Slightly off topic but.....Postcodes

Will have portable postcodes like the current areas in Dublin that grow legs and move into an adjacent area? Bits of Swords becoming Malahide, Marino becoming Clontarf and yesterday I thought I was in Tallaght when I was actually in Citywest!!

I researched European address formats for a web site I developed a while ago and every EU country except Ireland, UK, and Spain use identical address formats. Spain is close to the norm but they have an optional province. Irish addresses are of course complete bollocks but even in the UK you can have additional locality info.

If An Post developed their own address to locality database they should have talked to MapFlow who have Ireland's best location lookup system and solved this problem a long time ago. They're used by virtually all Irish companies that need to find an address.

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Can you imagine if An Post and Eircom were still the same organisation, how useful the resulting post code system would be.

They would introduce the concept of "postcode rental" - where you pay a fee, say, 30 euros a month for the privilage of recieving letters. Tax bills and TV licence demands would still get through as well as demands for the postcode rental itself.

A special 10 euro postage stamp would be issued for those seeking to have letters sent to non postcoded residents. This would be mainly used by companies seeking outstanding debt payments.

The government would pass a law preventing anyone other than An Post from delivering letters in order to prevent "duplication".

The problem with the geodirectory is that it's copyrighted to An Post and that the codes are rather long 8-digits.

I can imagine them dragging their feet about making it a public resource!!! considering they licence it at a cost of a small fortune under very tight terms and conditions to anyone who wants access.

Then again, if the codes were public information and were used there would be more demand for the actual database so i assume they would make more money that way too!

Well, not quite as bad as LLU!

Nothing could be that bad!

The Reg system actually works ok. There's only one clash WX and WD for obvious spelling reasons.
WaterforD
WeXford

Other than that cities (and their associated counties) have a single letter. E.g. D, C etc. It make some logical sense as you only ever really see Cork and Dublin plates regularly go beyond 4 digit numbers. (e.g. 00-C-12345 or OO-D-123456) you do need that little bit of extra space!

Counties have 2 letters, first and last unless the spelling clashes.

It's a sensible enough system. I can't see more than 999,999 cars being sold in a year Dublin anytime soon so it should keep working for the foreseable future. They could always introduce DN for County Dublin if it does

Oh yeah, the L and LK and W and WD come about because those two cities have suburbs that cross county boarders. So bit's of Limerick City actually lie in Clare (just don't tell anyone from Limerick or Clare that!)

Waterford City's got a similar scenario.

And a lot of people in Cork might be a bit upset if Clare were C.

In a country of 4 million people it's a bit over-complicated alright. It would make more sense to just have a simple code that didn't relate to anywhere particular.

I was amazed that I got a discount on a non-C reg car in Cork. Apparently one couldn't be seen dead driving something with KY on the back.

I would venture to suggest it's not the registrations that are stupid, it's people

It's the same everywehre though. There was HELL in London when they first introduced 071 and 081 phone codes. (the original london code was, like Dublin, 01)

071 was perceived to be snobbier than 081... So, there were reports of some people actually renting lines in 071 parts of london (e.g. a spare line at a friends/family members) and having the calls forwarded to their 081 real number!!!

Same for the Dublin postal district numbers and in Cork and elsewhere suburbs mysteriously stretch.

People will always find something to be snobby about..

e.g. Beverly Hills 90210 ... there's a snotty post code!

watty wrote:

There have been postcodes for years. An Post uses them for commercial advantage in Direct mailing. No doubt connected to fact the rest of use don't know what they are. Dublin has NOT got postcodes either. those are area codes, really just like extra counties.

Lots of web sites get upset. I put ROI or NA It's a scandal, not unrelated to Broadband or line rental scandals.

The worst is are the ones that check your ZIP code and if its not an American ZIP code, tell you its invalid even though they are selling stuff internationally over the Internet. 90210 is the one I use.

We need Zip codes to avoid this crap about them online if nothing else.

My mate signed up for online poker and used 90210 for Zip code with address somewhere, Co.Clare and they rang him to find out what the story was. He said we don't use post codes and the guy didn't understand. Had to explain it slowly then that he was from Ireland and in Ireland there are no Zip codes.

Blaster99 wrote:

Not that this is the place for it, but the Irish reg system is not sensible. All it does is devalue cars quicker because of reg number/county snobbery.

That exists in every country. People in Britain know what the region their codes correspond to and are snobby about which they'll buy aswell. People with no real worries in their lives need something to worry about.