Eircode - Why did they bother?

snowflaker · 22-10-2017 11:31PM

Sleeper12 wrote: »

I agree with what the driver has told you but if you ring DPD they will tell you that they don't use it. Because it is random it is of no use when sorting or dispatch. I do believe that the drivers use it.

Part of my business is mail order. I have had post returned from An Post with a valid eircode on it because they couldn't make out the county. I should be able to post with the eircode alone.

On the plus side, I am in appliance repair and call to 20 to 30 homes per week between Balbriggan and Bray, putting up 400 to 500 miles per week. I have an app on my phone that takes eircodes. I then transfer this information to a Tom Tom app. From here I can send it to my Tom Tom sat nav and it brings me to the door. The complex way I have to do this is the big flaw with eircode. I have been in touch with Garmin and Tom Tom and both say that eircode is too large. By adding eircode on top of Tom Tom map of Ireland it would take as much storage and a map of Europe. This is with full compression.

It's an overly complicated system but when it works it works well. I use it several times per day and I'd find it hard to live without it.

The address is still required. As it is in the UK (you have to include the address not just the house number)

Charles Babbage · 22-10-2017 11:33PM

Sleeper12 wrote: »

On the plus side, I am in appliance repair and call to 20 to 30 homes per week between Balbriggan and Bray, putting up 400 to 500 miles per week. I have an app on my phone that takes eircodes. I then transfer this information to a Tom Tom app. From here I can send it to my Tom Tom sat nav and it brings me to the door. The complex way I have to do this is the big flaw with eircode. I have been in touch with Garmin and Tom Tom and both say that eircode is too large. By adding eircode on top of Tom Tom map of Ireland it would take as much storage and a map of Europe. This is with full compression.

A Basic Eircode file should be 50 MB or s, while Europe maps are over 1GB.
it is bigger than other nations, as each address is included, but in terms of modern devices it isn't ridiculous.

Mountainsandh · 23-10-2017 12:03AM

server down wrote: »

45? I thought you were posting like a 70 year old. The internet is that old. Most 40 year olds have smart phones.

I think you are creating an issue that doesn’t exist. You admit eircode is useful to you. You seem to think the rest of the population can’t hack it.

Of course, I was probably one of the first to volunteer with my Eircode : when registering at the library, trying to get the Motor Tax office, my bank, my employer to update my details ... The 3 above were bewildered. Library said "nah, we don't need that", Motor Tax Office and bank simply didn't have the set up to take an Eircode. Delivery crowds, ebay, Amazon, you name it, I tried to input it.

They've probably updated now.

It was a bit bizarre to have something implemented before the relevant parties were able or willing to use it.

It's not about "admitting" that it's useful to me, I have clearly said that I love online shopping and could see the use for it in that regard. Also, I'm French and had great expectations for a useful postcode.

It's more about assessing whether it is actually useful to me in other ways (it isn't), and whether its use is as widespread as official spokespeople like to state. And yes, passing judgment on how poor communication has been about it, that people don't understand it and use it two years on.

My anecdotal evidence, whether people like it or not, (and I did say that it wasn't only old people by the way, I also mentioned housewives for example, or generally rural people who may not use much internet in the business/professional sphere, and small businesses like the ones advertising in my local papers) is that there is a large swath of population who do not know or use their Eircodes. I have mentioned a community alert meeting where Eircodes would, for obvious reasons, have been extremely useful, and where out of 80 people possibly two knew their Eircodes.

I have had assurances that it is widely used, more than I think, but I have not seen any number. The clocking up number on the Address something website is not representative of the wider population, since it could be (and I believe it mostly is) businesses looking up customers' Eircodes, and the app and website are obviously targeted at businesses.

I would like to see numbers representing the population of Ireland, not businesses, rural and urban, with age particulars and without, who know their Eircode by heart and use it regularly, who have the Eircode filed away/by the phone and use it occasionally, who don't know their Eircode and never use it, etc...

I'm ready and open to be convinced, but to counter balance my personal experience it will take reliable numbers that apply to everyone, not business.
Remember that part of my argument is that the poor design for the average member of the public is due to a project marketed as a public service, among other things, but really focused on the "other things" (business, selling).

flaneur wrote: »

Well I suppose you can still do it by telegram and pay with a postal order like the old days.

Or you can ring a telephone number and pay when you call to collect.
Or you can call to the pizza place, order there, and pay there in cash or by card, and take the pizza home yourself, as we mostly have to do when we're rural.
Or you can, like a lot of people I know, simply never order pizza.

What's your point above ? To ridicule the fact that some people may not know how to use Paypal or an Apple pay system, or that they might not want to order pizza, or that they do not follow the wonderful pattern of ordering online, paying digitally, and having it delivered ?

grogi · 23-10-2017 12:06AM

Sleeper12 wrote: »

I agree with what the driver has told you but if you ring DPD they will tell you that they don't use it. Because it is random it is of no use when sorting or dispatch. I do believe that the drivers use it.

It is not random. It just needs a backend to derive an exact location and determine the routing that way.

Part of my business is mail order. I have had post returned from An Post with a valid eircode on it because they couldn't make out the county. I should be able to post with the eircode alone.

On the plus side, I am in appliance repair and call to 20 to 30 homes per week between Balbriggan and Bray, putting up 400 to 500 miles per week. I have an app on my phone that takes eircodes. I then transfer this information to a Tom Tom app. From here I can send it to my Tom Tom sat nav and it brings me to the door. The complex way I have to do this is the big flaw with eircode.

It's not a flaw of Eircode. Any postcode would have exactly same limitation unless integrated with the sat nav.

I have been in touch with Garmin and Tom Tom and both say that eircode is too large. By adding eircode on top of Tom Tom map of Ireland it would take as much storage and a map of Europe. This is with full compression.

This is utter bull$hit.

I've previously said you'd need 8 bytes to store a geolocation in Ireland. That is not true - you effectively need 4 bytes to do that with enough accuracy. For longitude take 51*N and add a 0.0000* - 6.5535* (one needs two bytes to store that). Similarly for latitude - start with 5*W and add 0.0000* - 6.5535*. It gives accuracy of around 6m - good enough for satnav for sure.

So - coordinates for 5 mln codes requires 20 MB. Storing them in accessible way might require another 10 MB. Horrendous really. And that's without compression.

It's an overly complicated system but when it works it works well. I use it several times per day and I'd find it hard to live without it.

It is complex because one cannot derive an exact location solely based on the code itself. A database is required.

I have to stick with separate sat nav. I also take dozens of calls during the day. I found I was missing turns if the phone rang at the wrong time.

Just get a second phone or a tablet to do a navigation. You don't even need to have a data plan or anything in it.

Capt'n Midnight · 23-10-2017 12:31AM

The high horse brigade wrote: »

Wrong, I use DPD daily and from talking to their drivers they definitey do use it, their dispatch doesn't integrate it yet but the drivers on the road do use it

Does DPD pay for the drivers usage ?

Or is it something the drivers are doing themselves ?

I still can't understand the insane cost of the system given the number of state and semi state and utility companies that already had this information on their data bases.

Yes I know it's a bit more complicated to merge the databases than "select *" but it's not an IT megaproject. This isn't trying to do the HSE payroll where every hospital had local bargaining clauses. And yes the Ordinance Survey has aerial surveys and whatnot with the location of every building in the state too.

The high horse brigade · 23-10-2017 12:41AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Does DPD pay for the drivers usage ?

There is only a cost if you go over 15 searches a day and even then someone tech savy can easily get around this by clearing their browser cache. The driver won't need to lookup Eircode for all deliveries, just to verify the odd address

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Or is it something the drivers are doing themselves ?

Yes, this. The drivers see the value of it

Once we see the first third party courier dispatch software offer Eircode then we'll see a race to add it. It'll be a very useful addition

astrofool · 23-10-2017 12:48AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Does DPD pay for the drivers usage ?

Or is it something the drivers are doing themselves ?

I still can't understand the insane cost of the system given the number of state and semi state and utility companies that already had this information on their data bases.

Yes I know it's a bit more complicated to merge the databases than "select *" but it's not an IT megaproject. This isn't trying to do the HSE payroll where every hospital had local bargaining clauses. And yes the Ordinance Survey has aerial surveys and whatnot with the location of every building in the state too.

I think you're vastly overestimating the re-usability of information stored in state bodies. They essentially re-used the An Post directory for Eircode, and even that took a lot of work to make it usable.

The state bodies are now catching up, but, for example, when I bought my latest car, I sent off the ownership change form with the Eircode included, but it came back without it, however, the new ownership form that came back now does include Eircode, so it's literally just someone keying in details manually and ignoring bits which don't map field to field. This is the public service side, which has no intention of changing (I also know of one intern who's sole job was to take a word document written by a manager and copy and paste it into email and send it, the manager refused to learn how to send email, so they hired someone else to do it).

mdmix · 23-10-2017 01:02AM

tried to use this once but when i looked up my eircode i could see my works building on the eircode map, but no eircode available. searched the website to see if i could report this but did not see an option (although i didn't look very hard). its the same with my house.

it is a bit shocking that these are randomly generated tho, it means theres no way to intuitively learn the codes. if I'm out in town and i have to report an emergency, i will have to look up the code first, rather than learning the codes over time naturally (before said emergency) due to their relationship to each other. apparently it cost 50 million to randomly assign numbers to some but not all irish properties?

astrofool · 23-10-2017 01:38AM

mdmix wrote: »

tried to use this once but when i looked up my eircode i could see my works building on the eircode map, but no eircode available. searched the website to see if i could report this but did not see an option (although i didn't look very hard). its the same with my house.

it is a bit shocking that these are randomly generated tho, it means theres no way to intuitively learn the codes. if I'm out in town and i have to report an emergency, i will have to look up the code first, rather than learning the codes over time naturally (before said emergency) due to their relationship to each other. apparently it cost 50 million to randomly assign numbers to some but not all irish properties?

They're not random, they're non-sequential, to make it hard to make a mistake. If you're in town and report an emergency, just give the address, the street has no Eircode anyway. In the UK, I'd rarely know the postcode of where I was, and if I did, it wasn't much use to emergency services (e.g. on a farm, with one 6 digit postcode, there were 5 properties, 4 near each other, 1 another mile away).

Here's the link for reporting issues with Eircode: https://www.eircode.ie/getting-an-eircode

If you have no Eircode, it means An Post also has no record of you, and the postie just knows where you are (and if the postie changes, you could miss mail).

jcd5971 · 23-10-2017 01:46AM

i ordered a package last week online.
driver rang looking for directions as we are a bit secluded, after confusing him for a few minutes he asked for eircode. gave it to him an he was down to us 15 mins later so obviously some people are using it.

my own point of view is its a mildly useful piece of information but it does no harm really.

jca · 23-10-2017 02:42AM

jcd5971 wrote: »

i ordered a package last week online.
driver rang looking for directions as we are a bit secluded, after confusing him for a few minutes he asked for eircode. gave it to him an he was down to us 15 mins later so obviously some people are using it.

my own point of view is its a mildly useful piece of information but it does no harm really.

More than mildly useful for that delivery driver, he didn't have to spend ages trying to find your house.

jcd5971 · 23-10-2017 03:26AM

jca wrote:

More than mildly useful for that delivery driver, he didn't have to spend ages trying to find your house.

Yep 100%

flaneur · 23-10-2017 07:26AM

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Or you can ring a telephone number and pay when you call to collect.
Or you can call to the pizza place, order there, and pay there in cash or by card, and take the pizza home yourself, as we mostly have to do when we're rural.
Or you can, like a lot of people I know, simply never order pizza.

What's your point above ? To ridicule the fact that some people may not know how to use Paypal or an Apple pay system, or that they might not want to order pizza, or that they do not follow the wonderful pattern of ordering online, paying digitally, and having it delivered ?

....

My point was this is After Hours and not letters to the Irish Times and I was trying to be mildly funny! Meh! No idea why I bother posting on boards sometimes.

23-10-2017 08:55AM

grogi wrote: »

It is not random. It just needs a backend to derive an exact location and determine the routing that way.

It's not a flaw of Eircode. Any postcode would have exactly same limitation unless integrated with the sat nav.

This is utter bull$hit.

I've previously said you'd need 8 bytes to store a geolocation in Ireland. That is not true - you effectively need 4 bytes to do that with enough accuracy. For longitude take 51*N and add a 0.0000* - 6.5535* (one needs two bytes to store that). Similarly for latitude - start with 5*W and add 0.0000* - 6.5535*. It gives accuracy of around 6m - good enough for satnav for sure.

So - coordinates for 5 mln codes requires 20 MB. Storing them in accessible way might require another 10 MB. Horrendous really. And that's without compression.

It is complex because one cannot derive an exact location solely based on the code itself. A database is required.

Just get a second phone or a tablet to do a navigation. You don't even need to have a data plan or anything in it.

Now that's a very Irish solution to an Irish problem. Buy a second phone so I can use Eircode??? I use it several times per day so I not against eircode & I can't live without it but you do realize that suggesting I buy a second phone so I can use Eircode isn't exactly selling the idea at how great the system is.

grogi · 23-10-2017 09:16AM

Sleeper12 wrote: »

Now that's a very Irish solution to an Irish problem. Buy a second phone so I can use Eircode??? I use it several times per day so I not against eircode & I can't live without it but you do realize that suggesting I buy a second phone so I can use Eircode isn't exactly selling the idea at how great the system is.

You are whining about TomTom and Garmin, not about Eircode. Any change and innovation in mapping, regardless how flawless it was, would require satnav to support it. Your doesn't - not really Eircode's fault.

You say you use it several times per day. If it saves you 5 minutes each time, you spent an hour less doing some meaningless circles - that is brilliant IMHO...

murpho999 · 23-10-2017 09:22AM

mdmix wrote: »

tried to use this once but when i looked up my eircode i could see my works building on the eircode map, but no eircode available. searched the website to see if i could report this but did not see an option (although i didn't look very hard). its the same with my house.

it is a bit shocking that these are randomly generated tho, it means theres no way to intuitively learn the codes. if I'm out in town and i have to report an emergency, i will have to look up the code first, rather than learning the codes over time naturally (before said emergency) due to their relationship to each other. apparently it cost 50 million to randomly assign numbers to some but not all irish properties?

Why would you need to learn eircodes?

Do you think people in other countries know the codes of the areas they are in as they travel?

PDVerse · 23-10-2017 09:33AM

Mountainsandh wrote: »

I'm ready and open to be convinced, but to counter balance my personal experience it will take reliable numbers that apply to everyone, not business.
Remember that part of my argument is that the poor design for the average member of the public is due to a project marketed as a public service, among other things, but really focused on the "other things" (business, selling).

Except you aren't, you're completely disingenuous. I should have checked out your climate change denial posts before bothering to engage. Best of luck with your continuing struggles with reality, I won't be engaging with you further.

23-10-2017 09:50AM

grogi wrote:

You are whining about TomTom and Garmin, not about Eircode. Any change and innovation in mapping, regardless how flawless it was, would require satnav to support it. Your doesn't - not really Eircode's fault.

I'm not whining about Tom Tom. I'm a supporter of eircode but it's anything but perfect. An Post obviously doesn't use eircode nor do most of the delivery companies. Sat navs don't support it.

Eircode is anything but a success so far

seamus · 23-10-2017 09:55AM

murpho999 wrote: »

Why would you need to learn eircodes?

Do you think people in other countries know the codes of the areas they are in as they travel?

To paraphrase An Post, the idea of a sequential numbering system or hierarchical system where your street gets a number, is a 20th century solution. When people didn't have GPS systems to guide them and when a postman on a route could reasonably remember the location of his streets by their postcode, therefore using the postcode for navigation and route plotting. This is not necessary any more.

Eircode is not perfect. I have qualms about the implementation, but as time has gone on, a lot of them have been answered. Eircode is a system of codes for identifying postal addresses - i.e. places where people live or work. And it does that just fine.
It is not necessary that someone should be capable of knowing the rough location of a property by looking at its code.
It's not necessary that I should know any of my neighbour's codes, nor be able to determine what they are in my head.
Your shed, or your silage tank or the tree in the field at the front of your house, do not need eircodes. They are not postal addresses.
It is not necessary that companies "agreed" to use eircode before it was made live.

My experience in Dublin is that virtually all businesses that are involved in delivering stuff in any capacity, are using eircodes. From couriers, to fast food to taxis.

The Backwards Man · 23-10-2017 10:13AM

I wonder do the Flat Earth Society use their Eircode.

flaneur · 23-10-2017 10:31AM

I’d add actually that in France in rural areas you get the same problem as you do in Ireland and their postal codes don’t solve it.

Mme. DUPONT Marie
Perdu-sur-Lac
99273

Which is just a name and nearby tiny village and the post code just tells you a codified version of the department and village.

In most cases, continental and US postal codes were just for speed of scanning OCR or keying mail, or even just manually speed reading and flinging it into pigeon holes on sorting frames in older sorting systems.

I would suspect you’ll see much more recognition of Eircode as utility companies and others start printing it on bills and statements. That’s the bulk of Irish mail.

As for finding things by code by searching the postal code. Ireland has pretty easy and logical telephone area codes (unlike a lot of countries). So if you want to google Flowers + 066 you’ll typically find them in North Kerry.

You could search Flowers D07 or T23 and you’ll also get fairly reasonable areas. The issue is in low population areas the codes seem to cover much bigger areas, but unlike France we tend to define areas by county and not town/village so much.

A lot of French addresses would be like if we wrote::

John Murphy
Ballydehob
T99 1233

And had no idea that was in County Cork.
In some ways Irish addresses are more human readable than most continental ones as they relate the town to a county.

A lot of continental addresses just give you obscure town + code and it is not immediately obvious you’re looking at a suburb of Paris or Frankfurt.

astrofool · 23-10-2017 12:58PM

Sleeper12 wrote: »

Now that's a very Irish solution to an Irish problem. Buy a second phone so I can use Eircode??? I use it several times per day so I not against eircode & I can't live without it but you do realize that suggesting I buy a second phone so I can use Eircode isn't exactly selling the idea at how great the system is.

That's more a problem with your phone. I'm on Android 8 and it does picture in picture when I'm driving and a call comes in, so I don't miss anything (Pixel XL).

23-10-2017 01:21PM

astrofool wrote: »

That's more a problem with your phone. I'm on Android 8 and it does picture in picture when I'm driving and a call comes in, so I don't miss anything (Pixel XL).

I have a Samsung S8. I drive most of the day following the sat nav while talking to clients on the hands free. Most commercial drivers need separate sat navs . My sat nav is much bigger than my S8. Possibly a third bigger. Picture in picture just doesn't cut it when you are driving all day.

There's a lot of deflection on this thread. It's not my phones fault that the Eircode isn't suitable for sat navs. Using a second phone isn't a solution.

I love the idea of a proper post code for the country but Eircode isn't fit for purpose. How FG oked this setup is beyond me. The awarding of the contract & the obscene amount of taxpayers money pumped into a private company stinks of Lowryism IMO The contract was for 18 million yet the government handed over 38 million & we don't even own it! We pay a private company to come up with Eircode yet they own it. They sell the license & make a profit. How does this happen in Ireland?

OldMrBrennan83 · 23-10-2017 01:25PM

This post has been deleted.

23-10-2017 01:47PM

Patww79 wrote:

This post has been deleted.

It's not fit for purpose because despite what has been claimed here most delivery companies don't use & can't use it. Because it is random they can't sort parcels using it. I get that some of their delivery drivers use it once the hard work of sorting it has been done. An Post don't always use it. I've had post returned myself with the valid eircode on the parcel. Sat nav companies don't use it.

After blowing 38 million on it and not even owning it I would expect a post code that all delivery companies, and post & Sat nav companies would want to use.

Again I say that I find it handy myself and I do use it but with all of the above shying away from it I have to say we didn't get value for money. It could be so much better

WestWicklow1 · 23-10-2017 03:28PM

Sleeper12 wrote: »

I have an app on my phone that takes eircodes. I then transfer this information to a Tom Tom app. From here I can send it to my Tom Tom sat nav and it brings me to the door. The complex way I have to do this is the big flaw with eircode. I have been in touch with Garmin and Tom Tom and both say that eircode is too large.

This is exactly how I use Eircodes. I don't find it too much of a hassle but I only use it three or four time a week.

A couple of months ago I noticed something interesting. I was searching for an address on my TomTom go 5000 (with the latest European maps) and noticed in the search results at the end of the address it showed the Eircode routing key!!!

For example if you search for "5 main street naas" you will notice "W91" at the end of the search result. "W91" is that area's routing key.

It seems that TomTom are certainly working on it. Obviously its still useless but its encouraging to see that something is happening.

I am on the TomTom support forum and can get absolutely no information from them regarding Eircodes.

seamus · 23-10-2017 03:35PM

Sleeper12 wrote: »

Because it is random they can't sort parcels using it.

That's incorrect. Because it's random, they can't sort parcels with it for free. However, they can sort parcels with it if they pay the licence fee and integrate it into their sorting system, which would neither be difficult nor expensive.

Sat nav companies don't use it.

Because the demand for it is miniscule. The market for traditional sat navs has collapsed, so the development time and licensing cost alone make it not worth the while of the Sat Nav companies. Their focus is on non-traffic navigation - explorers, maritime, sports, etc - markets that aren't served well by Google Maps, and markets that coincidentally don't care about postcodes.

That Sat Nav companies aren't using eircode says more about the state of their business than it does about eircode IMO.

After blowing 38 million on it and not even owning it

The database is owned by the state. The system is managed under licence. Once that contract expires, ownership of the data and the systems remains with the state.

23-10-2017 06:35PM

seamus wrote:

That's incorrect. Because it's random, they can't sort parcels with it for free. However, they can sort parcels with it if they pay the licence fee and integrate it into their sorting system, which would neither be difficult nor expensive.

If it is not expensive or difficult why don't delivery companies use this simple system that can save them time and money? An Post doesn't always use it.
No you seem to be missing the point even if they pay they can't sort parcels because it's random. Parcels need to be sorted without the eircode system then drivers can use eircode if they choose to do so.

There are a few posters saying how great eircode is yet refuse to explain why the big players, eg, the businesses that would be from it wontor can't use it.

Again I'm a daily user so can see how it could be great but as a daily user sees how limited it is too

flaneur · 23-10-2017 07:14PM

You’re also likely to see it more as companies upgrade IT.
I wouldn’t expect eircode to be everywhere for 5 years or so.

Also some companies always see Ireland as a weird part of the UK market and will just be put out because we didn’t somehow magically adopt the Royal Mail database and will moan about costs.

The reality is a lot of companies fail to localise properly for the Irish market - Tesco for example insists on selling phone double adapters that don’t fit Irish RJ11 wall sockets, B&Q seems to sell fuse wire despite the fact that no rewirable fuses are used here. Many DIY stores sell combined cooker control switch and sockets which are a breech of regs, people quote UK 0800 helpline numbers and English law at you etc etc etc

Nightline / Parcel Motel have been using eircode pretty extensively and successfully.

I noticed Greenstar waste were looking for my Eircode when I rang them to check out about disrupted pick up due to the storm. They seemed to be using it to find out my route information.

Also Miele, the German appliances company were sending me out an accessory for my dryer and they needed an Eircode and even have the field on their website.

If other courier companies want to use a system that conveniences their staff and their customers, the they will adapt and adopt it.
If they see Ireland as a back of beyond market they don't care about, they won't or they'll just pass it through as clear text on a label.

Eircode will become more familiar as the utility companies, state bodies, insurance companies and so on start using it on letters and you'll also find an increasing use of it online - Dominos Pizza being a prime early example.

There's a full relatively easy to roll out API for Eircode and it's not that complicated to implement.

Most jurisdictions charge for addressing data and a lot of companies already use databases to verify addresses. Eircode is probably not all that hard to implement for them.

Akrasia · 23-10-2017 07:35PM

Feck Eircode,
We should all use 'what 3 words' for our post codes https://map.what3words.com/spark.slap.lobby

My address is spark.slap.lobby

Eircode - Why did they bother?

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