PON codes/Postcodes

antoinolachtnai

The item may well have been pre-assigned to a particular van by a central system, before it got to letterkenny.

Also, if the address said 'letterkenny', you can't really blame the guy in the depot for putting it on the van that goes to letterkenny.

It's all very well to say that the courier company isn't doing it right, but Geodirectory is really really complicated, even before you take into account that a lot of the addresses are just completely different from what you would expect them to be (which is a step back from saying they are 'wrong').

I had a classic "miss delivery" a couple of years ago, I live near Athlone in co. Roscommon.
The parcel started in Dublin,
[begin]
the courier company saw "co. Roscommon" on the label, sent it to Sligo for onward delivery.
Sligo depot saw "Athlone" and sent it to Dublin for onward delivery.
[goto begin]

I needed to call the couriers to tell them to substitute Westmeath for Roscommon before they were able to deliver. :rolleyes:

Bring on postcodes please!

L1011

Carawaystick wrote: »

See, this is an issue with the courier company not knowing what they're at.

I'd imagine it'd be reasonably obvious whether or not an address was rural or not from the address, and then it'd be a matter of getting to the location and then figuring out where the location is.
If the company couldn't do this in three days, well I don't think they should stay in business.

Its an issue with the courier company having a multi-million euro cost to develop their own routing system to be able to compete with a state-funded firm that was able to develop its own one whilst running up massive, taxpayer paid losses.

There is a reason we don't expect people to build their own telephone and power networks when competing in this market. Similarly developing your own post coding system is ludicrous when the state OWNS ONE.

You seem desperate to protect An Post's position here - do you work for them?

Carawaystick

Firstly I don't work for An Post. They've lost many letters I've posted and offer poor customer service every week I deal with them.

My argument is why should taxpayer money be used to subsidise private companies to come here and cherrypick the service they offer to maximise their profit. If they want to come here and start playing, they need to play by the existing rules, not whinge about them.

These courier companies are, from the evidence offered in the last few days even worse than I thought. I thought anyone with a reasonable knowledge of Ireland would know about seeming anomalies like having an address with Athlone, Co. Roscommon in it, let alone a company claiming to be a delivery company.

I can clearly see how one of twenty houses in a townland might be hard to specify, but not understanding a basic part of an irish postal address is just poor.

I've been asked by several couriers in my estate how to get to various parts of it. The estate is mapped correctly on google maps and reasonably ok on nokia maps. All the various roads have a standard namesign at the junctions. This leads me to believe the couriers are either lazy or porly trained and equipped.

Any time I get stuff delivered that cannot be posted, I always end up paying far more than the An Post rates, for a worse service.


I don't accept the postal address database is hardware like an electric or telecom network. It's software( and wetware).
If you have duplicate townland names, fairly few will be near the same town. This came from the fact that originally they would need a specific address back in the day when the brits were taking over the country setting up the postal service.
For the vast majority of locations the postal address should be figurable out easily, especially by a skilled company working in the delivery service game.
The other component is accurate and timely mapping; along with a strict refusal to allow any new duplicate placenames occurring (This bird has flown in many cases - Drogheda suffered a tragedy due to reusing streetnames in different parts of the town across co. lines)

In France, only 3 digits are used per county for the postcode, with a postal address there being: streetname, postcode, commune name.
And the last digit is usually 0 except for specific locations that receive lots of mail. so that's only a hundred per county, and French counties are mostly bigger than here. And it works pretty well there.

L1011

Only An Post is getting subsided with taxpayer money, the courier firms seem perfectly capable of turning a profit themselves...

Why should UTV, Magnet, Smart et al be allowed use the eircom copper wire network the state funded? Because it makes absolutely no sense to build another. Why should Eirtricity and Bord Gais be allowed use the ESB network the state funded? Because it makes absolutely no sense to build another.

It makes absolutely no sense to have two postcode systems. The state has already paid for An Posts one and it requires no on-going maintainence as such - hence there is no justification to charge for using it. In fact, having two postcode systems would in fact be far more damaging than having none.

antoinolachtnai

The issue isn't duplicate townland names. It's duplicate house addresses.

It is common for all the houses in a townland to have exactly the same address and that's the problem.

There is no accurate and timely mapping. The addresses are often just wrong. For instance, I've seen a street name in geodirectory that corresponds to no local usage and no street signs. Placing townlands in postal towns that are 50 miles away is just wrong.

In France, the address has a standard format. Here, an address can be between 2 and 8 lines long, depending.

Generally speaking in most European countries, the address system is somewhat well ordered and is somewhat well maintained in most countries. It's a piece of national infrastructure.

In Ireland, we don't have a well ordered and maintained address system. It is reasonable of courier companies (and doctors and ambulances and local authorities and logistics firms and utilities and all the rest of the people who depend on it) to expect that we should have this.

Carawaystick

What exactly is the postcode system here?

I can see there must be some database linking townlands to nearby towns and vilages, but that's it, and should be clearly reverse engineerable.

The key advantage An Post has is local knowledge. A postman will know that Sean Kelly, Empor, Ballinacarrigy, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath lives in that house while Pat Kelly, Empor, Ballinacarrigy, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath lives in this house a km away.

What postcode does a person writing to Pat Kelly put on the envelope to tell an Post this, that is secret from if a courier was delivering it?

L1011

Carawaystick wrote: »

What exactly is the postcode system here?

I can see there must be some database linking townlands to nearby towns and vilages, but that's it, and should be clearly reverse engineerable.

The key advantage An Post has is local knowledge. A postman will know that Sean Kelly, Empor, Ballinacarrigy, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath lives in that house while Pat Kelly, Empor, Ballinacarrigy, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath lives in this house a km away.

What postcode does a person writing to Pat Kelly put on the envelope to tell an Post this, that is secret from if a courier was delivering it?

An Post's OCR system + addressee database will be able to provide correct routing information for Pat and Sean, right down to which postman to give the letter to if they live on different sides of a delivery area. The local knowledge of the postman is fairly irrelevant due to their extensive, state funded address geolocation equipment.

An Post use this state funded database to operate an effective monopoly over any form of mass delivery. The state could never give TNT/DHL/UPS/Fastway/whoever the contract for delivering polling cards, tax documents, etc despite (indirectly) owning the ONLY reliable system for telling where people and places are.

The *only* reason An Post are so viciously opposed to a public post coding system is because they have one, and the competition don't.

Delphic

So what happens when they deregulate in 2011? which bits of the public post system become available to privte operators?

And if An Post have a good postal delivery system in place, why assume that the code solutions on here would be used for them?

Don't use them - just use them for everything else except delivery of post?

People don't spend their time thinking their way through 8 lines of an address. they just say where's that, show me the way to get to it, and I'll go there. If you know where you're starting from, and where you want to finish, that's it.

If I'm a guy delivering something, and I can see where I've got to go on a map - print or electronic - I'm not going to waste time wondering out loud about townlands, placenames, etc. Just turn right, turn left, go straight. Stop, you've arrivd.

antoinolachtnai

MYOB: I see where you are coming from, but geodirectory is really not that accurate. An Post appear to be very much dependent on local knowledge of postmen to deliver the mail the last few hundred yards. Like I say, you can licence GeoDirectory for your own use.

An Post's unions have voiced their support for a postcode.

By international standards, the Irish postal system is not particularly good. The next day delivery rate for flat mail is ten or fifteen percent below what it should be.

There are no maps to guide delivery men to non-unique addresses. There cannot be, as long as the addresses remain non-unique.

Nobody knows exactly what will happen when they deregulate.

ardmacha

An Post use this state funded database to operate an effective monopoly over any form of mass delivery.

This is only state funded to extent that a commercial semi state body produced it. If others are to be given access to it then this must too be on commercial terms, in the same way as an electricity provider has to pay the ESB for the grid. Or else the State must buy the database from An Post.

L1011

ardmacha wrote: »

This is only state funded to extent that a commercial semi state body produced it. If others are to be given access to it then this must too be on commercial terms, in the same way as an electricity provider has to pay the ESB for the grid. Or else the State must buy the database from An Post.

The ESB grid has ongoing maintenance costs just to keep it present and correct; and meter-reading costs. A postcode DB should be updated by the local authorities and doesn't cost cash to keep in existence.

ardmacha

A central geographic database available to everyone would be great, and this should include everything of relevance, the telephone code, the court district etc. But it cost real money for An Post to collect this data, it should not be handed to their competitors without compensation, especially competitors that cherry pick the services they will provide.

It would be great to see a central database of all geo data, this could be queried by anyone for a small fee, thus providing resources for updating it and funding the original holders of the data.