[OT] Postal counties to be dropped from the Postcode Address File
 

In uk.transport.london message
, Mon, 2 Aug 2010 17:23:57, Basil Jet
posted:


Since you're the post office, and you delivered the mail yesterday and
the day before, you should know which Station Road has a Mr Jones in
it, i.e. the person's name is a checksum.

And what if the letter is to a Mr Jones who is visiting the family of
his daughter Mrs Brush?

--
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Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
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[OT] Postal counties to be dropped from the Postcode Address File
 

In article ,
(Tim Roll-Pickering) wrote:

And of course there's the nightmare of courier firms trying to
deliver to those sorts of addresses. I don't know if it's the case
in Cambridge but a lot of universities have a tendency to use a
single postcode for the entire campus. This is fine for Royal Mail
who either deliver to a central mail room or who get used to
looking at the building information (for example I've recently
discovered that in my Kent days I was using the wrong post code for
my college/halls, instead giving out the postcode for the central
registry) but it can be a real nightmare for a courier firm with
limited experience of the destination and who find the address
supplied does not contain sufficient information. My current QMUL
department gives out an address that's fine for mail but it would
be incomprehensible to anyone trying to deliver a package,
especially at this time of year when a lot of people actually on
the campus are from conferences et al and won't know which building
a particular department office is in, let alone how to find it.
(And the Royal Mail's online post code finder is useless for trying
to divine a more specific code.)

I must admit courier deliveries were pretty well unknown in my student
days. I suspect they would only work to the porters' lodge nowadays.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

[OT] Postal counties to be dropped from the Postcode AddressFile
 

On 2010\08\03 19:54, Richard J. wrote:
Eric wrote on 03 August 2010 19:27:30 ...
On 2010-08-03, Roland wrote:
In messageeL6dnWfi1ubAy8rRnZ2dnUVZ8gSdnZ2d@giganews. com, at 18:35:57
on Mon, 2 Aug 2010, remarked:
Try Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ. Postcodes
define points for deliver of mail, not a large sprawl of buildings
covering a large chunk of central Cambridge.

When I was in Cambridge, I used a very short address that worked every
time. (Sidney Sussex, Cambridge). I've never had the opportunity to have
such a short address again.

surname,suburb worked for us when I were a nipper, though mostly we
put the road in, and later, a direction.

Presumably your surname isn't Jones and you didn't live in Wales. Even
the road wouldn't help much in some parts of Wales. My father-in-law
during WW2 had an entire platoon of soldiers all named Jones.

I don't know how he managed to keep up with them.

[OT] Postal counties to be dropped from the Postcode Address File
 

On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 17:22:13 +0100, Dr J R Stockton
wrote:

The postcode system ideally suits the postal authorities, and no-one
else very much.


If only that were true.

The postcode system works beautifully with navigation and mapping.
Perhaps you don't use these things.

[OT] Postal counties to be dropped from the Postcode Address File
 

Arthur Figgis wrote:
The colleges each have their own postcodes, though Name, College,
Cambridge is pretty much certain to work (unless there are two people
with the same name there), and there will be a porter to collect
whatever it is. I guess there might be a problem if you are getting a
big heavy thing which needs to be delivered to a very specific place.

Getting the 37kg parcel over the humpback bridge on the river on an unbraked
trolley was fun... it almost fell in. Next time I found out the real
postcode of the building it wanted to go to, even though it had no
facilities to receive post.

The system used to break with firms which couldn't cope with multiple
names at one address, but hopefully that is generally fixed these days -
one electronics firm used to send all orders to whoever had placed the
first ever order from that address, so there would be messages
circulating saying things like "whoever ordered the left-handed grommit
from ACME, it's in my pigeon hole, from Fred Bloggs".

Still happens. Usually the addressee is left off, so things are just
addressed to 'XYZ College', and the porters have to figure which of 600
people it might belong to. Plenty of emails like this still fly around.

Theo

[OT] Postal counties to be dropped from the Postcode AddressFile
 

On 2010\08\04 09:59, Bruce wrote:

The postcode system works beautifully with navigation and mapping.
Perhaps you don't use these things.

No, the OS grid reference system works beautifully with navigation and
mapping, as does the lat long system. The postcode system only works in
these applications via a stonking great lookup table, whose ugliness the
computer hides from you.

[OT] Postal counties to be dropped from the Postcode Address File
 

On Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:44:19 +0100, Basil Jet
wrote:

On 2010\08\04 09:59, Bruce wrote:

The postcode system works beautifully with navigation and mapping.
Perhaps you don't use these things.

No, the OS grid reference system works beautifully with navigation and
mapping, as does the lat long system. The postcode system only works in
these applications via a stonking great lookup table, whose ugliness the
computer hides from you.


If I can't see it, who cares? It really isn't important.

What *is* important is that the system works extremely well.

Some implementations are even better - my Garmin SatNav tells me which
side of the road my destination address is on, and is uncannily
accurate. My TomTom SatNav doesn't have that particular feature, but
it is still extremely good - stonking great lookup tables or no.

[OT] Postal counties to be dropped from the Postcode Address File
 

Arthur Figgis wrote:

Cambridge doesn't have a campus. Unless you are a dodgy looking tourist,
in which case it is that way ---

Cambridge as a whole no but the college I'm most familiar with (Churchill)
feels rather campusy.

The colleges each have their own postcodes, though Name, College,
Cambridge is pretty much certain to work (unless there are two people with
the same name there), and there will be a porter to collect whatever it
is. I guess there might be a problem if you are getting a big heavy thing
which needs to be delivered to a very specific place.

I was thinking of things like laser printers and even reams of paper, where
you might want it delivered to a specific entrance/building. These are the
sort of things that might come via a courier who is less familiar with the
set-up and likely to take a college wide post code literally.

My undergraduate university was Kent, with colleges on a campus, and the
post codes told to students often bore little relation to the ones on the
database. (This also created a lot of problems for TV licences.) Compounding
matters was a tendency for some of the more obscure sections to use building
names that weren't very prominently displayed on the buildings themselves or
on signs and it could be quite difficult to find out of the way places - the
students' union (split across multiple buildings) saying things were
happenng in "the Virginia Woolf building" was one of the worst. Some of the
newer accomodation blocks are standalone creatures with no receptions at all
and absolutely no way to contact anyone inside without both having mobile
phones (far from universal when I started).

[OT] Postal counties to be dropped from the Postcode Address File
 

In uk.transport.london message , Tue, 3
Aug 2010 08:57:08, Roland Perry posted:

In message , at 18:35:57
on Mon, 2 Aug 2010, remarked:
Try Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ. Postcodes
define points for deliver of mail, not a large sprawl of buildings
covering a large chunk of central Cambridge.

When I was in Cambridge, I used a very short address that worked every
time. (Sidney Sussex, Cambridge). I've never had the opportunity to
have such a short address again.

That could cause problems with an item posted in Massachusetts.
Especially as there appears to be a Sidney Sussex College in New York,
New York.

--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. Turnpike v6.05.
Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - w. FAQish topics, links, acronyms
PAS EXE etc : URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/programs/ - see 00index.htm
Dates - miscdate.htm estrdate.htm js-dates.htm pas-time.htm critdate.htm etc.

[OT] Postal counties to be dropped from the Postcode Address File
 

In article ,
(Tim Roll-Pickering) wrote:

Arthur Figgis wrote:

Cambridge doesn't have a campus. Unless you are a dodgy looking
tourist, in which case it is that way ---

Cambridge as a whole no but the college I'm most familiar with
(Churchill) feels rather campusy.

The colleges each have their own postcodes, though Name, College,
Cambridge is pretty much certain to work (unless there are two
people with the same name there), and there will be a porter to
collect whatever it is. I guess there might be a problem if you
are getting a big heavy thing which needs to be delivered to a
very specific place.

I was thinking of things like laser printers and even reams of
paper, where you might want it delivered to a specific
entrance/building. These are the sort of things that might come via
a courier who is less familiar with the set-up and likely to take a
college wide post code literally.

My undergraduate university was Kent, with colleges on a campus,
and the post codes told to students often bore little relation to
the ones on the database. (This also created a lot of problems for
TV licences.) Compounding matters was a tendency for some of the
more obscure sections to use building names that weren't very
prominently displayed on the buildings themselves or on signs and
it could be quite difficult to find out of the way places - the
students' union (split across multiple buildings) saying things
were happenng in "the Virginia Woolf building" was one of the
worst. Some of the newer accomodation blocks are standalone
creatures with no receptions at all and absolutely no way to
contact anyone inside without both having mobile phones (far from
universal when I started).

There are always University Departments in Cambridge, with a whole load of
other postcodes.

--
Colin Rosenstiel