Post Codes!!!!

Bass Cadet · 29-08-2008 12:44PM #1

When the f@ck are we gonna move into the 20th century (sic) and get POST CODES?? Trying to apply to an American college for a masters and without a postsode, its a nightmare!! :mad:

Rant over

ScumLord · 29-08-2008 12:46PM

Postcodes are the devil and I'll fight tooth and nail to keep them out of this country.

biko · 29-08-2008 12:49PM

Ireland don't need post codes. We're not big enough.
Just use 000 or something : oldrolleyes :

Bass Cadet · 29-08-2008 12:56PM

biko wrote: »

Ireland don't need post codes. We're not big enough.
Just use 000 or something : oldrolleyes :

I hope you're taking the p!ss!

tman · 29-08-2008 01:01PM

You seriously think Ireland needs post codes outside of the pale???:p

Just use 12345 or 00000 like everybody else

ARGINITE · 29-08-2008 01:05PM

ScumLord wrote: »

Postcodes are the devil and I'll fight tooth and nail to keep them out of this country.

+1.

biko · 29-08-2008 01:08PM

Bass Cadet wrote: »

I hope you're taking the p!ss!

Explain yourself

ukgalwaymcguire · 29-08-2008 01:22PM

biko wrote: »

Ireland don't need post codes. We're not big enough.
Just use 000 or something : oldrolleyes :

AGREED
post codes in the uk are used for credit checks
if you had a number of people in your road who default on credit they put everyone with that postcode in the same bag..
keep them out!

PopeBuckfastXVI · 29-08-2008 01:51PM

Postcodes are for the convenience of the postal service, not for online forms.

I use 0 or 0000 and it generally works... if you need an american style zip code use 90210

Madame Razz · 29-08-2008 01:54PM

Or just put GY, or GY 123.

If something simply has to be put down.

leeroybrown · 29-08-2008 02:25PM

I'd suggest that the two main reasons that we don't have post codes are:

1) When they're suggested the main proponents of them include junk-mail senders and credit checkers. If anything is likely to whip up opposition it's this.

2) An Post stand to lose a lot if they're introduced and as such will object. They already have a sorting system and delivery network so the last thing they want is a system that allows any delivery agent with a GPS to get most of the information from a post code. There's a possibility they may already have an internal post code system.

If I need to supply a postcode I normally use 00000 as it's generally accepted and unlikely to cause any address confusion.

Bass Cadet · 29-08-2008 02:33PM

tman wrote: »

You seriously think Ireland needs post codes outside of the pale???:p

Just use 12345 or 00000 like everybody else

My God, you people are still in the Dark Ages!!

I can think of loads of reasons why we need them. First of all...navigation, GPS would be much more effective and I don't just mean for finding Johnny's Tool Hire in Mayo but for businesses that use GPS and sat nav everyday for their work like construction companies, county council/service maintenance, etc.

The whole postal service would be run more efficiently, it would benefit government services, even the health service providing data on particular post codes. There is a reason why every country in the EU except us and Greece have a postal code...

Also...what about the future? Do we wait until the population reaches a certain point before they are implemented? I suppose, that would be typically Irish...introduce something decades after it should have been implemented!

Also, it'll help supermacs find my gaff faster!!

As for people complaining about junk mail...90% of junk mail in a city is delivered by hand, we already get junk mail.
And if people are paranoid about any other dodgy reasons why the governement woul;d want to have postcodes...hello? They already have ALL your information. They don't need postcodes for that

ScumLord · 29-08-2008 02:49PM

It's been a while since I used GPS but last time I did the vast majority of roads in the west of Ireland wheren't on it.

How do postcodes work in small towns or rural areas where you might only have two house within a 5 mile radius? They have no benefit to the emergency services then because they still have to find the road that the house is on. The postcode would be as useful as knowing the parish the house is in.

The local postman who knows where everybody lives is the only way to get post delivered in the country. They can even get your post to you with partial addresses.

Bass Cadet · 29-08-2008 03:50PM

ScumLord wrote: »

It's been a while since I used GPS but last time I did the vast majority of roads in the west of Ireland wheren't on it.

How do postcodes work in small towns or rural areas where you might only have two house within a 5 mile radius? They have no benefit to the emergency services then because they still have to find the road that the house is on. The postcode would be as useful as knowing the parish the house is in.

The local postman who knows where everybody lives is the only way to get post delivered in the country. They can even get your post to you with partial addresses.

All roads in the west of ireland besides some very small local roads are on sat-navs. We use them everyday for work. Granted if we had postcodes we could probably do the work faster!

I presume emergency services can use GPS and sat-navs (or at least they should do)...simply enter in the post code and away ye go. There are plenty of houses in the states and other countries in very remote areas that work off post codes. I don't see why it would be different here. In fact I'm pretty sure some sat nav companies have had to come up with their own (post) codes for areas of ireland because postal ones aren't available.

Postmen being able to work off partial addresses isn't the point imo. Fair to play to them if they can, but they shouldn't have to. If there is at least a postcode on the address, it will get there. In this day in age we shouldn't have to rely on postman Pat knowing where every family in the community lives

In other words, there are numerous reasons besides the postal service why we should have post codes not least that it might prevent us having to give directions to annoying tourists!

WooPeeA · 29-08-2008 04:02PM

I usually post "N/A" in the post code field.

leeroybrown · 29-08-2008 04:12PM

Bass Cadet wrote: »

I presume emergency services can use GPS and sat-navs (or at least they should do)...simply enter in the post code and away ye go.

It works very well for ambulances in the UK. They can normally get close enough in awkward areas that they can either spot the destination or only need minimal directions.

Bass Cadet wrote: »

As for people complaining about junk mail...90% of junk mail in a city is delivered by hand, we already get junk mail.

I agree, but it still became one of the primary objections the last time post code introduction was discussed.

I'd definitely be in favor of post code introduction but I think that between the various junk mail objectors and An Post who will also object I think it will be difficult to find the political will to push them through. Having your national postal agency 'defending itself' against post codes for anti-competitive reasons isn't good but it does make it a lot more difficult to introduce them.

ScumLord · 29-08-2008 04:14PM

Bass Cadet wrote: »

Postmen being able to work off partial addresses isn't the point imo. Fair to play to them if they can, but they shouldn't have to. If there is at least a postcode on the address, it will get there. In this day in age we shouldn't have to rely on postman Pat knowing where every family in the community lives

I don't think Irish postmen (outside of cities) would ever rely on them. The fact is they are often locals that do know everything about everyone. They won't pay a bit of attention to postcodes. I'd rather have a knowledgeable postman the a postal service that can blame the computer so no ones responsible for anything.

A postcode will not give an exact location if I'm not mistaken. It'll only give you an location down to a few houses, which would work great in cities where you have numbered houses but in the country I just don't see it working.

I also have no faith in the Irish governments ability to introduce postcodes without the mail service grinding to a halt.

leeroybrown · 29-08-2008 04:47PM

ScumLord wrote: »

A postcode will not give an exact location if I'm not mistaken. It'll only give you an location down to a few houses, which would work great in cities where you have numbered houses but in the country I just don't see it working.

You'd actually be surprised how accurate they can be. If you look at the UK post code system even in the most rural of areas the a GPS should be able to get you close enough to find an address within a few minutes. In outer suburban areas with low density and unnumbered houses/buildings they will have a very high success rate. They really do work wonders for ambulances and for delivery agents who don't know the area.

From a postal point of view you get a huge improvement in sorting efficiency and reliability. So long as the first part of a UK post code is correct the mail will get to the correct post office and the second part will get it to the right postman. You also get the huge advantage of having two reliable addresses to cross check in the event of a mis-delivery. I would guess that the current An Post address based delivery system actually runs it's internal sorting using what could be called a post code system.

WooPeeA · 29-08-2008 04:49PM

Post codes are needed in two cases:

1. Automatic selection of letters by computers (they don't read hand-written addresses). It's fast, cheap and used in most of the countries.

2. If there's more than 2 or 3 cities in the country that has same name.

leeroybrown · 29-08-2008 04:58PM

WooPeeA wrote: »

2. If there's more than 2 or 3 cities in the country that has same name.

You get this a surprising amount in Ireland. Generally you'll find that most of the locals in these areas deliberately mis-address their post so that the name of the town with their local sorting office is included.

I used to live at an address near the border of two counties. We deliberately used a postal address with the wrong county as otherwise it went to the wrong sorting office (in the correct county) and took an extra day to be delivered.

ScumLord · 30-08-2008 02:26AM

leeroybrown wrote: »

You'd actually be surprised how accurate they can be. If you look at the UK post code system even in the most rural of areas the a GPS should be able to get you close enough to find an address within a few minutes. In outer suburban areas with low density and unnumbered houses/buildings they will have a very high success rate. They really do work wonders for ambulances and for delivery agents who don't know the area.

In the UK though they don't allow one off housing like they do here. They actually think about the long term affects of allowing one off housing and restrict new houses to be within the limits of a town. Here, you can build wherever you like as long as you know your local.

Here you can have a house in the middle of nowhere with relations aloud to build (somewhere within the vaccinate) of the family home.

As much as I like the efficiency of other European countries. I love the Irish attitude to modern systems. You can't say the Irish people are under the thumb of the government because the government have no idea where we are. I don't like over baring governments even though I'd say I have very socialist leanings.

DRakE · 30-08-2008 12:17PM

000

/thread

ukgalwaymcguire · 30-08-2008 05:43PM

ScumLord wrote: »

In the UK though they don't allow one off housing like they do here. They actually think about the long term affects of allowing one off housing and restrict new houses to be within the limits of a town. Here, you can build wherever you like as long as you know your local.

Here you can have a house in the middle of nowhere with relations aloud to build (somewhere within the vaccinate) of the family home.

As much as I like the efficiency of other European countries. I love the Irish attitude to modern systems. You can't say the Irish people are under the thumb of the government because the government have no idea where we are. I don't like over baring governments even though I'd say I have very socialist leanings.

TOTALLY AGREE!:)

wet-paint · 01-09-2008 01:49PM

Is the whole Dublin 1, dublin 4, 12 etc not a post code?

leeroybrown · 01-09-2008 05:42PM

wet-paint wrote: »

Is the whole Dublin 1, dublin 4, 12 etc not a post code?

They are but they only designate a specific postal district. They're a hangover from the old UK postal district system and date back to the early 1900's in Dublin and far earlier in some English cities. London and other big UK cities would have had a similar designations until the UK post code system was introduced in the 1960's and 1970's.

Mrs OBumble · 02-09-2008 04:11PM

Sheesh! I'd settle for every street having a name, and for signs at the end of every street saying that the name is. It would be nice if the numbers could be consistent as well - perhaps all the odd numbers on one side, and the evens on the other. And houses numbered in order would be nice, too.

:rolleyes:

Those features would reduce the number of annoying tourist questions no end ...

cornbb · 02-09-2008 04:22PM

Local knowledge > postcodes.

Well I can see all the potential advantages, in many ways it would be nice to have every address neatly indexable. On the other hand, having worked in a call centre that serviced UK customers, I would have major privacy concerns about the system*. I like the ambiguity thats built into the current addressing system in Ireland, the fact that postmen in rural Ireland know which neighbours to drop packages to when you're on holidays, etc. I can deal with the hassle of typing in 0000 if it means keeping our old system tbh.

*With a postcode system, its possible to find out a hell of a lot of information about famous people if you know what street they live on...

02-09-2008 05:17PM

cornbb wrote: »

I like the ambiguity thats built into the current addressing system in Ireland, the fact that postmen in rural Ireland know which neighbours to drop packages to when you're on holidays, etc.[/size]

Even with postcodes that happens, in London I had to sign for a package for John Sergeant

Amazotheamazing · 02-09-2008 07:51PM

There's been postmen in my family for five generations now and I'll resist to the death postcodes (or not, I'm fairly passive).

People in Ireland know each other, postcodes aren't really that necessary.

I remember hearing how back years ago a postcard arrived in the Limerick depot addressed to Sean, Limerick. Naturally, that could be several hundred, if not even a few thousand, people. But the postmen passed the card around, where it was from etc.

One of the postmen recognised the reference in the card and sure enough, it was delivered to the right Sean. So, take that postcodes, we don't even need surnames in Ireland.

Chris_533976 · 02-09-2008 08:34PM

Postcodes arent needed at all here as An Post has a perfectly functional system for directing mail. (Dublin 10 etc we wont count).

Mail is directed via the first four letters of the town name and the first letter of the county.

eg:

Clarinbridge, Co Galway

CLARG

If this clashes with another name, such as Claregalway, Co Galway, (also CLARG) you have a manual video-coded selection of the destination.

Frequent similar matches such as Bally and Kil are dealt with as one letter.

Ballymore, Co Cork

would be BALLYMORC, with the Bally treated as one letter.

It sounds convoluted but it works quite well. Postcodes would just be an unnecessary changeover. This works fine.

Bass Cadet · 03-09-2008 10:24AM

Chris_533976 wrote: »

Postcodes arent needed at all here as An Post has a perfectly functional system for directing mail. (Dublin 10 etc we wont count).

Mail is directed via the first four letters of the town name and the first letter of the county.

eg:

Clarinbridge, Co Galway

CLARG

If this clashes with another name, such as Claregalway, Co Galway, (also CLARG) you have a manual video-coded selection of the destination.

Frequent similar matches such as Bally and Kil are dealt with as one letter.

Ballymore, Co Cork

would be BALLYMORC, with the Bally treated as one letter.

It sounds convoluted but it works quite well. Postcodes would just be an unnecessary changeover. This works fine.

That might aswell be an argument for telegrams over email. Telography 'works' fine but is 60+ years behind email. If we took that approach to everything we'd still be sending telegrams instead of emails. Bottom-line is, sooner or later, postcodes will have to be introduced, it's inevitable, why not do it now?

As mentioned in the rest of the thread there are numerous reasons why they should be introduced, efficiency of the postal service is only one of many

Post Codes!!!!

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