Post/Zip codes and Ireland

Maskhadov

when are we getting zip/post codes ? I know the government signed a contract a while back. There are postcodes and zip codes, although mostly the same.

It should make deliveries with DHL and the like far quicker. I think the government may have to introduce road/street names to all the roads in ireland. House numbers of course will never work in this country with all the one off housing in the countryside we do.

some day we may be able to do the following


http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/fry/zipdecode/

dowlingm

An Post have always opposed it but in my view that's only to protect their direct mailing monopoly since they have their own system - at a price.

dr zoidberg

Wiki says they're to come in at the start of 2008, no idea what format they'll be though.
Click here for link

Hagar

AFAIK An Post have an internal "postcode" system which they haven't made public to protect their monopoly. They will make it available to businesses on a licenced basis 40k per annum 3 years ago. Before you ask I was the IT manager for a major courier company and we were thwarted at ever turn by An Post in our efforts to develop a similar system.

Maskhadov

The lack of postcodes is one of the biggest reasons why post is so poor delivered in this tiny island. An post has to be one of the most inefficent post services in western Europe. Its a shame its another 2 years away. Still its better than never.

When I order anything off amazon it takes up to 10 days to get here but the north has next day delivery or 2-5 day deliver. Why cant we have next day delivery (for a similar reasonable price) or free delivery within 2-5 days on offer to people in the north.

In the north they had similar problems to us in that they used townlands. It meant that the U.K government had to name ALL of the roads in the north. Thinking up thousands of names will be intresting. I dont know if they will be in English or Irish.

corktina

in my home town it isnt a problem, i had a mag posted to me at the address "house with all the Cortinas, Kanturk..." not a prob.....:D

mackerski

An Post doesn't require a Postcode, since, as noted above, they have their own database of all addresses that works just fine without one. Just about anybody else delivering stuff and a bunch of other people would benefit greatly from their introduction, so it's probably in the interest of fairness that they are being introduced.

Some of the more obvious benefits:

* Facilitates address-based verification for credit-card transactions (currently next to impossible to automate for Ireland)

* Makes it easier for couriers to do automated quotes for a particular pickup/delivery point.

* Gives us something to enter in compusory postcode fields on brain-dead e-commerce systems.

* Annoys traditionalists

* May get us over our national obsession with county boundaries (see "Annoys traditionalists")

* Allows the elimination of oxymoronic addresses like "Clonee, Dublin 15".

Dermot

Calina

mackerski wrote:

* Gives us something to enter in compusory postcode fields on brain-dead e-commerce systems.

I don't see why people have a problem with this. I just enter zeroes, end of story. Anyway, because there are different post code formats depending on what country you are in, the presence or absence doesn't necessarily made a difference to simplistic e-commerce systems.

Hagar

If you have Autoroute Europe 2006 just enter 83240 and hit find.
It's so accurate my house is practically in the box it uses to display the 83240.
How Irish business can survive without that is a mystery to me.

murphaph

Postcodes will be a good thing for competition in the mail delivery arena. An Post are great for badly addressed stuff but in all honesty, is that what we want from a postal service? It's ironic that the internet was once seen as the killer blow for the post office (email, online banking etc.) but in fact now it seems it may be the saviour (ebay, amazon). It would be nice if we could somehow integrate our postal service with the UK (not saying the UK has a good QoS, it's gone to sh!t in recent years) so we can avail of the same rates from amazon and so on. If they're shipping to fecking Newry for x, they (in theory) could ship to Dundalk for exactly the same price.

corktina

Maskhadov wrote:

The lack of postcodes is one of the biggest reasons why post is so poor delivered in this tiny island. An post has to be one of the most inefficent post services in western Europe. Its a shame its another 2 years away. Still its better than never.

When I order anything off amazon it takes up to 10 days to get here but the north has next day delivery or 2-5 day deliver. Why cant we have next day delivery (for a similar reasonable price) or free delivery within 2-5 days on offer to people in the north.

In the north they had similar problems to us in that they used townlands. It meant that the U.K government had to name ALL of the roads in the north. Thinking up thousands of names will be intresting. I dont know if they will be in English or Irish.

i would suspect that a postcode will be issued for each townland. Codes in the UK are for batches of houses rather than individual ones so I cant see aproblem there.Streets in built up areas are already named usually I would have thought.

Maskhadov

The towns and cities will be fine its just the countryside that is the problem. There arent too many other countries that have our distributed population like ours.

Were going to have a big postcode then if every town land gets one. I think they should introduce road names. All that road and postcode information can be then put into a computer and any delivery company (using GPS as well) could find the house with complete ease.

Hagar

It's not that simple. The only thing that will work is an unambiguous postcode.

Take the following example

Saint Anne's Park
St. Anne's Pk.
St Annes Pk
St Ann's Park

I could do that all day. There is no end to the variations on simple names.
Also there is a snobbery thing. Many people in poorer areas on the borders of well-to-do areas ofter use that area name as their own rather than the correct one.
In my experience half the people in Old Ballymun give their address as Glasnevin.

Only postcodes will sort it out.

corktina

and what about all the similar (or identical names) I dont know how our postmen cope.....they do very well I think....

it is certainly going to be a nightmare to sort it out but I cant think that street names in the countryside will work out

Maskhadov

Do you think they will name all of the roads in Ireland ? I think they may well have to.

MrPudding

Calina wrote:

I don't see why people have a problem with this. I just enter zeroes, end of story. Anyway, because there are different post code formats depending on what country you are in, the presence or absence doesn't necessarily made a difference to simplistic e-commerce systems.

Entering zeros may get you past simple web form validation but it can cause problems on web sites that use address validation for credit cards. Your address of record with your credit card provider will not have the zeros in it. Sites which use address validation or Worldpay may initiall refuse your card.


Have a look at this post from a while ago:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=1219272&postcount=37

This is what An Post use:

http://www.geodirectory.ie/index.html

Floater knows a disturbing amount about posting sh1t. Nice explanation here of CEDEX:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=1231693&postcount=57

The whole thread is actually a good read if you are interested in postcodes.

MrP

Maskhadov

good post MrPudding.

The best system of house number (for use outside the existing urban numbered area) is the metric house number as used in France and some other countries.

If your house is 500 metres from the start of Dublin Road, it will be 500 Dublin Road.

If my house is on the same road on the opposite side, half a km down from you, it will be 1001 Dublin Road.

If someone builds a house half way between the two on my side it will be 751 Dublin Road, or 750 if it is on your side.

It makes searching for houses and business premises simple – even if everyone doesn’t display their house number. All you need to do is reset the odometer in the car to 00000 either at the start of the road or outside someone’s house where they display the house number.

You don’t need a district name in a rationalized mailing address system because the postcode will clearly indicate the “district”.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=1231693&postcount=57

I think that is just a fantastic idea !!

dazberry

Hagar wrote:

Also there is a snobbery thing. Many people in poorer areas on the borders of well-to-do areas ofter use that area name as their own rather than the correct one.

You are right - I think we've all seen it (or done it depending where we came from). But more interestingly there are areas of ambiguity, and areas that have been created by previous disputes.

Since you mentioned St. Annes, just thinking of the D5/D13 split as I would remember there are anomolies, in that parts of D13 jut in to D5 and vice versa, and it probably has more to do with when they were built (or who built them) then where they actually are. As my mother said to me - it was all country roads in 1968!

The latter for example would be say bits of Leopardstown that have a postcode of Blackrock Co.Dublin. The reason for this is related to old postal disputes and union issues etc...

I now live on a road with a little curve. In the middle of the curve, the street name changes from terrace, to street(answers on a post card please ) and all the house numbers start again. You have no idea of the confusion this causes. I doubt postcodes will fix this - but definitely its the way forward.

D.

johnnyrotten

If it's not broken , dont fix it

MrPudding

johnnyrotten wrote:

If it's not broken , dont fix it

I think the point is that most people think, in fact, that itis broken and therefore requires fixing.

MrP

Maskhadov

just one problem with the french system for house numbers. What happens when you are coming from the other direction on the road.

weehamster

While this may be a interesting debate, can the mods please tell me what has this topic got anything to do with Commuting/Transport ???

Calina

MrPudding wrote:

Entering zeros may get you past simple web form validation but it can cause problems on web sites that use address validation for credit cards. Your address of record with your credit card provider will not have the zeros in it. Sites which use address validation or Worldpay may initiall refuse your card.

You are probably right - but it has never happened to me, and I order from sites in several different countries - all of which have postcodes.

corktina

weehamster wrote:

While this may be a interesting debate, can the mods please tell me what has this topic got anything to do with Commuting/Transport ???

easy one to answer that is.....any Couriers want to comment on how useful in TRANSPORT circles a postcode would be?

Sarsfield

It would also be useful to the emergency services. If a caller to 999/112 can give a postcode, there's less room for error. The location can also be brought up immediately on a map and the services directed to the correct location.

This would work for pizza delivery too!

shotamoose

mackerski wrote:

Some of the more obvious benefits:

* Facilitates address-based verification for credit-card transactions (currently next to impossible to automate for Ireland)

* Makes it easier for couriers to do automated quotes for a particular pickup/delivery point.

* Gives us something to enter in compusory postcode fields on brain-dead e-commerce systems.

* Annoys traditionalists

* May get us over our national obsession with county boundaries (see "Annoys traditionalists")

* Allows the elimination of oxymoronic addresses like "Clonee, Dublin 15".

Dermot

It'd be good for services like this, too.

corktina

This would work for pizza delivery too![/QUOTE]

very valid point!!!!!:cool:

Victor

mackerski wrote:

* Allows the elimination of oxymoronic addresses like "Clonee, Dublin 15".

Rathoath, Dublin 15 is much "better".

mackerski

Victor wrote:

Rathoath, Dublin 15 is much "better".

Have you seen that used? I haven't.

Dermot

corktina

Maskhadov wrote:

just one problem with the french system for house numbers. What happens when you are coming from the other direction on the road.

i guess you subtract instead of adding.......

Victor

weehamster wrote:

While this may be a interesting debate, can the mods please tell me what has this topic got anything to do with Commuting/Transport ???

Its legit, postcodes are "paper" (or is it virtual) infrastructure.