Eircode puzzle

daithi7 wrote: »

It's a pile of crap is what it is, and an expensive one at that!!

On the contrary I think its great. No need asking for directions. Just input 7 digits into google drive and 'bingo'.

What3words has the location solution nailed for virtually all situations.

Ursus Horribilis wrote: »

They're all whistling in the wind now the eircode is here

Well if the house I'm looking for knew and could use their what3word tag I'd use that.

For now I'll stick with eircode.

They don't use it yet when they put my letter with perfect address in to a neighbour, the response was, well if it had an eircode, it would be sure of going to the correct house.

mdebets wrote: »

It could have worked, if they used a logical (rather than a random) system and the house next to D07 R532 would be D07 R533. Then it could work for the postman.

That's lovely and neat until someone adds an infill house, or demolishes a house to replace it with an apartment block.

Then what happens to your sequential numbers?

L1011 wrote: »

This falls to pieces when the owner of D07 R533 decides to replace his detached house with 4 townhouses, and D07 R534 replaces hers with 12 apartments. These now end up out of sequence.

Any system that works sequentially collapses in to incoherence after a few years and you need to glue it back together with a database very like what Eircode has anyway, except assumptions keep being made that are plainly wrong.

Loc8 was not a "brilliant system", it was a concatenated coordinate which means it could not be used for any proper delivery planning purposes.

The future proofing (and keeping it sequential) of the system would have been very easy. You could have added 3 or for additional digits at the end. 000 at the start, then change this if an existing Eircode is subdivided for new houses or apartents. In addition, the system could have been done so that one Eircode per house is used, so not every apartment has its own Eircode, but just the whole building.

mdebets wrote: »

The future proofing (and keeping it sequential) of the system would have been very easy. You could have added 3 or for additional digits at the end. 000 at the start, then change this if an existing Eircode is subdivided for new houses or apartents. In addition, the system could have been done so that one Eircode per house is used, so not every apartment has its own Eircode, but just the whole building.

That'd be as retarded as a loc8 code

If you are up around Athlone, KV56 is the sewerage plant

Much better than N37KV560001 being the shop next door like.

For everything else, there is What3words :

mdebets wrote: »

The future proofing (and keeping it sequential) of the system would have been very easy. You could have added 3 or for additional digits at the end. 000 at the start, then change this if an existing Eircode is subdivided for new houses or apartents. In addition, the system could have been done so that one Eircode per house is used, so not every apartment has its own Eircode, but just the whole building.

And now you've a ten digit code and/or one that can't be used to identify individual apartments.

Both useless.

An Post is very heavily unionised with very set job practices, getting any changes (even though it should benefit their workload in the long term) in how they deliver will take years and years. Everyone else will use Eircode, then An Post will adopt it at the slowest pace imaginable (despite marketing to the contrary).

mdebets wrote: »

The Eircode in its current form doesn't help An Post. The mailman can't check every letter for the Eircode, if he would, he would still be delivering mail from the last century. He needs a sequential code, which tells him in which order the houses are on the road. Eircode doesn't deliver this. What benefit do you think An Post or its customers would get from using Eircode?

An Post is much more than the postman on the street. Your postman/woman has local knowledge and even in rural areas with duplicate addresses will get the right house based on knowing the names of the occupants. But first post has to be sorted with machines with no local knowledge at a national level, this is where postcodes are useful to an post. They could automatically sort post in order into the mail bag using it if they wanted to.

Another point as to why they don't use sequential codes. If people make a transcribing error in the post code, say swap a 6 with a 7, or swap two digits which is very common, in a sequential system two these could resolve to two houses in the same neighbourhood. In Ireland up to a third of properties have duplicate addresses, so you would often have a situation where you can't tell if there's an error in a postcode by comparing to the address. With Eircode they made sure that similar addresses had vastly different codes, so it would always be possible to detect an error. The way they designed it makes it easy to figure out the correct code once the error is discovered.

mdebets wrote: »

The Eircode in its current form doesn't help An Post. The mailman can't check every letter for the Eircode, if he would, he would still be delivering mail from the last century. He needs a sequential code, which tells him in which order the houses are on the road. Eircode doesn't deliver this. What benefit do you think An Post or its customers would get from using Eircode?

It helps for everything but the last mile, where even a sequential system won't help the postie unless they memorise the starting number of each estate and then count down (understanding the estate numbering layout which can also be absolutely crazy with missing numbers, odds vs. evens, new parts of the estate being misnumbered).

Once the union practices move forward, the postie will just have a scanner or phone to verify all these addresses, which again makes sequential vs. random irrelevant and ignores the fact that the random addresses provide a built in error correction system.

The_Conductor wrote: »

Yes it is- along with her name- and shes been living 3 doors down for at least 4-5 years, without any of her post ever having been misdelivered to me- and yet, here I have two items of hers, in the space of less than 2 weeks. Note- the commonality is- I also received items from Bank of Ireland on the same days myself........... The postman is not familiar with the route- and has only recently started working in Lucan.

No postcode system will help someone who doesn't even read what's written on the envelope.

My address isn't listed in the Eircode Finder, when I contacted them the response was 'find your house on the map and use the Eircode allocated.'
Despite numerous requests for them to change their system and input my correct address they refuse to do so. I have problems getting insurance and other services because they can't match my address to an Eircode.

Millions of euros was wasted on this system for some ignorant staff to refuse to fix their errors.