Eircodes, why do some courier companies not use them?

Mad_maxx

SpannerMonkey wrote: »

did we, cause i use them all the time, bloody brilliant they are, try living in a rural area and you will see what a difference they have made.

There is definitely a cultural aversion to them, bit like automatic transmission in cars

freshpopcorn

I had an issue with Littlewoods before. They said my parcel couldn't be delivered because they hadn't my eircode.
However to access my account they made me confirm digits in my eircode.

janfebmar

Mad_maxx wrote: »

We order a lot of stuff from amazon, a lot of couriers still don't understand or are too lazy to use eircode

It's an expensive, not user friendly system for couriers. Yet another f. Up by the gubberment here. Ask any courier who has used some systems outside the state.

dxhound2005

Mad_maxx wrote: »

There is definitely a cultural aversion to them, bit like automatic transmission in cars

I love my automatic.

fryup

Mad_maxx wrote: »

We order a lot of stuff from amazon, a lot of couriers still don't understand or are too lazy to use eircode

well in fairness to the couriers...a lot of customers don't include their eircode when filling out the shipping address online

Mad_maxx

dxhound2005 wrote: »

I love my automatic.

Me too

Stovepipe

Gerardo Large Suicide wrote: »

Loc8? You're joking. I went with it years ago, because of difficulty getting deliveries to our rural location. Not one courier company used it nor had heard of it. The Garmin I had at the time didn't use it, and no in car sat nav since has used it. And it's a very unwieldy number.

Loc8 code was designed by a member of the Naval Service and offered to the State for free, primarily as a search and rescue location code and it happens to work perfectly with housing and business premises, long before Eircode did and it was in use in the popular GPS systems long before Eircode. I have used it for parcel deliveries and it works just fine. It also works for random locations, which Eircode can't do. Eircode is not as user friendly as UK postcodes, which has been in service for decades.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Stovepipe wrote: »

Loc8 code was designed by a member of the Naval Service and offered to the State for free, primarily as a search and rescue location code and it happens to work perfectly with housing and business premises, long before Eircode did and it was in use in the popular GPS systems long before Eircode. I have used it for parcel deliveries and it works just fine. It also works for random locations, which Eircode can't do. Eircode is not as user friendly as UK postcodes, which has been in service for decades.

I'm well aware of who designed it, as I had a couple of conversations with him, trying to find some couriers who used it and to get it operational on my Sat Navs - none of which he could satisfy at the time.


It's numbering is even more unwieldy and counter intuitive than Eircode.

astrofool

Mad_maxx wrote: »

We order a lot of stuff from amazon, a lot of couriers still don't understand or are too lazy to use eircode

These couriers are bad at their jobs, and should be given feedback to that effect. I mean, the entire job of a courier is to get to a location to make a delivery and go there, Eircode in combination with a GPS/Phone makes it much more efficient to do so.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

astrofool wrote: »

These couriers are bad at their jobs, and should be given feedback to that effect. I mean, the entire job of a courier is to get to a location to make a delivery and go there, Eircode in combination with a GPS/Phone makes it much more efficient to do so.

And to put it in perspective: We are in a very rural location and pre Eircode, only DPD, for some reason, could ever find us. We regularly failed to receive deliveries at all. Post Eircode, every delivery just arrives, without the need for calls from drivers looking for directions. So, saying couriers don't use it is just plainly incorrect.

judeboy101

Best address system ever

https://what3words.com/

The high horse brigade

judeboy101 wrote: »

Best address system ever

https://what3words.com/

That nobody uses, good luck with getting the emergency services or even couriers to adapt to it

dxhound2005

Stovepipe wrote: »

Loc8 code was designed by a member of the Naval Service and offered to the State for free, primarily as a search and rescue location code and it happens to work perfectly with housing and business premises, long before Eircode did and it was in use in the popular GPS systems long before Eircode. I have used it for parcel deliveries and it works just fine. It also works for random locations, which Eircode can't do. Eircode is not as user friendly as UK postcodes, which has been in service for decades.

Eircodes are user friendly. A string of 5 digits (USA zip codes) is user friendly, if it means something. Because UK postcodes have been in use for so long, some people are saying that they are past their sell by date.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/02/postcode-system-no-longer-fit-purpose-digital-age-study-shows/

gctest50

The high horse brigade wrote: »

That nobody uses, good luck with getting the emergency services or even couriers to adapt to it

Openpostcode is the one thet should've settled on

LGPL so no super secret special snowflake stuff

From OpenPostcode to coordinates:

For "D4TGHK5C"

swap the character set

"6789B5NPQC4MXRD3LWTF2KJHG" for regular base 25 "0...9, A...N".

base10to5(base25to10("EAIONL59"))="2420334443411014"

Taking alternating characters:
55.5-(base5to10("22344411")+.5)/390625*4.2 = 53.349798912

(base5to10("40343104")+.5)/390625*5.4 -10.75 = -6.260248192

From coordinates to OpenPostcode:

base10to25(base25to10(base10to5(int((55.5-53.349795)/4.2*390625))))*5 + base10to25(base25to10(int((10.75-6.260254)/5.4*390625))))) = "EAIONL59"

Take away vowels etc by swapping the base 25 "0...9, A...N" character set

for "6789B5NPQC4MXRD3LWTF2KJHG"

( so you don't accidently end up with words)

and you get "D4TGHK5C"

You could do / undo that with a pencil n paper if you like that sort of thing



.

gctest50

It's free as can be :



https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AiBGO0bjC-vidEJXN2FYeXdRanduMWtqTmpxcDlqdnc&output=xls

Badly Drunk Boy

SPDUB wrote: »

There was , the Irish Language lobby .

They couldn't use codes that would reference the english language version of placenames or else there would be an outcry.

They got away with it for Dublin because they could claim they were just bolting it on to an existing system.

That sounds like you made that up, or gullibly believed somebody who did. I just checked, and the eircode for TG4 (for example) is H91 X4T0, with an 'X', a letter that isn't even in the Irish alphabet! Údarás na Gaeltachta in Galway is H91 TY22, RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta is H91 Y431.

Yeah, I'm sad for checking these eircodes, but of four organisations relating to the Irish language, three contained non-Irish letters.

The Cush

Leaving couriers aside for a minute, I booked a chimney cleaner in recent weeks, he asked me for directions, I asked him if the eircode would do. Texted him on the eircode and job done.

Eircode is one of those developments that will over time become part of everyday life without us even noticing, we'll just take it for granted

Stovepipe

dxhound2005 wrote: »

Eircodes are user friendly. A string of 5 digits (USA zip codes) is user friendly, if it means something. Because UK postcodes have been in use for so long, some people are saying that they are past their sell by date.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/02/postcode-system-no-longer-fit-purpose-digital-age-study-shows/

the advantage of the UK system is that it defined a location of a house more accurately than Eircode did and that was decades ago; a postman in the UK could find a house or a row of houses (worst case) or an individual workshop or factory in an industrial estate. The nature of Eircode being a random generator means that the Eircodes of adjoining buildings is not sequential, so that a parcel or letter that goes to the wrong address by one door number can end up back in the depot, whereas a UK postman knows from the Postcode that even a single digit change still keeps him close to his delivery destination.

dxhound2005

Stovepipe wrote: »

the advantage of the UK system is that it defined a location of a house more accurately than Eircode did and that was decades ago; a postman in the UK could find a house or a row of houses (worst case) or an individual workshop or factory in an industrial estate. The nature of Eircode being a random generator means that the Eircodes of adjoining buildings is not sequential, so that a parcel or letter that goes to the wrong address by one door number can end up back in the depot, whereas a UK postman knows from the Postcode that even a single digit change still keeps him close to his delivery destination.

An Post does not depend on Eircodes, so this is not relevant. Postpersons have defined routes, unlike couriers who have to find unfamiliar addresses. But just like Postcodes, the first element of an Eircode will lead to a geographical area, e.g. BT is Northern Ireland, A91 is half of Co Louth.

Tin Foil Hat

Stovepipe wrote: »

the advantage of the UK system is that it defined a location of a house more accurately than Eircode did and that was decades ago; a postman in the UK could find a house or a row of houses (worst case) or an individual workshop or factory in an industrial estate. The nature of Eircode being a random generator means that the Eircodes of adjoining buildings is not sequential, so that a parcel or letter that goes to the wrong address by one door number can end up back in the depot, whereas a UK postman knows from the Postcode that even a single digit change still keeps him close to his delivery destination.

UK post code are decades old.
Irish postcodes are designed in a digital age, when you can type a seven character code into the super computer in your pocket, connected to a network of global positioning satellites, and be directed straight to the door. They don't need to be sequential.
I'm a van driver. I use them all the time. They are life changing.

dxhound2005

I just checked on Wikipedia.

As of June 2016, there are 124 postcode areas, 2,987 postcode districts, 11,192 postcode sectors, and 1,500 post towns. Addresses receiving large volumes of mail are each assigned separate "large user" postcodes. But most postcodes are shared by several neighbouring properties, typically covering about 15 addresses.

From that it seems that Eircodes are more exact than Postcodes.

vargoo

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

the emergency services ask for it,

They don't as their systems can't use them. It came up at a coroners investigation into a death on the radio a few weeks back, judge asked how the fuk the ambulance got lost with Eircodes out and guy over Ambulances said they had no way to use them unless one of the crew used their own phone.

Heard another case even more recent where ambulance crew went to the wrong swimming pool where a girl had been pulled from the water unconscious.

She later died.

I'm really not surprised how the HSE could fuk that system up anymore than it already is.

Harris is one stupid, stupid lad aswell to top if off.

Tin Foil Hat

vargoo wrote: »

They don't as their systems can't use them. It came up at a coroners investigation into a death on the radio a few weeks back, judge asked how the fuk the ambulance got lost with Eircodes out and guy over Ambulances said they had no way to use them unless one of the crew used their own phone.

Heard another case even more recent where ambulance crew went to the wrong swimming pool where a girl had been pulled from the water unconscious.

She later died.

I'm really not surprised how the HSE could fuk that system up anymore than it already is.

Harris is one stupid, stupid lad aswell to top if off.

That's not a flaw with the eircodes though. It's a flaw with those who refuse to use them.

TheRiverman

It should be compulsory for everyone to use them.

dxhound2005

vargoo wrote: »

They don't as their systems can't use them. It came up at a coroners investigation into a death on the radio a few weeks back, judge asked how the fuk the ambulance got lost with Eircodes out and guy over Ambulances said they had no way to use them unless one of the crew used their own phone.

It says the exact opposite of that on the Gov website. And that is backed up by the Eircode site.

https://www.dccae.gov.ie/en-ie/communications/topics/Postcodes/eircode-stories/Pages/National-Ambulance-Services.aspx

National Ambulance Service
The National Ambulance Service, have Eircodes loaded into their Computer Aided Dispatch System (CAD) and went live in operation in February 2016. This means that a caller in any part of the Country when contacting the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) can give the patients Eircode, as part of the address, to the call taker who will enter the details in the CAD which will validate it.

vargoo

dxhound2005 wrote: »

It says the exact opposite of that on the Gov website. And that is backed up by the Eircode site.

https://www.dccae.gov.ie/en-ie/communications/topics/Postcodes/eircode-stories/Pages/National-Ambulance-Services.aspx

National Ambulance Service
The National Ambulance Service, have Eircodes loaded into their Computer Aided Dispatch System (CAD) and went live in operation in February 2016. This means that a caller in any part of the Country when contacting the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) can give the patients Eircode, as part of the address, to the call taker who will enter the details in the CAD which will validate it.

And yet head of that service was on radio only a couple of weeks ago saying the opposite.

I wondered to myself who has been paying for that ad on the TV the last few months with "we just moved here" "the eircode is here beside the phone" lines.

Haven't seen it since though to check.

dxhound2005

vargoo wrote: »

And yet head of that service was on radio only a couple of weeks ago saying the opposite.

I wondered to myself who has been paying for that ad on the TV the last few months with "we just moved here" "the eircode is here beside the phone" lines.

Haven't seen it since though to check.

Yet in April 2018 he (Martin Dunne) was promoting the use of Eircodes. It's hard to know what to make of it, if you heard him properly on the radio.

https://www.donegalnow.com/news/eircodes-making-life-easier-national-ambulance-service/220780

gctest50

The high horse brigade wrote: »

That nobody uses, good luck with getting the emergency services or even couriers to adapt to it

Android phones can send their location for years :

Published Jul 25, 2016


Emergency Location Service is supported by over 99% of existing Android devices (version 2.3 out and upwards) through Google Play services. The service activates when supported by your mobile network operator or emergency infrastructure provider.

Our service is already live today for people with Android phones in the UK and in Estonia.


https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/helping-emergency-services-find-you/

Hamsterchops

Foweva Awone wrote: »

As a country, we kind of made a unanimous decision not to use them.

100% Not True.

They work really well in many situations from directing people in What's App groups to parcel deliveries to ambulance calls, we've had them all, and the Eircode had been requested on each occasion. We waited 40 years for postcodes, now they're here, and they work Great ........

daheff

i only use eircode to prepopulate forms online.

dont use it in real life because mine is wrong. it has my house listed as being in a town 30km away.... because its part of that postal district. fine for An post.. but not good for couriers