
not have opened it, whatever your thoughts. Still less should you
have thought about telling the bank that you had opened it.
You are not obliged to deliver misdelivered mail but you had two
options, to discover the location of the intended recipient's
address, which is what you did, and deliver it, or to mark the
envelope 'Not known at XYZ House' and put it back in the post.

It's often not as simple as that, being a last-resort postal
sorting person that is.
Twice last week I ended up with parcels for two different
neighbours, delivered in error to me by DPD (rang doorbell and
handed it to me) and Amazon (rang doorbell, left it on doorstep,
and ran away).
Because I was expecting something, the first thing I normally do is
open it and see if it's intact. In both cases it was something I
didn't recognise ordering. Only then looking at the address label
(where current practice is often to have a very large barcode but
the human-readable information very small).

On that last item, see where I have learned to check the label before
accepting it, if possible, if the driver is still here. It's easier
to then hand it back to the delivery person, and tell
him/her/it/(unknown pronoun) that it is the wrong address.

Depends how fast they run away, compared to how quickly I can get to
the front door.

Indeed. Covered by: "...if possible, if the driver is still here."
Telling them that they have the wrong address often results in
confusion and pointing to the name of the house on the wall, until they
realise the truth. And it is a fact that most (but not all) of those
who get it wrong do not have English as their native tongue.

[Roland Perry]

Post by Davey
On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 15:12:36 +0000

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Davey
On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 05:45:45 +0000

14:02:36 on Sun, 27 Oct 2024, Peter Johnson

Post by Peter Johnson

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often,
even when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries
come to me, because the name of the house is prominently
displayed, the house is at one end of the Lane, and people,
especially those in a hurry, are lazy. Yesterday, Royal Mail
delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody whom I do not
know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane". I had to open it
to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a nationwide
bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the earliest
before I could contact it to find out who the intended recipient
was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the
Lane, and she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will
take it to her house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the
letter, to find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was
delivered to its address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered
to its address, as its full address was missing. Did I break any
rules or laws by opening the letter, to find out who sent it? Am
I obliged to deliver it? I am not employed by Royal Mail.

As the envelope had the intended recipient's name on it you should
not have opened it, whatever your thoughts. Still less should you
have thought about telling the bank that you had opened it.
You are not obliged to deliver misdelivered mail but you had two
options, to discover the location of the intended recipient's
address, which is what you did, and deliver it, or to mark the
envelope 'Not known at XYZ House' and put it back in the post.

It's often not as simple as that, being a last-resort postal
sorting person that is.
Twice last week I ended up with parcels for two different
neighbours, delivered in error to me by DPD (rang doorbell and
handed it to me) and Amazon (rang doorbell, left it on doorstep,
and ran away).
Because I was expecting something, the first thing I normally do is
open it and see if it's intact. In both cases it was something I
didn't recognise ordering. Only then looking at the address label
(where current practice is often to have a very large barcode but
the human-readable information very small).

On that last item, see where I have learned to check the label before
accepting it, if possible, if the driver is still here. It's easier
to then hand it back to the delivery person, and tell
him/her/it/(unknown pronoun) that it is the wrong address.

Depends how fast they run away, compared to how quickly I can get to
the front door.

Indeed. Covered by: "...if possible, if the driver is still here."

But also covered by "leave on doorstep and run away", vs "check the
label before accepting it".

Post by Davey
Telling them that they have the wrong address often results in
confusion and pointing to the name of the house on the wall, until they
realise the truth. And it is a fact that most (but not all) of those
who get it wrong do not have English as their native tongue.

I live in a house which is like 47A, and next door of course is 47 (an
older house), but as mine is a fill-in semi, the other half is 47B. A
lot of foreign delivery drivers seem to think my house is 47B, despite
clear signage on all three.

[Sam Plusnet]

Post by Roland Perry
I live in a house which is like 47A, and next door of course is 47 (an
older house),

You say "of course".

I live at (numbers munged for privacy) number 6.
Numbers 2 and 4 _do_ exist, but they are eighty yards away with a couple
of other houses in between.
There is no number 8.
There is a number 10, but that's about 300 yards away - again with lots
of other houses in between (many of which are around 100 years old, so
not recent infill).
Those intervening houses have (multiple) naming or numbering schemes of
their own.

For completeness, I should mention that the houses on the other side of
the road have an entirely different numbering scheme.

[Clive Arthur]

Post by Sam Plusnet

Post by Roland Perry
I live in a house which is like 47A, and next door of course is 47 (an
older house),

You say "of course".
I live at (numbers munged for privacy) number 6.
Numbers 2 and 4 _do_ exist, but they are eighty yards away with a couple
of other houses in between.
There is no number 8.
There is a number 10, but that's about 300 yards away - again with lots
of other houses in between (many of which are around 100 years old, so
not recent infill).
Those intervening houses have (multiple) naming or numbering schemes of
their own.
For completeness, I should mention that the houses on the other side of
the road have an entirely different numbering scheme.

I live in a village in Wossname Street where the house numbers start at
35. I had sort of assumed that at one time, one end of the street was
demolished or something, but it didn't look like it.

Then I discovered another Wossname Street well under a mile away in the
adjacent town, where the house numbers go up to 34.

Different postcodes of course, but very similar houses.

[Theo]

Post by Peter Johnson
As the envelope had the intended recipient's name on it you should not
have opened it, whatever your thoughts. Still less should you have
thought about telling the bank that you had opened it.
You are not obliged to deliver misdelivered mail but you had two
options, to discover the location of the intended recipient's address,
which is what you did, and deliver it, or to mark the envelope 'Not
known at XYZ House' and put it back in the post.

'Putting it back in the post' is not straightforwrd when it's delivered by a
courier. There is sometimes no way to get them to take back a delivery,
often because they have basically no customer service you can communicate
with.

Theo

[Roland Perry]

Post by Theo

Post by Peter Johnson
As the envelope had the intended recipient's name on it you should not
have opened it, whatever your thoughts. Still less should you have
thought about telling the bank that you had opened it.
You are not obliged to deliver misdelivered mail but you had two
options, to discover the location of the intended recipient's address,
which is what you did, and deliver it, or to mark the envelope 'Not
known at XYZ House' and put it back in the post.

'Putting it back in the post' is not straightforwrd when it's delivered by a
courier. There is sometimes no way to get them to take back a delivery,
often because they have basically no customer service you can communicate
with.

They also appear to have no 'customer service' as a component of their
delivery model. Here's a moan I had earlier in another place:

"None of this will come as any surprise to those who have had Evri
inflicted on them as courier. Normally I refuse to deal with sellers who
use Evri (so bad they had to rebrand from Hermes), but in this instance
wasn't warned who they'd be using.

Bought something online at 5pm Wednesday, obviously as it wasn't Amazon
can't expect it to arrive next day. But they couldn't say which day. So
I decided to use "Click and Collect" at a nearby Inconvenience Store,
because I didn't want to spend the rest of the week trapped at home
waiting for the delivery.

Tumbleweed passes, but at 9pm Friday I get an email from Evri saying
they've just received the package. I expect what they mean is they
collected it on Friday and they just got around to logging it. A bit
disappointed the vendor didn't manage to hand it to them Thursday.

Evri says "It'll be at the Click and Collect sometime Saturday". And
gives me a tracking number. Apparently I'm supposed to poll that
tracking number all day Saturday to see if it's arrived, because no SMS,
no email, from Evri (or the vendor).

5pm Saturday, I poll for the umpteenth time, and told it arrived there
at 2pm. So jump in the car and go to collect. On arrival I say to the
till operator "I've come to collect a Evri parcel". He stares like a
rabbit in the headlights, and doesn't respond. So I say again "I'm here
to collect an Evri parcel".

I give him my name and he scurries off into a back room. Several minutes
later he re-emerges and says "I've found your parcel but I can't give it
to you".

"Why?"

"I can't give it to you because it's not on our system, and the gadget
we use to put it on our system has been broken the last two or three
days".

"That's unacceptable, how can we resolve this".

He scurries off to the backroom and a couple of minutes later emerges
with a colleague, who suggests perhaps they could open the parcel and
give me the contents, but keep the wrapper. So they can enter it into
the system when it's next working, then pretend I just then came in to
collect it.

I said "Well, if that works for you, but it's medication". So they
change tack and decide maybe they won't open it up after all. But hand
me the whole thing to take away.

"We won't get paid now" he said. But I replied "That's between you and
Evri, and perhaps you should reconsider being one of their collection
points, because they are dragging your reputation through the gutter as
well as their own".

Meanwhile, a queue of a dozen people has formed behind me at the till,
none of whom apparently knows how to use the vacant self-checkouts."

[Martin Brown]

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".

The law is a complete ass on this one. I get a pension report for
someone who lived in my house at least 4 decades ago every year and
their pension provider won't accept that they don't live here any more.
Only the intended recipient can tell them that and be believed!

Post by Davey
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.

I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named cottage in
a nearby village (most villages here have one of all the usual ones).
The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT MY VILLAGE TRY OTHER ONE".

Post by Davey
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was delivered to its
address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to its address, as its
full address was missing. Did I break any rules or laws by opening
the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I obliged to deliver it? I am
not employed by Royal Mail.

Sometimes you don't notice that it isn't for you until you have already
opened it. Almost all mail does arrive at the right place.

When another Mr Brown moved into our village for a while I got all his
mail too. Likewise at University the various M. Brown's all knew each
other's mailboxes after a while since stuff often did get misplaced.

[Davey]

On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 14:19:51 +0000

Post by Martin Brown

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house
is at one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry,
are lazy. Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed
to somebody whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ
Lane".

The law is a complete ass on this one. I get a pension report for
someone who lived in my house at least 4 decades ago every year and
their pension provider won't accept that they don't live here any
more. Only the intended recipient can tell them that and be believed!

Post by Davey
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it
was a nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at
the earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane,
and she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it
to her house later today.

I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named cottage
in a nearby village (most villages here have one of all the usual
ones). The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT MY VILLAGE TRY
OTHER ONE".

Post by Davey
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the
letter, to find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was
delivered to its address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to
its address, as its full address was missing. Did I break any rules
or laws by opening the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I
obliged to deliver it? I am not employed by Royal Mail.

Sometimes you don't notice that it isn't for you until you have
already opened it. Almost all mail does arrive at the right place.

Due to the frequency of couriers delivering to my house as a default,
when they only look at the XYZ and then see that on the side of my
house, I always check a delivery if I am in to receive it. FedEx once
delivered a box marked "Urgent. Frozen Meat" to my house, and left it
on the doorstep. The house name was the same, but the Postcode was
different, in the neighbouring village..
Trying to contact somebody to get it collected was like getting blood
out of the proverbial stone.

[Roland Perry]

Post by Davey
On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 14:19:51 +0000

Post by Martin Brown

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house
is at one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry,
are lazy. Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed
to somebody whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ
Lane".

The law is a complete ass on this one. I get a pension report for
someone who lived in my house at least 4 decades ago every year and
their pension provider won't accept that they don't live here any
more. Only the intended recipient can tell them that and be believed!

Post by Davey
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it
was a nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at
the earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane,
and she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it
to her house later today.

I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named cottage
in a nearby village (most villages here have one of all the usual
ones). The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT MY VILLAGE TRY
OTHER ONE".

Post by Davey
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the
letter, to find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was
delivered to its address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to
its address, as its full address was missing. Did I break any rules
or laws by opening the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I
obliged to deliver it? I am not employed by Royal Mail.

Sometimes you don't notice that it isn't for you until you have
already opened it. Almost all mail does arrive at the right place.

Due to the frequency of couriers delivering to my house as a default,
when they only look at the XYZ and then see that on the side of my
house, I always check a delivery if I am in to receive it. FedEx once
delivered a box marked "Urgent. Frozen Meat" to my house, and left it
on the doorstep. The house name was the same, but the Postcode was
different, in the neighbouring village..
Trying to contact somebody to get it collected was like getting blood
out of the proverbial stone.

I was talking to my son last week, and he often gets post for the same
<number><street> in a town five miles away. Even though the postcode is
correct for the other place.

[Clive Arthur]

On 28/10/2024 05:50, Roland Perry wrote:

<snip>

Post by Roland Perry
I was talking to my son last week, and he often gets post for the same
<number><street> in a town five miles away. Even though the postcode is
correct for the other place.

Until a couple of years ago, I lived in a large town in Somename Road.
Nearby was Somename Street, Terrace, Square and Place. We would often
get deliveries, mostly attempted deliveries of takeaways, for these
other roads. The deliverers were exclusively foreign.

It occurred to me that maybe their origin countries don't have this near
duplication? "No, not here, that's just around the corner" was often
met with confusion as they look at the correct house number.

[And those people at Somename Square must live on takeaways!]

[Adam Funk]

Post by Clive Arthur
<snip>

Post by Roland Perry
I was talking to my son last week, and he often gets post for the same
<number><street> in a town five miles away. Even though the postcode is
correct for the other place.

Until a couple of years ago, I lived in a large town in Somename Road.
Nearby was Somename Street, Terrace, Square and Place. We would often
get deliveries, mostly attempted deliveries of takeaways, for these
other roads. The deliverers were exclusively foreign.
It occurred to me that maybe their origin countries don't have this near
duplication?

It's definitely less common in the USA. I think it's less common in
France too.

Post by Clive Arthur
"No, not here, that's just around the corner" was often
met with confusion as they look at the correct house number.
[And those people at Somename Square must live on takeaways!]

[Norman Wells]

Post by Martin Brown
I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named cottage in
a nearby village (most villages here have one of all the usual ones).
The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT MY VILLAGE TRY OTHER ONE".

Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road? It would make
mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned than silly
names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could be anywhere.

Eventually, there could be a system that would ease sorting too. There
could be a code based on the geographical area which I reckon could be
just 6 or 7 increasingly specific letters and numbers to cut down the
options to just a few individual houses.

[Roger Hayter]

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Martin Brown
I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named cottage in
a nearby village (most villages here have one of all the usual ones).
The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT MY VILLAGE TRY OTHER ONE".

Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road? It would make
mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned than silly
names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could be anywhere.
Eventually, there could be a system that would ease sorting too. There
could be a code based on the geographical area which I reckon could be
just 6 or 7 increasingly specific letters and numbers to cut down the
options to just a few individual houses.

My postcode covers a score of houses over about half a square mile. There are
three or four roads, and several unmarked tracks, but no road names. Back to
the drawing board?

[Norman Wells]

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Martin Brown
I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named cottage in
a nearby village (most villages here have one of all the usual ones).
The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT MY VILLAGE TRY OTHER ONE".

Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road? It would make
mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned than silly
names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could be anywhere.
Eventually, there could be a system that would ease sorting too. There
could be a code based on the geographical area which I reckon could be
just 6 or 7 increasingly specific letters and numbers to cut down the
options to just a few individual houses.

My postcode covers a score of houses over about half a square mile. There are
three or four roads, and several unmarked tracks, but no road names. Back to
the drawing board?

If you insist on living in the wilds of nowhere, I suggest you owe it to
anyone who may make deliveries to you to make it as easy as possible.

If a 7-digit code and a number doesn't work, which of course it should,
I reckon a system based on just three ordinary words of the English
language could map the entire globe down to 10-metre squares. Why oh
why hasn't anyone who has any problems thought of using that?

[Roger Hayter]

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Martin Brown
I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named cottage in
a nearby village (most villages here have one of all the usual ones).
The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT MY VILLAGE TRY OTHER ONE".

Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road? It would make
mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned than silly
names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could be anywhere.
Eventually, there could be a system that would ease sorting too. There
could be a code based on the geographical area which I reckon could be
just 6 or 7 increasingly specific letters and numbers to cut down the
options to just a few individual houses.

My postcode covers a score of houses over about half a square mile. There are
three or four roads, and several unmarked tracks, but no road names. Back to
the drawing board?

If you insist on living in the wilds of nowhere, I suggest you owe it to
anyone who may make deliveries to you to make it as easy as possible.
If a 7-digit code and a number doesn't work, which of course it should,
I reckon a system based on just three ordinary words of the English
language could map the entire globe down to 10-metre squares. Why oh
why hasn't anyone who has any problems thought of using that?

Indeed, various coordinate systems have been developed over several centuries.
And we do have commercially available databases of all property addresses
with either latitude and longitude or GPS coordinate data to within metres.
The trouble is that the meaner courier firms, let alone ordinary visitors, do
not subscribe to them.

[Davey]

On 28 Oct 2024 09:50:27 GMT

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Martin Brown
I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named
cottage in a nearby village (most villages here have one of all
the usual ones). The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT
MY VILLAGE TRY OTHER ONE".

Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road? It would
make mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned
than silly names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could
be anywhere.
Eventually, there could be a system that would ease sorting too.
There could be a code based on the geographical area which I
reckon could be just 6 or 7 increasingly specific letters and
numbers to cut down the options to just a few individual houses.

My postcode covers a score of houses over about half a square
mile. There are three or four roads, and several unmarked tracks,
but no road names. Back to the drawing board?

If you insist on living in the wilds of nowhere, I suggest you owe
it to anyone who may make deliveries to you to make it as easy as
possible.
If a 7-digit code and a number doesn't work, which of course it
should, I reckon a system based on just three ordinary words of the
English language could map the entire globe down to 10-metre
squares. Why oh why hasn't anyone who has any problems thought of
using that?

Indeed, various coordinate systems have been developed over several
centuries. And we do have commercially available databases of all
property addresses with either latitude and longitude or GPS
coordinate data to within metres. The trouble is that the meaner
courier firms, let alone ordinary visitors, do not subscribe to them.

If they know that they exist. W3W is the only one that I know of that
actively promoted itself. From my very limited experience of it, (my
own house), the 3 Words are not exactly easily memorable (aka there is
no way I can remember them for more than a couple of days).

[Andy Burns]

Post by Davey
W3W is the only one that I know of that
actively promoted itself. From my very limited experience of it, (my
own house), the 3 Words are not exactly easily memorable

Lack of distinction, e.g. say out loud

https://w3w.co/think.credits.apply
https://w3w.co/think.credit.supply

[Jon Ribbens]

Post by Andy Burns

W3W is the only one that I know of that actively promoted itself.
From my very limited experience of it, (my own house), the 3 Words
are not exactly easily memorable

Lack of distinction, e.g. say out loud
https://w3w.co/think.credits.apply
https://w3w.co/think.credit.supply

At least those two are far apart. Compare:

https://w3w.co/deep.pink.start
https://w3w.co/deep.pinks.start

[Spike]

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Andy Burns

W3W is the only one that I know of that actively promoted itself.
From my very limited experience of it, (my own house), the 3 Words
are not exactly easily memorable

Lack of distinction, e.g. say out loud
https://w3w.co/think.credits.apply
https://w3w.co/think.credit.supply

https://w3w.co/deep.pink.start
https://w3w.co/deep.pinks.start

Dispatcher: “OK, caller, go ahead with the location in W3W”

Caller: “First word: deep. Second word: pinks. Third word: start”.

Dispatcher: “That was clear, thanks, caller. I have you on the west side of
North Mountain Park, Phoenix, Arizona, is that correct?”

[Jon Ribbens]

Post by Spike

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Andy Burns

W3W is the only one that I know of that actively promoted itself.
From my very limited experience of it, (my own house), the 3 Words
are not exactly easily memorable

Lack of distinction, e.g. say out loud
https://w3w.co/think.credits.apply
https://w3w.co/think.credit.supply

https://w3w.co/deep.pink.start
https://w3w.co/deep.pinks.start

Dispatcher: “OK, caller, go ahead with the location in W3W”
Caller: “First word: deep. Second word: pinks. Third word: start”.
Dispatcher: “That was clear, thanks, caller. I have you on the west side of
North Mountain Park, Phoenix, Arizona, is that correct?”

Yes, you're quite right, if you can imagine a scenario in which
it doesn't go wrong then it must never go wrong.

[Norman Wells]

Post by Davey
On 28 Oct 2024 09:50:27 GMT

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Martin Brown
I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named
cottage in a nearby village (most villages here have one of all
the usual ones). The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT
MY VILLAGE TRY OTHER ONE".

Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road? It would
make mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned
than silly names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could
be anywhere.
Eventually, there could be a system that would ease sorting too.
There could be a code based on the geographical area which I
reckon could be just 6 or 7 increasingly specific letters and
numbers to cut down the options to just a few individual houses.

My postcode covers a score of houses over about half a square
mile. There are three or four roads, and several unmarked tracks,
but no road names. Back to the drawing board?

If you insist on living in the wilds of nowhere, I suggest you owe
it to anyone who may make deliveries to you to make it as easy as
possible.
If a 7-digit code and a number doesn't work, which of course it
should, I reckon a system based on just three ordinary words of the
English language could map the entire globe down to 10-metre
squares. Why oh why hasn't anyone who has any problems thought of
using that?

Indeed, various coordinate systems have been developed over several
centuries. And we do have commercially available databases of all
property addresses with either latitude and longitude or GPS
coordinate data to within metres. The trouble is that the meaner
courier firms, let alone ordinary visitors, do not subscribe to them.

If they know that they exist. W3W is the only one that I know of that
actively promoted itself. From my very limited experience of it, (my
own house), the 3 Words are not exactly easily memorable (aka there is
no way I can remember them for more than a couple of days).

Who oh why doesn't someone in authority develop a system where words and
numbers can be inscribed on thin sheets of something so they can be
referred to later? It's long overdue.

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Davey
On 28 Oct 2024 09:50:27 GMT

Post by Roger Hayter
Indeed, various coordinate systems have been developed over several
centuries. And we do have commercially available databases of all
property addresses with either latitude and longitude or GPS
coordinate data to within metres. The trouble is that the meaner
courier firms, let alone ordinary visitors, do not subscribe to them.

If they know that they exist. W3W is the only one that I know of that
actively promoted itself. From my very limited experience of it, (my
own house), the 3 Words are not exactly easily memorable (aka there is
no way I can remember them for more than a couple of days).

Any organisation involved in delivering post or packages will, unless it is
completely incompetant, be aware of the Postal Address File (PAF) published
by Royal Mail and AddressBase published by Ordnance Survey. Between them,
those two packages give not only the full postal address of every
addressable property in Great Britain but also the precise coordinates of
not just the property itself but the public-facing access point (eg, the
front door containing the letterbox of a house, or the reception desk of a
business) to which post can be delivered.

However, any organisation involved in delivering post or packages will also
be aware that both PAF and AddressBase cost an arm and a leg, and, given
that addresses are constantly being added, amended or deleted, that's an
ongoing cost rather than a one-off. So, if costs need to be cut in the name
of remaining competitive, those are often the costs that are cut.

Mark

[Jeff]

Post by Mark Goodge
However, any organisation involved in delivering post or packages will also
be aware that both PAF and AddressBase cost an arm and a leg, and, given
that addresses are constantly being added, amended or deleted, that's an
ongoing cost rather than a one-off. So, if costs need to be cut in the name
of remaining competitive, those are often the costs that are cut.
Mark

Not correct, the data has been free since 2009 from OS Open Data.

Jeff

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Jeff

Post by Mark Goodge
However, any organisation involved in delivering post or packages will also
be aware that both PAF and AddressBase cost an arm and a leg, and, given
that addresses are constantly being added, amended or deleted, that's an
ongoing cost rather than a one-off. So, if costs need to be cut in the name
of remaining competitive, those are often the costs that are cut.

Not correct, the data has been free since 2009 from OS Open Data.

No, they're not. You're probably thinking of CodePoint and the ONSPD, which
are open data. But they only go down to postcode level, so, other than for
large user postcodes, they don't identify specific premises.

PAF and AddressBase, on the other hand, go all the way down to individual
premises. And they're not free for commercial use. AddressBase is free to
qualifying local authorities and government agencies under the Public Sector
Geospatial Agreement, but not to other users.

Mark

[Norman Wells]

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Jeff

Post by Mark Goodge
However, any organisation involved in delivering post or packages will also
be aware that both PAF and AddressBase cost an arm and a leg, and, given
that addresses are constantly being added, amended or deleted, that's an
ongoing cost rather than a one-off. So, if costs need to be cut in the name
of remaining competitive, those are often the costs that are cut.

Not correct, the data has been free since 2009 from OS Open Data.

No, they're not. You're probably thinking of CodePoint and the ONSPD, which
are open data. But they only go down to postcode level, so, other than for
large user postcodes, they don't identify specific premises.
PAF and AddressBase, on the other hand, go all the way down to individual
premises. And they're not free for commercial use. AddressBase is free to
qualifying local authorities and government agencies under the Public Sector
Geospatial Agreement, but not to other users.
Mark

You are both making an excellent case for the existence and use of What
Three Words.

[Roland Perry]

Post by Davey

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells
If a 7-digit code and a number doesn't work, which of course it
should, I reckon a system based on just three ordinary words of the
English language could map the entire globe down to 10-metre
squares. Why oh why hasn't anyone who has any problems thought of
using that?

Indeed, various coordinate systems have been developed over several
centuries. And we do have commercially available databases of all
property addresses with either latitude and longitude or GPS
coordinate data to within metres. The trouble is that the meaner
courier firms, let alone ordinary visitors, do not subscribe to them.

If they know that they exist. W3W is the only one that I know of that
actively promoted itself. From my very limited experience of it, (my
own house), the 3 Words are not exactly easily memorable (aka there is
no way I can remember them for more than a couple of days).

And it has serious issues with for example homonyms. eg Sending mountain
rescue teams to a location in the middle of the sea.

[Jeff]

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Davey

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells
If a 7-digit code and a number doesn't work, which of course it
should, I reckon a system based on just three ordinary words of the
English language could map the entire globe down to 10-metre
squares.  Why oh why hasn't anyone who has any problems thought of
using that?

Indeed, various coordinate systems have been developed over several
centuries. And we do have commercially available databases of all
property addresses with either latitude and longitude or GPS
coordinate data to within metres. The trouble is that the meaner
courier firms, let alone ordinary visitors, do not subscribe to them.

If they know that they exist. W3W is the only one that I know of that
actively promoted itself. From my very limited experience of it, (my
own house), the 3 Words are not exactly easily memorable (aka there is
no way I can remember them for more than a couple of days).

And it has serious issues with for example homonyms. eg Sending mountain
rescue teams to a location in the middle of the sea.

and if you can't spell or English is not your first language (which
covers most delivery drivers it would seem) the problems get worse.

Jeff

[Norman Wells]

Post by Jeff

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Davey

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells
If a 7-digit code and a number doesn't work, which of course it
should, I reckon a system based on just three ordinary words of the
English language could map the entire globe down to 10-metre
squares.  Why oh why hasn't anyone who has any problems thought of
using that?

Indeed, various coordinate systems have been developed over several
centuries. And we do have commercially available databases of all
property addresses with either latitude and longitude or GPS
coordinate data to within metres. The trouble is that the meaner
courier firms, let alone ordinary visitors, do not subscribe to them.

If they know that they exist. W3W is the only one that I know of that
actively promoted itself. From my very limited experience of it, (my
own house), the 3 Words are not exactly easily memorable (aka there is
no way I can remember them for more than a couple of days).

And it has serious issues with for example homonyms. eg Sending
mountain rescue teams to a location in the middle of the sea.

and if you can't spell or English is not your first language (which
covers most delivery drivers it would seem) the problems get worse.

The thing about English words is that spell-checkers can be used.

Can't do that with numbers.

[Norman Wells]

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Martin Brown
I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named cottage in
a nearby village (most villages here have one of all the usual ones).
The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT MY VILLAGE TRY OTHER ONE".

Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road? It would make
mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned than silly
names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could be anywhere.
Eventually, there could be a system that would ease sorting too. There
could be a code based on the geographical area which I reckon could be
just 6 or 7 increasingly specific letters and numbers to cut down the
options to just a few individual houses.

My postcode covers a score of houses over about half a square mile. There are
three or four roads, and several unmarked tracks, but no road names. Back to
the drawing board?

If you insist on living in the wilds of nowhere, I suggest you owe it to
anyone who may make deliveries to you to make it as easy as possible.
If a 7-digit code and a number doesn't work, which of course it should,
I reckon a system based on just three ordinary words of the English
language could map the entire globe down to 10-metre squares. Why oh
why hasn't anyone who has any problems thought of using that?

Indeed, various coordinate systems have been developed over several centuries.
And we do have commercially available databases of all property addresses
with either latitude and longitude or GPS coordinate data to within metres.
The trouble is that the meaner courier firms, let alone ordinary visitors, do
not subscribe to them.

What Three Words is 'free for anyone to use via our app and online map –
and it always will be'.

There's no excuse at all.

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Roger Hayter
Indeed, various coordinate systems have been developed over several centuries.
And we do have commercially available databases of all property addresses
with either latitude and longitude or GPS coordinate data to within metres.
The trouble is that the meaner courier firms, let alone ordinary visitors, do
not subscribe to them.

Theoretically, UPRNs (Unique property Reference Numbers) could fill that
gap. Datasets mapping UPRNs to coordinates are freely available under the
Open Government Licence[1], so there is no cost to an organisation which
wants to use them to locate a delivery point. And, although the datasets
which link postal addresses to UPRNS in bulk are not free, the data is
publicly available for anyone to look up their own UPRN[2].

So, if you know that your UPRN is, say, 100030490201, you could give that
number to a supplier and that's all they need to know to plug into a sat-nav
and get to the street in front of your house. And another advantage of UPRNs
is that, unlike postcodes and postal addresses, they also apply to
non-addressable objects. So you could, for example, get a delivery to
10010457355 or 10022990231. Or even 10023242987, which is about as on point
as you can get[3].

UPRNs are already widely used in local and national government - they're
particularly useful in planning, because there are often planning
applications for things that don't have postal addresses (eg, electricity
substations, or farm buildings) and therefore can't be uniquely identified
by an address.

However, UPRNs aren't particularly consumer friendly. They're designed as
unique identifiers in databases, and work very well for that. But they're
not memorable, and they're not structured - just because your UPRN is
100080025423 doesn't mean that your neighbours are 100080025424 and
100080025422. They might be, but they might not be. And you can't tell from
a UPRN where in the country it is, without doing the actual lookup. With a
postcode, you know that all the addresses in ST4 6NU are going to be
reasonably close to each other, and that they in turn are going to be in the
same neck of the woods as properties in ST4 6xx, which is a subset of ST4,
and so on. UPRNs have no such structure.

They're also pure numbers, allocated sequentially, without anything like a
check digit. So if you give your UPRN to a supplier, but get just one digit
of it wrong, somewhere (and they're up to 12 digits long, so there are penty
of opportunities for a typo), and your parcel will end up in completely the
wrong place, quite possibly the other end of the country, and there will be
no clue from the faulty UPRN what the real one might be.

[1] https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/products/os-open-uprn

[2] FindMyAddress: https://www.findmyaddress.co.uk

[3] You can also use FindMyAddress to look up those UPRNs if you want, but
it's rate limited and you'll quickly run out of searches if you do several.
For a simple UPRN to coordinates lookup and map display, use https://uprn.uk
which is unlimited.

Mark

[Roger Hayter]

On 28 Oct 2024 at 15:50:07 GMT, "Mark Goodge"

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Roger Hayter
Indeed, various coordinate systems have been developed over several centuries.
And we do have commercially available databases of all property addresses
with either latitude and longitude or GPS coordinate data to within metres.
The trouble is that the meaner courier firms, let alone ordinary visitors, do
not subscribe to them.

Theoretically, UPRNs (Unique property Reference Numbers) could fill that
gap. Datasets mapping UPRNs to coordinates are freely available under the
Open Government Licence[1], so there is no cost to an organisation which
wants to use them to locate a delivery point. And, although the datasets
which link postal addresses to UPRNS in bulk are not free, the data is
publicly available for anyone to look up their own UPRN[2].

I wrote nearby about my council getting my house name wrong on the information
they supplied for the UPRN database.

Amusingly enough, they also provide a *different* spelling of the village name
from the one on the postcode database and the one the council itself uses to
write to me about council tax. It is a more modern, politically correct, form
of Welsh place name with hyphens inserted. But the fact remains that the UPRN
database will *not* find my address because of three errors (4 if
capitalisation counts) differing from the postcode database. If other councils
are as stupid, only some sort of fuzzy search on the postcode would make the
UPRN system usable for some addresses.

snip

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Roger Hayter
On 28 Oct 2024 at 15:50:07 GMT, "Mark Goodge"

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Roger Hayter
Indeed, various coordinate systems have been developed over several centuries.
And we do have commercially available databases of all property addresses
with either latitude and longitude or GPS coordinate data to within metres.
The trouble is that the meaner courier firms, let alone ordinary visitors, do
not subscribe to them.

Theoretically, UPRNs (Unique property Reference Numbers) could fill that
gap. Datasets mapping UPRNs to coordinates are freely available under the
Open Government Licence[1], so there is no cost to an organisation which
wants to use them to locate a delivery point. And, although the datasets
which link postal addresses to UPRNS in bulk are not free, the data is
publicly available for anyone to look up their own UPRN[2].

I wrote nearby about my council getting my house name wrong on the information
they supplied for the UPRN database.
Amusingly enough, they also provide a *different* spelling of the village name
from the one on the postcode database and the one the council itself uses to
write to me about council tax. It is a more modern, politically correct, form
of Welsh place name with hyphens inserted. But the fact remains that the UPRN
database will *not* find my address because of three errors (4 if
capitalisation counts) differing from the postcode database. If other councils
are as stupid, only some sort of fuzzy search on the postcode would make the
UPRN system usable for some addresses.

As far as English (and Welsh) law is concerned, names (proper nouns) are
case-insensitive and punctuation-insensitive. So, for example,
Stoke-on-Trent, Stoke on Trent and STOKE ON TRENT are identical. Their
capitalisation and punctuation in normal use is merely a matter of
convention; there is no canonical correct form. And there are cases where
different sources differ in their usage of things like hyphens. The one
that's most "right" is the one that most people use.

Mark

[Roger Hayter]

On 29 Oct 2024 at 18:24:42 GMT, "Mark Goodge"

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Roger Hayter
On 28 Oct 2024 at 15:50:07 GMT, "Mark Goodge"

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Roger Hayter
Indeed, various coordinate systems have been developed over several centuries.
And we do have commercially available databases of all property addresses
with either latitude and longitude or GPS coordinate data to within metres.
The trouble is that the meaner courier firms, let alone ordinary visitors, do
not subscribe to them.

Theoretically, UPRNs (Unique property Reference Numbers) could fill that
gap. Datasets mapping UPRNs to coordinates are freely available under the
Open Government Licence[1], so there is no cost to an organisation which
wants to use them to locate a delivery point. And, although the datasets
which link postal addresses to UPRNS in bulk are not free, the data is
publicly available for anyone to look up their own UPRN[2].

I wrote nearby about my council getting my house name wrong on the information
they supplied for the UPRN database.
Amusingly enough, they also provide a *different* spelling of the village name
from the one on the postcode database and the one the council itself uses to
write to me about council tax. It is a more modern, politically correct, form
of Welsh place name with hyphens inserted. But the fact remains that the UPRN
database will *not* find my address because of three errors (4 if
capitalisation counts) differing from the postcode database. If other councils
are as stupid, only some sort of fuzzy search on the postcode would make the
UPRN system usable for some addresses.

As far as English (and Welsh) law is concerned, names (proper nouns) are
case-insensitive and punctuation-insensitive. So, for example,
Stoke-on-Trent, Stoke on Trent and STOKE ON TRENT are identical. Their
capitalisation and punctuation in normal use is merely a matter of
convention; there is no canonical correct form. And there are cases where
different sources differ in their usage of things like hyphens. The one
that's most "right" is the one that most people use.
Mark

Well I can believe that punctuation between words is ignored, but I can tell
you for a fact that the UPRN finder does not accept the normal form of a Welsh
place name (for example, not the correct one) Penybont when it has been told
it should be spelt Pen-Y-Bont.

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Roger Hayter
On 29 Oct 2024 at 18:24:42 GMT, "Mark Goodge"

Post by Mark Goodge
As far as English (and Welsh) law is concerned, names (proper nouns) are
case-insensitive and punctuation-insensitive. So, for example,
Stoke-on-Trent, Stoke on Trent and STOKE ON TRENT are identical. Their
capitalisation and punctuation in normal use is merely a matter of
convention; there is no canonical correct form. And there are cases where
different sources differ in their usage of things like hyphens. The one
that's most "right" is the one that most people use.

Well I can believe that punctuation between words is ignored, but I can tell
you for a fact that the UPRN finder does not accept the normal form of a Welsh
place name (for example, not the correct one) Penybont when it has been told
it should be spelt Pen-Y-Bont.

That sounds like a simple flaw in the search facility.
Punctuation-insensitive search is a relatively easy thing to implement, it
sounds as if the site's developers just haven't bothered to do it. Might be
worth using the feedback form on the site to suggest that they do.

Mark

[Roger Hayter]

On 30 Oct 2024 at 11:07:23 GMT, "Mark Goodge"

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Roger Hayter
On 29 Oct 2024 at 18:24:42 GMT, "Mark Goodge"

Post by Mark Goodge
As far as English (and Welsh) law is concerned, names (proper nouns) are
case-insensitive and punctuation-insensitive. So, for example,
Stoke-on-Trent, Stoke on Trent and STOKE ON TRENT are identical. Their
capitalisation and punctuation in normal use is merely a matter of
convention; there is no canonical correct form. And there are cases where
different sources differ in their usage of things like hyphens. The one
that's most "right" is the one that most people use.

Well I can believe that punctuation between words is ignored, but I can tell
you for a fact that the UPRN finder does not accept the normal form of a Welsh
place name (for example, not the correct one) Penybont when it has been told
it should be spelt Pen-Y-Bont.

That sounds like a simple flaw in the search facility.
Punctuation-insensitive search is a relatively easy thing to implement, it
sounds as if the site's developers just haven't bothered to do it. Might be
worth using the feedback form on the site to suggest that they do.
Mark

So they should treat white space as an optional punctuation mark? And
presumably try all possible insertion points of punctuation in words to match
their database? So Stokeontrent would be equally valid. Provided they only
tried to compare it against their own, finite database I suppose that would
work.

I don't think I am going to try running that past their customer services
clerk/intern though.

[Roland Perry]

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Martin Brown
I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named cottage in
a nearby village (most villages here have one of all the usual ones).
The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT MY VILLAGE TRY OTHER ONE".

Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road? It would make
mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned than silly
names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could be anywhere.
Eventually, there could be a system that would ease sorting too. There
could be a code based on the geographical area which I reckon could be
just 6 or 7 increasingly specific letters and numbers to cut down the
options to just a few individual houses.

My postcode covers a score of houses over about half a square mile.
There are three or four roads, and several unmarked tracks, but no
road names. Back to the drawing board?

If you insist on living in the wilds of nowhere, I suggest you owe it
to anyone who may make deliveries to you to make it as easy as possible.
If a 7-digit code and a number doesn't work, which of course it should,
I reckon a system based on just three ordinary words of the English
language could map the entire globe down to 10-metre squares. Why oh
why hasn't anyone who has any problems thought of using that?

Mainly because the existing scheme like that has so many issues, it
beggars belief the emergency services even consider using it.

[Jeff]

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Norman Wells
If a 7-digit code and a number doesn't work, which of course it
should, I reckon a system based on just three ordinary words of the
English language could map the entire globe down to 10-metre squares.
Why oh why hasn't anyone who has any problems thought of using that?

Mainly because the existing scheme like that has so many issues, it
beggars belief the emergency services even consider using it.

We already have a system that can define a position down to virtually
any resolution you like; the National Grid.

A 6 figure reference will take you to within 100m, an 8 figure 1 to 10m
and so on.

Why people don't use defeats me.

Jeff

[nib]

Post by Jeff

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Norman Wells
If a 7-digit code and a number doesn't work, which of course it
should, I reckon a system based on just three ordinary words of the
English language could map the entire globe down to 10-metre squares.
Why oh why hasn't anyone who has any problems thought of using that?

Mainly because the existing scheme like that has so many issues, it
beggars belief the emergency services even consider using it.

We already have a system that can define a position down to virtually
any resolution you like; the National Grid.
A 6 figure reference will take you to within 100m, an 8 figure 1 to 10m
and so on.
Why people don't use defeats me.
Jeff

Partly at least because W3W markets itself?

nib

[Norman Wells]

Post by Jeff

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Norman Wells
If a 7-digit code and a number doesn't work, which of course it
should, I reckon a system based on just three ordinary words of the
English language could map the entire globe down to 10-metre squares.
Why oh why hasn't anyone who has any problems thought of using that?

Mainly because the existing scheme like that has so many issues, it
beggars belief the emergency services even consider using it.

We already have a system that can define a position down to virtually
any resolution you like; the National Grid.
A 6 figure reference will take you to within 100m, an 8 figure 1 to 10m
and so on.
Why people don't use defeats me.

It's because most people prefer London Charing Cross to TQ30280486, and
put Keir in their contacts list rather than 02072194272.

[Andy Burns]

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells
Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road?

My postcode covers a score of houses over about half a square mile. There are
three or four roads, and several unmarked tracks, but no road names. Back to
the drawing board?

Maybe Labour ought to nationalise W3W?

[Jon Ribbens]

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells
Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road?

My postcode covers a score of houses over about half a square mile.
There are three or four roads, and several unmarked tracks, but no
road names. Back to the drawing board?

Maybe Labour ought to nationalise W3W?

"Ban it" would be better (from any use by government-provided services).

[Andy Burns]

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Andy Burns
Maybe Labour ought to nationalise W3W?

"Ban it" would be better (from any use by government-provided services).

FWIW I agree ...

[Norman Wells]

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Andy Burns
Maybe Labour ought to nationalise W3W?

"Ban it" would be better (from any use by government-provided services).

FWIW I agree ...

Why?

I think it's a fantastically innovative system that has massive
potential. It's quite a mind-blowing thought that you can get within 10
feet of anywhere on earth using just three English language words, and I
cannot understand some people's objections based on largely imagined
teething problems. They can and will be sorted out as and when necessary.

Most seem to be based on mishearings of verbal communications when most
uses I suspect will anyway be written rather than said, eg in satnav or
routing applications. And the vast majority of verbal misunderstandings
could easily be avoided by the simple expedient of just vocalising the
dots between the words as we are very familiar with already from
xxx.co.uk for example.

Is it fear of the unfamiliar and unknown?

[Sam Plusnet]

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Andy Burns
Maybe Labour ought to nationalise W3W?

"Ban it" would be better (from any use by government-provided services).

FWIW I agree ...

Why?
I think it's a fantastically innovative system that has massive
potential.  It's quite a mind-blowing thought that you can get within 10
feet of anywhere on earth using just three English language words, and I
cannot understand some people's objections based on largely imagined
teething problems.  They can and will be sorted out as and when necessary.
Most seem to be based on mishearings of verbal communications when most
uses I suspect will anyway be written rather than said, eg in satnav or
routing applications.  And the vast majority of verbal misunderstandings
could easily be avoided by the simple expedient of just vocalising the
dots between the words as we are very familiar with already from
xxx.co.uk for example.
Is it fear of the unfamiliar and unknown?

I don't think so.
An open source equivalent would be acceptable (to me at least), but it
would help if they could find a way to reduce the chances of error (in
verbal transmission) to something less than 40% (figure made up on the
spot).

[Norman Wells]

Post by Sam Plusnet

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Andy Burns
Maybe Labour ought to nationalise W3W?

"Ban it" would be better (from any use by government-provided services).

FWIW I agree ...

Why?
I think it's a fantastically innovative system that has massive
potential.  It's quite a mind-blowing thought that you can get within
10 feet of anywhere on earth using just three English language words,
and I cannot understand some people's objections based on largely
imagined teething problems.  They can and will be sorted out as and
when necessary.
Most seem to be based on mishearings of verbal communications when
most uses I suspect will anyway be written rather than said, eg in
satnav or routing applications.  And the vast majority of verbal
misunderstandings could easily be avoided by the simple expedient of
just vocalising the dots between the words as we are very familiar
with already from xxx.co.uk for example.
Is it fear of the unfamiliar and unknown?

I don't think so.
An open source equivalent would be acceptable (to me at least), but it
would help if they could find a way to reduce the chances of error (in
verbal transmission) to something less than 40% (figure made up on the
spot).

Well, when you have a real number rather than one you've just made up,
we may be able to get a better grip on whether the problem is really one
or not, and what the solution, if any is necessary, might be.

Vocalising the dots where there is any doubt would in my view eliminate
the vast majority of errors.

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Andy Burns
Maybe Labour ought to nationalise W3W?

"Ban it" would be better (from any use by government-provided services).

FWIW I agree ...

Why?
I think it's a fantastically innovative system that has massive
potential. It's quite a mind-blowing thought that you can get within 10
feet of anywhere on earth using just three English language words, and I
cannot understand some people's objections based on largely imagined
teething problems. They can and will be sorted out as and when necessary.

They can't be sorted out. Any change would break existing three word codes.
For better or worse, it is what it is.

Post by Norman Wells
Most seem to be based on mishearings of verbal communications when most
uses I suspect will anyway be written rather than said, eg in satnav or
routing applications. And the vast majority of verbal misunderstandings
could easily be avoided by the simple expedient of just vocalising the
dots between the words as we are very familiar with already from
xxx.co.uk for example.

But the whole selling point of "normal English words" is that they're easy
to say. But if you're writing it down, then brevity matters more. Which of
these do you think is quicker to write, TQ290796, IO91wm30, GBR DJ.C3 or
plus.escape.yarn? They all point to the same spot on the map.

And, actually, when you're speaking something out loud in a safety-critical
situation, an alphanumeric code is more robust. One of the advantages of our
names for digits is that they're audibly unambigous - "one" doesn't sound
like "two", which doesn't sound like "three", and so on. Combine that with
the NATO phonetic alphabet for letters, and you have something whih is
almost impossible to mishear. It may take a bit longer to say "Tango Quebec
two nine zero seven nine six" than it does to say "plus dot escape dot
yarn", but it's much less likely to be misinterpreted.

Post by Norman Wells
Is it fear of the unfamiliar and unknown?

There's nothing unknown about location encoding systems. The main objection
to what3words is that, unlike every almost other location encoding system in
existance (including Plus Codes, MapCode, UTM References and the Maidenhead
Locator System, among others) is that it relies on a lengthy hard-coded
database of words and lookups. It's not amenable to a simple algorithmic
conversion from latitude/longitude or any other standard geographic
coordinate system.

Mark

[Norman Wells]

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Andy Burns
Maybe Labour ought to nationalise W3W?

"Ban it" would be better (from any use by government-provided services).

FWIW I agree ...

Why?
I think it's a fantastically innovative system that has massive
potential. It's quite a mind-blowing thought that you can get within 10
feet of anywhere on earth using just three English language words, and I
cannot understand some people's objections based on largely imagined
teething problems. They can and will be sorted out as and when necessary.

They can't be sorted out. Any change would break existing three word codes.
For better or worse, it is what it is.

Those codes are not immutable. Changes can be made and, while the
system is still relatively new, any changes will obviously affect people
less the earlier it is.

Besides, there are procedures in place already to minimise any
possibility of confusion. See::

https://support.what3words.com/en/articles/1520322

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Norman Wells
Most seem to be based on mishearings of verbal communications when most
uses I suspect will anyway be written rather than said, eg in satnav or
routing applications. And the vast majority of verbal misunderstandings
could easily be avoided by the simple expedient of just vocalising the
dots between the words as we are very familiar with already from
xxx.co.uk for example.

But the whole selling point of "normal English words" is that they're easy
to say. But if you're writing it down, then brevity matters more. Which of
these do you think is quicker to write, TQ290796, IO91wm30, GBR DJ.C3 or
plus.escape.yarn? They all point to the same spot on the map.

Mis-spellings, mis-typings etc are far more easily spotted in ordinary
English words than they are in essentially random and superficially
meaningless numbers.

Post by Mark Goodge
And, actually, when you're speaking something out loud in a safety-critical
situation, an alphanumeric code is more robust. One of the advantages of our
names for digits is that they're audibly unambigous - "one" doesn't sound
like "two", which doesn't sound like "three", and so on.

Nor do they look the same when written out.

But radio communicators are trained to say five as fifer, nine as niner
etc, which disproves your point.

Post by Mark Goodge
Combine that with
the NATO phonetic alphabet for letters, and you have something whih is
almost impossible to mishear. It may take a bit longer to say "Tango Quebec
two nine zero seven nine six" than it does to say "plus dot escape dot
yarn", but it's much less likely to be misinterpreted.

That's a matter of opinion. Normally, 'plus escape yarn' would be
perfectly easily intelligible without the dots.

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Norman Wells
Is it fear of the unfamiliar and unknown?

There's nothing unknown about location encoding systems. The main objection
to what3words is that, unlike every almost other location encoding system in
existance (including Plus Codes, MapCode, UTM References and the Maidenhead
Locator System, among others) is that it relies on a lengthy hard-coded
database of words and lookups.

It doesn't seem to affect its operation in practice, so what's the problem?

Post by Mark Goodge
It's not amenable to a simple algorithmic
conversion from latitude/longitude or any other standard geographic
coordinate system.

That's because it's supposed to replace them.

No-one in real life is concerned in the least with their latitude and
longitude.

[Roland Perry]

Post by Norman Wells
No-one in real life is concerned in the least with their latitude and
longitude.

There's a stone by the side of the road just north of Royston which
says "here lies the Meridian". It's also a good way to prove that
Peterborough is north of Wolverhampton, something many folk find hard to
accept.

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Mark Goodge
Combine that with
the NATO phonetic alphabet for letters, and you have something whih is
almost impossible to mishear. It may take a bit longer to say "Tango Quebec
two nine zero seven nine six" than it does to say "plus dot escape dot
yarn", but it's much less likely to be misinterpreted.

That's a matter of opinion. Normally, 'plus escape yarn' would be
perfectly easily intelligible without the dots.

Could you be sure that they're not saying "pluses cape yarn"? Are you sure
enough of their accent to be certain that the last word isn't "yearn"?

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Norman Wells
Is it fear of the unfamiliar and unknown?

There's nothing unknown about location encoding systems. The main objection
to what3words is that, unlike every almost other location encoding system in
existance (including Plus Codes, MapCode, UTM References and the Maidenhead
Locator System, among others) is that it relies on a lengthy hard-coded
database of words and lookups.

It doesn't seem to affect its operation in practice, so what's the problem?

It doesn't affect its operation in practice because its practical use is
fairly limited, by design.

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Mark Goodge
It's not amenable to a simple algorithmic
conversion from latitude/longitude or any other standard geographic
coordinate system.

That's because it's supposed to replace them.

No, it isn't. It's intended as a front-end to them. It cannot possibly
replace them. It isn't designed to do so.

Post by Norman Wells
No-one in real life is concerned in the least with their latitude and
longitude.

Maybe not in your life, but your sat-nav and GPS apps use them. Even w3w
uses them, the API either takes a w3w code and gives you lat/lon in return
or takes lat/lon and gives you w3w.

The whole point of location encoding systems is to provide a human-friendly
face onto latitude and longitude (or other coordinate systems, of which
there are several, but WGS84 latitude/longitude is now the global standard).
But latitude and longitude aren't particularly human-friendly, and can't
easily be made so because of the unavoidable complexity of geodetic
coordinates for locating a point on the surface of a sphere.

A location encoding system, such as w3w or pluscode, can simplify that by
accepting the compromise of locating a discrete area rather than a point
value. For example, w3w goes down to a 3m square, pluscodes go down to a
3.5m square and mapcodes can, in theory, go down to a 25cm square although,
in practice, they're typically used at a 5m resolution. For normal,
evveryday use for identifying locations that's good enough. It will get you
to a house or a business, for example.

That doesn't work where you need greater precision, though. Engineering
projects often require a maximum tolerance that's measured in millimetres.
Boundaries between properties need to be precise to a few inches or less,
something that's up to 3m either way is useless in that scenario. For those
scenarios, you need actual coordinates that can be recorded and plotted on a
map. And for navigational purposes you need to be able to plot lines and
routes at entirely arbitrary positions, you can't calculate a route by
jumping from one w3w box or pluscode to the next.

So location encoding systems have their place, but as a supplement to
geodetic coordinates rather than a replacement for them. And to be widely
used as a supplement to coordinates, location encoding systems need to have
a published conversion algorithm that's simple enough for anyone with
reasonable maths and programming skills to implement in software that, if
necessary, can work offline (or even be calculated manually). Something that
relies entirely on an API or an unpublished lookup table isn't going to meet
that requirement.

Mark

[Norman Wells]

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Mark Goodge
Combine that with
the NATO phonetic alphabet for letters, and you have something whih is
almost impossible to mishear. It may take a bit longer to say "Tango Quebec
two nine zero seven nine six" than it does to say "plus dot escape dot
yarn", but it's much less likely to be misinterpreted.

That's a matter of opinion. Normally, 'plus escape yarn' would be
perfectly easily intelligible without the dots.

Could you be sure that they're not saying "pluses cape yarn"? Are you sure
enough of their accent to be certain that the last word isn't "yearn"?

Giving a verbal address of whatever nature is always subject to problems
of misinterpretation. It's not unique to W3W, but they say they take
such matters into account and attempt disambiguation:

https://support.what3words.com/en/articles/1520322

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Norman Wells
Is it fear of the unfamiliar and unknown?

There's nothing unknown about location encoding systems. The main objection
to what3words is that, unlike every almost other location encoding system in
existance (including Plus Codes, MapCode, UTM References and the Maidenhead
Locator System, among others) is that it relies on a lengthy hard-coded
database of words and lookups.

It doesn't seem to affect its operation in practice, so what's the problem?

It doesn't affect its operation in practice because its practical use is
fairly limited, by design.

I don't see any limitation.

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Mark Goodge
It's not amenable to a simple algorithmic
conversion from latitude/longitude or any other standard geographic
coordinate system.

That's because it's supposed to replace them.

No, it isn't. It's intended as a front-end to them. It cannot possibly
replace them. It isn't designed to do so.

Post by Norman Wells
No-one in real life is concerned in the least with their latitude and
longitude.

Maybe not in your life, but your sat-nav and GPS apps use them. Even w3w
uses them, the API either takes a w3w code and gives you lat/lon in return
or takes lat/lon and gives you w3w.

You don't have to know how a car works for you to drive it. But the
point remains, no-one in real life knows, has to know, or has any desire
to know their latitude or longitude.

Post by Mark Goodge
The whole point of location encoding systems is to provide a human-friendly
face onto latitude and longitude (or other coordinate systems, of which
there are several, but WGS84 latitude/longitude is now the global standard).
But latitude and longitude aren't particularly human-friendly, and can't
easily be made so because of the unavoidable complexity of geodetic
coordinates for locating a point on the surface of a sphere.

That is precisely why W3W is a Good Thing.

Post by Mark Goodge
A location encoding system, such as w3w or pluscode, can simplify that by
accepting the compromise of locating a discrete area rather than a point
value. For example, w3w goes down to a 3m square, pluscodes go down to a
3.5m square and mapcodes can, in theory, go down to a 25cm square although,
in practice, they're typically used at a 5m resolution. For normal,
evveryday use for identifying locations that's good enough. It will get you
to a house or a business, for example.
That doesn't work where you need greater precision, though. Engineering
projects often require a maximum tolerance that's measured in millimetres.
Boundaries between properties need to be precise to a few inches or less,
something that's up to 3m either way is useless in that scenario. For those
scenarios, you need actual coordinates that can be recorded and plotted on a
map.

At that level, I suggest what you need is actually a spirit level and a
tape measure.

Post by Mark Goodge
And for navigational purposes you need to be able to plot lines and
routes at entirely arbitrary positions, you can't calculate a route by
jumping from one w3w box or pluscode to the next.

We have machines to do that. Before that we had what we called maps.
No-one but a geek would do it manually.

Post by Mark Goodge
So location encoding systems have their place, but as a supplement to
geodetic coordinates rather than a replacement for them. And to be widely
used as a supplement to coordinates, location encoding systems need to have
a published conversion algorithm that's simple enough for anyone with
reasonable maths and programming skills to implement in software that, if
necessary, can work offline (or even be calculated manually). Something that
relies entirely on an API or an unpublished lookup table isn't going to meet
that requirement.

All that's necessary for ordinary people is to be able to look up a
specific designation for a location and pass that on to someone else,
preferably by simply using their phone. Which W3W does.

[Andy Burns]

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Andy Burns
Maybe Labour ought to nationalise W3W?

"Ban it" would be better (from any use by government-provided services).

FWIW I agree ...

Why?

The words are badly chosen, and presumably can't be changed now.

Encouraging officialdom to use it plays into the hands of w3w, and their
"guarantee"that it'll always be free, they seem to be good at clocking
up losses year after year.

Post by Norman Wells
I think it's a fantastically innovative system that has massive
potential.  It's quite a mind-blowing thought that you can get within 10
feet of anywhere on earth using just three English language words

Just encourage everyone to install the OS Locate app,
it can read lat/long, or 6/8/10 figure grid refs

Post by Norman Wells
Is it fear of the unfamiliar and unknown?

Not really, I've seen that it works as far as it goes.

[Roland Perry]

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Andy Burns
Maybe Labour ought to nationalise W3W?

"Ban it" would be better (from any use by government-provided services).

FWIW I agree ...

Why?
I think it's a fantastically innovative system that has massive
potential. It's quite a mind-blowing thought that you can get within
10 feet of anywhere on earth using just three English language words,
and I cannot understand some people's objections based on largely
imagined teething problems. They can and will be sorted out as and
when necessary.

It's been going long enough, with sufficient glaring issues - which
haven't been resolved - so I think you are mistaken.

Post by Norman Wells
Most seem to be based on mishearings of verbal communications when most
uses I suspect will anyway be written rather than said, eg in satnav or
routing applications. And the vast majority of verbal
misunderstandings could easily be avoided by the simple expedient of
just vocalising the dots between the words as we are very familiar with
already from xxx.co.uk for example.
Is it fear of the unfamiliar and unknown?

No, it's the problem that half the population has below-average
intelligence.

[Norman Wells]

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Andy Burns
Maybe Labour ought to nationalise W3W?

"Ban it" would be better (from any use by government-provided services).

FWIW I agree ...

Why?
I think it's a fantastically innovative system that has massive
potential.  It's quite a mind-blowing thought that you can get within
10 feet of anywhere on earth using just three English language words,
and I cannot understand some people's objections based on largely
imagined teething problems.  They can and will be sorted out as and
when necessary.

It's been going long enough, with sufficient glaring issues - which
haven't been resolved - so I think you are mistaken.

Do you have any evidence for that, or is it just prejudice against
anything new?

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Norman Wells
Most seem to be based on mishearings of verbal communications when
most uses I suspect will anyway be written rather than said, eg in
satnav or routing applications.  And the vast majority of verbal
misunderstandings could easily be avoided by the simple expedient of
just vocalising the dots between the words as we are very familiar
with already from xxx.co.uk for example.
Is it fear of the unfamiliar and unknown?

No, it's the problem that half the population has below-average
intelligence.

Of course! That must be it.

[Roland Perry]

Post by Jon Ribbens

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells
Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road?

My postcode covers a score of houses over about half a square mile.
There are three or four roads, and several unmarked tracks, but no
road names. Back to the drawing board?

Maybe Labour ought to nationalise W3W?

"Ban it" would be better (from any use by government-provided services).

**Applause**

[Vir Campestris]

Post by Jon Ribbens
"Ban it" would be better (from any use by government-provided services).

Only last week I reported some fly tipping (several tonnes of shredded
domestic waste) and the Environment Agency man thanked me for using W3W.

Andy

[Fredxx]

Post by Roger Hayter

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Martin Brown
I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named cottage in
a nearby village (most villages here have one of all the usual ones).
The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT MY VILLAGE TRY OTHER ONE".

Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road? It would make
mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned than silly
names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could be anywhere.
Eventually, there could be a system that would ease sorting too. There
could be a code based on the geographical area which I reckon could be
just 6 or 7 increasingly specific letters and numbers to cut down the
options to just a few individual houses.

My postcode covers a score of houses over about half a square mile. There are
three or four roads, and several unmarked tracks, but no road names. Back to
the drawing board?

I was in a similar position. I was in a cul-de-sac and arranged with the
other properties for a new postcode to be issued. Down from scores of
properties down to 4.

Why not consider doing the same?

[John Levine]

Post by Norman Wells
Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road? It would make
mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned than silly
names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could be anywhere.

It can't be that hard. Here across the pond when they set up the 911 emergency
phone number, the various governments assigned a unique address to every place
the Post Office delivers to make it easier for the 911 dispatchers to tell
emergency services where to go. The addresses don't have to be in order but they
do have to be unique.

For example, a few blocks from here there is a road that runs along the county
line. On the south side the numbers are from about 60 to 100 increasing to the
west, on the north side from 4431 to 4891 increasing to the east, and the
postman has no trouble delivering the mail.

Post by Norman Wells
Eventually, there could be a system that would ease sorting too. There
could be a code based on the geographical area which I reckon could be
just 6 or 7 increasingly specific letters and numbers to cut down the
options to just a few individual houses.

We have 11 digit postcodes that give every address a unique code. Individuals
usually only use the first 5 or 9, but bulk mailers put on the whole code to get
a discount. I believe the Post Office has internal databases that map those
11 digit codes to delivery routes.

[Martin Brown]

Post by John Levine

Post by Norman Wells
Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road? It would make
mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned than silly
names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could be anywhere.

It can't be that hard. Here across the pond when they set up the 911 emergency
phone number, the various governments assigned a unique address to every place
the Post Office delivers to make it easier for the 911 dispatchers to tell
emergency services where to go. The addresses don't have to be in order but they
do have to be unique.

The UK emergency services have a similar system apparently in parallel
to the postcode. I found this out when I got into a dispute with
licensing about the right postcode for our Village Hall (which having no
permanent residents hasn't officially got one). The houses that adjoin
it do.

I noticed that they kept replacing the right postcode for the location
with one that pointed to the middle of a field 5 miles away. I deduced
this address was where a former VH secretary lived in about 1960!

Post by John Levine
We have 11 digit postcodes that give every address a unique code. Individuals
usually only use the first 5 or 9, but bulk mailers put on the whole code to get
a discount. I believe the Post Office has internal databases that map those
11 digit codes to delivery routes.

There is something similar in the UK. But it isn't public.

W3W works well enough apart from when soundalikes on a phone line result
in a location somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or Africa.

It is good enough to get to you to the right entrance door in confusing
buildings with multiple entrances not all of which are accessible.

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Martin Brown
The UK emergency services have a similar system apparently in parallel
to the postcode. I found this out when I got into a dispute with
licensing about the right postcode for our Village Hall (which having no
permanent residents hasn't officially got one). The houses that adjoin
it do.

Not having permanent residents has nothing to do with it. Most business
don't have permanent residents. What makes a property addressable is simply
that it has somewhere that a postie can deliver a letter to - for example, a
letter box in the door. *Any* property can be made addressable if you need
to get post sent there and you can arrange for some form of post receptacle
to be installed.

Post by Martin Brown
I noticed that they kept replacing the right postcode for the location
with one that pointed to the middle of a field 5 miles away. I deduced
this address was where a former VH secretary lived in about 1960!

If you need a licence for premises that cannot receive post, then the
correct postcode for those premises is that of the location that post for it
must be sent to. That's not necessarily going to be the same as the postcode
of its immediate neighbours, unless one of those neighbours happens to be
the location that receives its post.

Mark

[Martin Brown]

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Martin Brown
I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named cottage
in a nearby village (most villages here have one of all the usual
ones). The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT MY VILLAGE TRY
OTHER ONE".

Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road?  It would make
mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned than silly
names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could be anywhere.
Eventually, there could be a system that would ease sorting too.  There
could be a code based on the geographical area which I reckon could be
just 6 or 7 increasingly specific letters and numbers to cut down the
options to just a few individual houses.

We should be so lucky. Our street doesn't even *have* a name.

This causes considerable trouble when websites insist that you must have
a street name. I alternate between "no street" and "main street"
depending on how I am feeling when forced to input an answer.

Sometimes this causes credit card payment validation to fail (address
doesn't match the one on file - they can cope with a blank street name).

Postcodes here are a joke too. Historical field boundaries mean that a
bit of the church carpark shares its postcode with the farm shop about a
mile away and at the other end of a long thin strip of land.

Back when Northallerton still had a sorting office (instead of a
pathetic desk at the back of W.H.Smiths) it had a Darlington postcode!

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Martin Brown
Postcodes here are a joke too. Historical field boundaries mean that a
bit of the church carpark shares its postcode with the farm shop about a
mile away and at the other end of a long thin strip of land.

That's absolutely nothing at all to do with historic boundaries. Postcodes
are allocated for the convenience of the Royal Mail in delivering post. If
two premises share the same postcode then that's because post to both of
them is delivered at the same time by the same postie doing the same round,
and if they're different postcodes then it's because they're not delivered
as part of the same round.

A church car park, not being an addressable object, doesn't have a postcode
at all. Nor does a field. Any map which purports to show you postcodes as
discrete areas, with boundaries[1], is making it up using their own, often
unreliable algorithms. Such data is not provided by Royal Mail and has no
role at all in allocating postcodes to premises.

Post by Martin Brown
Back when Northallerton still had a sorting office (instead of a
pathetic desk at the back of W.H.Smiths) it had a Darlington postcode!

And there's no such thing as a "Darlington postcode". Postcode areas, like
postcodes themselves, are allocated for the convenience of Royal Mail. Their
names are, for the sake of a convenient mnemonic, typically taken from the
first two letters of one of the most significant towns or cities in the area
they cover. But they don't "belong" to those locations in any meaningful
sense. It's just a location code, nothing more, nothing less.

[1] Eg, the way Google does it in these examples:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Durber+Cl,+Stoke-on-Trent+ST4+6NU/@52.9900942,-2.2073999,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x487a6866848b40db:0x60f27128fcd644b3!8m2!3d52.9900957!4d-2.2047323!16s%2Fg%2F1v93_lqb!5m1!1e1?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTAyMy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
or https://tinyurl.com/knk4zkce

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Broad+St,+Ely+CB7+4AJ/@52.3968283,0.2651723,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x47d813733111613d:0x657ad2635fbeb87d!8m2!3d52.3965383!4d0.2679014!16s%2Fg%2F1tg5t9cl!5m1!1e1?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTAyMy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
or https://tinyurl.com/m4x2s32h

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sedge+Fen,+Lakenheath,+Brandon+IP27+9LG/@52.4380887,0.4403814,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x47d83ebd79edb207:0x5568373f1149e238!8m2!3d52.4326201!4d0.4635488!16s%2Fg%2F1td7bdqt!5m1!1e1?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTAyMy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
or https://tinyurl.com/5d5kwwzh

I've chosen the latter two as they neatly illustrate the futility of trying
to map postcodes as areas. The last one is particularly egregious because
it's extending the putative boundary to cover areas of land that, in
reality, do not have postal addresses and, if they were ever to be assigned
one, would not get this one.

Mark

[Theo]

Post by Mark Goodge
And there's no such thing as a "Darlington postcode". Postcode areas, like
postcodes themselves, are allocated for the convenience of Royal Mail. Their
names are, for the sake of a convenient mnemonic, typically taken from the
first two letters of one of the most significant towns or cities in the area
they cover. But they don't "belong" to those locations in any meaningful
sense. It's just a location code, nothing more, nothing less.

Also, the 'structure' of the postcode is based on Royal Mail's delivery
rounds in 1950s-70s. It doesn't mean that still applies today.

Effectively the postcode went from being a tree where the code defined a
route from trunk to branch to leaf, that was based on the delivery patterns
at the time, to now just a collection of leaves. The structure RM now
chooses to apply to their deliveries is not something they publicise and may
change from time to time.

Theo

[Mark Goodge]

On 28 Oct 2024 15:13:48 +0000 (GMT), Theo

Post by Theo

Post by Mark Goodge
And there's no such thing as a "Darlington postcode". Postcode areas, like
postcodes themselves, are allocated for the convenience of Royal Mail. Their
names are, for the sake of a convenient mnemonic, typically taken from the
first two letters of one of the most significant towns or cities in the area
they cover. But they don't "belong" to those locations in any meaningful
sense. It's just a location code, nothing more, nothing less.

Also, the 'structure' of the postcode is based on Royal Mail's delivery
rounds in 1950s-70s. It doesn't mean that still applies today.
Effectively the postcode went from being a tree where the code defined a
route from trunk to branch to leaf, that was based on the delivery patterns
at the time, to now just a collection of leaves. The structure RM now
chooses to apply to their deliveries is not something they publicise and may
change from time to time.

Yes, indeed. Although the basic structure, other than the final two
characters (and excluding non-geographic postcodes, of course) is still a
concentric geography-based system. The boundaries can get a little fuzzy at
the edges, but, broadly speaking, you know that CB7 4AJ is a subset of CB7,
which is a subset of CB. Postcodes do have one of the key usability features
of a location encoding system, which is that they are truncatable - ST4 is
not a completely different place to ST4 6NU, it's just less precise.

Mark

[Norman Wells]

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Martin Brown
Postcodes here are a joke too. Historical field boundaries mean that a
bit of the church carpark shares its postcode with the farm shop about a
mile away and at the other end of a long thin strip of land.

That's absolutely nothing at all to do with historic boundaries. Postcodes
are allocated for the convenience of the Royal Mail in delivering post. If
two premises share the same postcode then that's because post to both of
them is delivered at the same time by the same postie doing the same round,
and if they're different postcodes then it's because they're not delivered
as part of the same round.

That depends how close they are. A single postcode typically covers
between 6 and 12 houses. A single 'walk' will cover many more than
that, so several different postcodes.

[Adam Funk]

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Martin Brown
Postcodes here are a joke too. Historical field boundaries mean that a
bit of the church carpark shares its postcode with the farm shop about a
mile away and at the other end of a long thin strip of land.

That's absolutely nothing at all to do with historic boundaries. Postcodes
are allocated for the convenience of the Royal Mail in delivering post. If
two premises share the same postcode then that's because post to both of
them is delivered at the same time by the same postie doing the same round,
and if they're different postcodes then it's because they're not delivered
as part of the same round.
A church car park, not being an addressable object, doesn't have a postcode
at all. Nor does a field. Any map which purports to show you postcodes as
discrete areas, with boundaries[1], is making it up using their own, often
unreliable algorithms. Such data is not provided by Royal Mail and has no
role at all in allocating postcodes to premises.

Post by Martin Brown
Back when Northallerton still had a sorting office (instead of a
pathetic desk at the back of W.H.Smiths) it had a Darlington postcode!

And there's no such thing as a "Darlington postcode". Postcode areas, like
postcodes themselves, are allocated for the convenience of Royal Mail. Their
names are, for the sake of a convenient mnemonic, typically taken from the
first two letters of one of the most significant towns or cities in the area
they cover. But they don't "belong" to those locations in any meaningful
sense. It's just a location code, nothing more, nothing less.
or https://tinyurl.com/knk4zkce
or https://tinyurl.com/m4x2s32h
or https://tinyurl.com/5d5kwwzh
I've chosen the latter two as they neatly illustrate the futility of trying
to map postcodes as areas. The last one is particularly egregious because
it's extending the putative boundary to cover areas of land that, in
reality, do not have postal addresses and, if they were ever to be assigned
one, would not get this one.

I get the problem with the last one but how did CB7 4AJ turn out like
that?

[Andy Burns]

how did CB7 4AJ turn out like that?

Properties with tandem frontage, set back from the road?

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Adam Funk

Post by Mark Goodge
or https://tinyurl.com/knk4zkce
or https://tinyurl.com/m4x2s32h
or https://tinyurl.com/5d5kwwzh
I've chosen the latter two as they neatly illustrate the futility of trying
to map postcodes as areas. The last one is particularly egregious because
it's extending the putative boundary to cover areas of land that, in
reality, do not have postal addresses and, if they were ever to be assigned
one, would not get this one.

I get the problem with the last one but how did CB7 4AJ turn out like
that?

It's a combination of infill, orientation and Google simply getting it
wrong.

The gap between the top right area and the middle area - the section where
there's a street called Cardinals Way - used to be the location of Tesco.
When it was there, Tesco's postcode was CB7 4AJ, the same as its neighbours.
But when Tesco moved to their now-current location, the area was
redeveloped. All of the buildings on the former Tesco site have a street
address as one of the new streets, even those which seemingly face onto
Broad Street - those are, in fact, in Cardinals Terrace according to Royal
Mail. So they have the postcode associated with that street name, not a
Broad Street postcode. You can see that if you look at Streetview:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/kAXTYWqCpFk3cSn77

Moving on to the middle section - where Google has helfully labelled "Ely
Oriental Groceries" - the building immediately to the south of it (number
13) does actually also have a postcode of CB7 4AJ. Google is wrong to
exclude it from its putative map, there. Then there's another side street
(Ship Lane), and one of the buildings on the corner is on that street, not
Broad Street, so, again it has Ship Lane's postcode. But, beyond that, the
building numbered 17a and 17b (Google shows the numbers if you zoom in) has
a postcode of CB7 4AJ. So, again Google should have included those.

Then, finally, the small area at the bottom left of the map - the one
surrounding Alan Fish Bar (not, as Google wrongly calls it, Alan's Fish Bar)
- is, again, an error, although in this case it's the opposite error. The
correct postcode for Alan Fish Bar is CB7 4BD, so Google shouldn't have
shown it within CB7 4AJ. 17b Broad Street is the last building with a
postcode of CB7 4AJ, number 19 is the first with CB7 4BD. The chippie is 21
Broad Street, and correctly shares its postcode with its neighbours.

Mark

[Jeff]

Post by Mark Goodge
A church car park, not being an addressable object, doesn't have a postcode
at all. Nor does a field. Any map which purports to show you postcodes as
discrete areas, with boundaries[1], is making it up using their own, often
unreliable algorithms. Such data is not provided by Royal Mail and has no
role at all in allocating postcodes to premises.

That is not correct, a post codes do represent a defined areas starting
with the first designator working down in size. The smallest area may be
a building or business, but can be quite large in some cases.

The area are defined by RM but they have allowed Ordnance Survey to make
the data available freely under their Open Data system. You can download
the files in several different formats, some suitable for GIS systems.

Jeff

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Jeff

Post by Mark Goodge
A church car park, not being an addressable object, doesn't have a postcode
at all. Nor does a field. Any map which purports to show you postcodes as
discrete areas, with boundaries[1], is making it up using their own, often
unreliable algorithms. Such data is not provided by Royal Mail and has no
role at all in allocating postcodes to premises.

That is not correct, a post codes do represent a defined areas starting
with the first designator working down in size. The smallest area may be
a building or business, but can be quite large in some cases.

Please can you provide a cite for that assertion. Because it's contrary to
the information published by, among others, Royal Mail.

Post by Jeff
The area are defined by RM but they have allowed Ordnance Survey to make
the data available freely under their Open Data system. You can download
the files in several different formats, some suitable for GIS systems.

OS open data doesn't include anything that treats postcodes as anything
other than points, or collections of points. If you believe otherwise,
please supply the URL to where such data can be obtained.

Mark

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Jeff
The area are defined by RM but they have allowed Ordnance Survey to make
the data available freely under their Open Data system. You can download
the files in several different formats, some suitable for GIS systems.

OS open data doesn't include anything that treats postcodes as anything
other than points, or collections of points. If you believe otherwise,
please supply the URL to where such data can be obtained.

I should add that there is a non-open OS dataset called "Code-Point with
Polygons", which does assign notional areas to postcodes. This isn't free to
normal users, but is free to eligible public sector organisations. However,
the documentation associated with it makes it explicitly clear that postcode
boundaries are not a thing as far as Royal Mail are concerned, and that the
notional boundaries supplied with the dataset are essentiall arbitrary:

The polygons within the product are derived from georeferenced Royal Mail
Postal Address File (PAF) delivery addresses. A process is undertaken to
create a set of polygons around individual address records within a
postcode. This is called a Thiessen process and the polygons are the
result of a mathematical computation that creates polygons from point
data. In this way, mathematically-consistent boundaries are created
between distinct postcode groups, creating this notional boundary set.

Postcode unit boundaries are, by definition, only the delivery point or
collection of delivery points that constitutes the postcode units. The
boundary is therefore a notional one, the position of which is arbitrary.
What has been created, however, is a set of boundaries that follows a
consistent logic and portrays the notional footprint of each postcode
unit.

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/documents/product-support/getting-started/code-point-with-polygons-getting-started-guide.pdf

That document contains a small sample of the notional boundaries generated
by OS. Interestingly, if you compare it with the notional boundaries shown
by Google, they are very similar, but not precisely identical. This suggests
that Google aren't actually using that product themselves, instead, they are
using their own algorithm to calculate notional boundaries. Which is another
illustration of the fact that there is no canonical source of postcode
boundaries, just an accepted best-effort means of generating them.

Mark

[Roger Hayter]

On 30 Oct 2024 at 14:06:58 GMT, "Mark Goodge"

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Jeff
The area are defined by RM but they have allowed Ordnance Survey to make
the data available freely under their Open Data system. You can download
the files in several different formats, some suitable for GIS systems.

OS open data doesn't include anything that treats postcodes as anything
other than points, or collections of points. If you believe otherwise,
please supply the URL to where such data can be obtained.

I should add that there is a non-open OS dataset called "Code-Point with
Polygons", which does assign notional areas to postcodes. This isn't free to
normal users, but is free to eligible public sector organisations. However,
the documentation associated with it makes it explicitly clear that postcode
boundaries are not a thing as far as Royal Mail are concerned, and that the
The polygons within the product are derived from georeferenced Royal Mail
Postal Address File (PAF) delivery addresses. A process is undertaken to
create a set of polygons around individual address records within a
postcode. This is called a Thiessen process and the polygons are the
result of a mathematical computation that creates polygons from point
data. In this way, mathematically-consistent boundaries are created
between distinct postcode groups, creating this notional boundary set.
Postcode unit boundaries are, by definition, only the delivery point or
collection of delivery points that constitutes the postcode units. The
boundary is therefore a notional one, the position of which is arbitrary.
What has been created, however, is a set of boundaries that follows a
consistent logic and portrays the notional footprint of each postcode
unit.
https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/documents/product-support/getting-started/code-point-with-polygons-getting-started-guide.pdf
That document contains a small sample of the notional boundaries generated
by OS. Interestingly, if you compare it with the notional boundaries shown
by Google, they are very similar, but not precisely identical. This suggests
that Google aren't actually using that product themselves, instead, they are
using their own algorithm to calculate notional boundaries. Which is another
illustration of the fact that there is no canonical source of postcode
boundaries, just an accepted best-effort means of generating them.
Mark

Indeed it is hard to see what possible function postcode boundaries could
subserve. They certainly wouldn't be used to allocate postcodes to new
buildings, where the road connections would be much more important than
geographical boundaries. So why does anyone seek to allocate such boundaries,
except perhaps for visual clarity on a map?

[Martin Brown]

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Martin Brown
Postcodes here are a joke too. Historical field boundaries mean that a
bit of the church carpark shares its postcode with the farm shop about a
mile away and at the other end of a long thin strip of land.

That's absolutely nothing at all to do with historic boundaries. Postcodes
are allocated for the convenience of the Royal Mail in delivering post. If
two premises share the same postcode then that's because post to both of
them is delivered at the same time by the same postie doing the same round,
and if they're different postcodes then it's because they're not delivered
as part of the same round.

The population is so sparse that the same postie does a huge number of
postcodes on this round. In my village ending "A" is one side of the
"road" and ending "B" is the other apart from this one former farm which
has "F" (and the village hall which is officially postcoded as being in
a field 5 miles away according to official reference sources).

Post by Mark Goodge
A church car park, not being an addressable object, doesn't have a postcode
at all. Nor does a field. Any map which purports to show you postcodes as
discrete areas, with boundaries[1], is making it up using their own, often
unreliable algorithms. Such data is not provided by Royal Mail and has no
role at all in allocating postcodes to premises.

It is a clearly observable fact that vehicles trying to reach the farm
shop screech to a halt outside the church (which has a different
postcode ending "B") and look bemused because one building opposite
shares the same postcode "E" as the farm shop. It is the GPS car satnav
matching up the postcode that causes the problem and it does so at the
church carpark.

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Martin Brown
Back when Northallerton still had a sorting office (instead of a
pathetic desk at the back of W.H.Smiths) it had a Darlington postcode!

And there's no such thing as a "Darlington postcode". Postcode areas, like
postcodes themselves, are allocated for the convenience of Royal Mail. Their
names are, for the sake of a convenient mnemonic, typically taken from the
first two letters of one of the most significant towns or cities in the area
they cover. But they don't "belong" to those locations in any meaningful
sense. It's just a location code, nothing more, nothing less.

I think the problem arises when postcodes are used as geolocation tags
by other systems like GPS in car navigation for example. The regular
postie knows about this peculiar outlier but when he is on holiday the
relief guy often doesn't.

Post by Mark Goodge
I've chosen the latter two as they neatly illustrate the futility of trying
to map postcodes as areas. The last one is particularly egregious because
it's extending the putative boundary to cover areas of land that, in
reality, do not have postal addresses and, if they were ever to be assigned
one, would not get this one.

I don't think postcodes cause too much trouble to the post office or
their posties. But they do create some pretty weird anomalies.

Car GPS tends to take you to the median location of the zone which for
some really odd shaped ones isn't even the same postcode. Royal PITA in
those estates consisting entirely of tangled dead end cul de sacs.

It works OK if you have postcode and street name & house name/number.

[Fredxx]

Post by Norman Wells

Post by Martin Brown
I regularly get mail for another Mr Brown and the same named cottage
in a nearby village (most villages here have one of all the usual
ones). The latter goes back in the postbox with "NOT MY VILLAGE TRY
OTHER ONE".

Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number

Each property has a unique number. I suggest you look up Unique Property
Reference Numbers (UPRNs).

[Vir Campestris]

Post by Norman Wells
Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road?  It would make
mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned than silly
names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could be anywhere.

Next door to me is number 13. The house next to that is 11d, because
they built 4 new ones in a field. Should we renumber the road? Imagine
the chaos if we did!

Andy

[Martin Brown]

Post by Vir Campestris

Post by Norman Wells
Why oh why doesn't someone in authority identify all houses in the
country by a number and make them sequential in a road?  It would make
mail and goods deliveries so much easier for all concerned than silly
names like Rose Cottage or The Old Forge which could be anywhere.

Next door to me is number 13. The house next to that is 11d, because
they built 4 new ones in a field. Should we renumber the road? Imagine
the chaos if we did!

It is even more fun in Japan where buildings on a road are numbered
sequentially according to the order that they were built. After a few
decades this becomes essentially random making life nearly impossible
for taxi drivers away from their home patch in the pre-GPS era.

It spurred the invention of the Fax machine so that you could send
visitors a map of where to find your company address. Knowing the street
name and building number was nowhere near good enough. Local knowledge
was essential. "This place will do nicely" was a very handy phrase for
getting out of such situations when your taxi was obviously lost!

ISTR there is a Manchester Road between Bolton and Salford where each
authority started numbering sequentially from 1 at each end and where
they now meet in the middle are a bunch of different houses with the
same numbers and post code. Postman's nightmare - allegedly the only one
in the UK...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/postmans-nightmare-uk-street-houses-11237094

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was delivered to its
address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to its address, as its
full address was missing. Did I break any rules or laws by opening
the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I obliged to deliver it? I am
not employed by Royal Mail.

Post is delivered to an address, not a person, so if it is correctly
delivered to your address, even if it has someone else's name on it, then as
far as the Postal Services Act 2000 is concerned you are absolutely entitled
to open it and cannot be guilty of any offence related to interception of
mail.

That, of course, does not mean you have you have the right to make any use
you wish of the contents. If the contents are an object of value (eg, a
misaddressed eBay order), then you have an obligation to make reasonable
efforts to inform the sender of their error and make the goods available for
collection or, at their expense, post them back to them. If the contents are
information (eg, a bank statement, or a medical record) then they are likely
to be personal data which you are obliged to treat accordingly.

In your case, though, given that the address was incomplete, it could be
argued that it wasn't correctly delivered. Under the circumstances, I would
be inclined to simply drop it in the nearest letterbox with a note to the
effect that the person named does not live at your house. That way, it's
Royal Mail's problem, not yours.

Even if the address is yours, if the name isn't then in most cases I'd
generally just drop it back in the post with a "not known at this address"
scrawl on the front. Again, this is Royal Mail's problem, not yours. And,
unlike you, they employ people whose job it is to decide what to do with
misdirected mail.

Mark

[Roland Perry]

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was delivered to its
address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to its address, as its
full address was missing. Did I break any rules or laws by opening
the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I obliged to deliver it? I am
not employed by Royal Mail.

Post is delivered to an address, not a person, so if it is correctly
delivered to your address, even if it has someone else's name on it, then as
far as the Postal Services Act 2000 is concerned you are absolutely entitled
to open it and cannot be guilty of any offence related to interception of
mail.

The lack of *I*nterception liability is RIPA and successors, not PSA.

Basically the same idea that if you have a house with two phones, it's
not intercepting the communications of someone using the phone if you
pick up the extension and listen-in.

Post by Mark Goodge
That, of course, does not mean you have you have the right to make any use
you wish of the contents. If the contents are an object of value (eg, a
misaddressed eBay order), then you have an obligation to make reasonable
efforts to inform the sender of their error and make the goods available for
collection or, at their expense, post them back to them. If the contents are
information (eg, a bank statement, or a medical record) then they are likely
to be personal data which you are obliged to treat accordingly.

I don't think ordinary members of the public have any liability under
GDPR.

Post by Mark Goodge
In your case, though, given that the address was incomplete, it could be
argued that it wasn't correctly delivered. Under the circumstances, I would
be inclined to simply drop it in the nearest letterbox with a note to the
effect that the person named does not live at your house. That way, it's
Royal Mail's problem, not yours.
Even if the address is yours, if the name isn't then in most cases I'd
generally just drop it back in the post with a "not known at this address"

Or if you recognise the name as a previous inhabitant: "Gone Away".

I returned an item the other day with the explanation "Deceased".

Post by Mark Goodge
scrawl on the front. Again, this is Royal Mail's problem, not yours. And,
unlike you, they employ people whose job it is to decide what to do with
misdirected mail.
Mark

[Mark Goodge]

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Mark Goodge
Post is delivered to an address, not a person, so if it is correctly
delivered to your address, even if it has someone else's name on it, then as
far as the Postal Services Act 2000 is concerned you are absolutely entitled
to open it and cannot be guilty of any offence related to interception of
mail.

The lack of *I*nterception liability is RIPA and successors, not PSA.

Postal Services Act 2000 section 84:

(1) A person commits an offence if, without reasonable excuse, he
(a) intentionally delays or opens a postal packet in the course of its
transmission by post

But the point is that once it's been delivered, it's no longer in
transmission, so that section doesn't apply.

Mark

[Roland Perry]

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Mark Goodge
Post is delivered to an address, not a person, so if it is correctly
delivered to your address, even if it has someone else's name on it, then as
far as the Postal Services Act 2000 is concerned you are absolutely entitled
to open it and cannot be guilty of any offence related to interception of
mail.

The lack of *I*nterception liability is RIPA and successors, not PSA.

(1) A person commits an offence if, without reasonable excuse, he
(a) intentionally delays or opens a postal packet in the course of its
transmission by post
But the point is that once it's been delivered, it's no longer in
transmission, so that section doesn't apply.

It also include the verbs *delays* and *opens* (but strangely, not
*reads*), rather than the verb *intercepts*.

[Martin Brown]

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Mark Goodge
Even if the address is yours, if the name isn't then in most cases I'd
generally just drop it back in the post with a "not known at this address"

Or if you recognise the name as a previous inhabitant: "Gone Away".

That is unfortunately insufficient to prevent pension providers (and a
few others) from sending annual statements to people who no longer live
at the address in perpetuity (or do they finally stop at age 100?).

I just bin them now since nothing else works :(

[Jon Ribbens]

Post by Martin Brown

Post by Roland Perry

Post by Mark Goodge
Even if the address is yours, if the name isn't then in most cases I'd
generally just drop it back in the post with a "not known at this address"

Or if you recognise the name as a previous inhabitant: "Gone Away".

That is unfortunately insufficient to prevent pension providers (and a
few others) from sending annual statements to people who no longer live
at the address in perpetuity (or do they finally stop at age 100?).
I just bin them now since nothing else works :(

We occasionally get NHS letters to someone who can't have lived here for
decades. There appears to be nothing we can do to get the NHS to stop
sending them.

[Fredxx]

Post by Mark Goodge

Post by Davey
I live at XYZ House, XYZ Lane, in a village in Suffolk. Often, even
when correctly addressed, mail and/or courier deliveries come to me,
because the name of the house is prominently displayed, the house is at
one end of the Lane, and people, especially those in a hurry, are lazy.
Yesterday, Royal Mail delivered to me a letter addressed to somebody
whom I do not know, but the address merely said: "XYZ Lane".
I had to open it to find out who (what?) had sent it, in fact it was a
nationwide bank. Realising that it would take until Monday at the
earliest before I could contact it to find out who the intended
recipient was, and they might well refuse to tell me on the basis of
"GDPR", I asked a friend who lives nearer the middle of the Lane, and
she told me who it is, and where her house is. I will take it to her
house later today.
But what is the legal position here, regarding my opening the letter, to
find out who sent it? It can be argued that it was delivered to its
address, XYZ Lane, or that it was not delivered to its address, as its
full address was missing. Did I break any rules or laws by opening
the letter, to find out who sent it? Am I obliged to deliver it? I am
not employed by Royal Mail.

Post is delivered to an address, not a person, so if it is correctly
delivered to your address, even if it has someone else's name on it, then as
far as the Postal Services Act 2000 is concerned you are absolutely entitled
to open it and cannot be guilty of any offence related to interception of
mail.

That is not strictly true. Royal Mail and their postcode finder /
database work on business names. In fact they won't accept a bare
address and a business name for the same property.

[Jon Ribbens]

Post by Fredxx

Post by Mark Goodge
Post is delivered to an address, not a person, so if it is correctly
delivered to your address, even if it has someone else's name on it,
then as far as the Postal Services Act 2000 is concerned you are
absolutely entitled to open it and cannot be guilty of any offence
related to interception of mail.

That is not strictly true. Royal Mail and their postcode finder /
database work on business names. In fact they won't accept a bare
address and a business name for the same property.

I've seen many business entries in the PAF, of course, but somehow
I've never, ever, managed to add such an entry into it.