National Postcodes to be introduced

TheBustedFlush

Carawaystick wrote: »

I've been charged dirt since before I had a pps number ( or even a rsi number) .
The banks don't need to know any number to deduct tax from their payments to you.

Ouch!

irishgeo

Carawaystick wrote: »

I've been charged dirt since before I had a pps number ( or even a rsi number) .
The banks don't need to know any number to deduct tax from their payments to you.

but it does need to know it to give your mortgage interest relief.

TheBustedFlush

irishgeo wrote: »

but it does need to know it to give your mortgage interest relief.

Hooray!

recedite

Knowing an eircode is not proof that you live at that address.
Banks want to see a utility bill matching your name with an address. The bill going before the Oireactas specifically prohibits eircode from doing that.

dr.fuzzenstein

recedite wrote: »

Knowing an eircode is not proof that you live at that address.
Banks want to see a utility bill matching your name with an address. The bill going before the Oireactas specifically prohibits eircode from doing that.

Sorry, can you elaborate on that? Does that mean it is specifically forbidden for Eircode to be matched to an address? That makes no sense unless I'm getting this wrong.

Sam Russell

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Sorry, can you elaborate on that? Does that mean it is specifically forbidden for Eircode to be matched to an address? That makes no sense unless I'm getting this wrong.

I think what is meant is the name matching to an Eircode. Obviously an Eircode is an address.

dr.fuzzenstein

Sam Russell wrote: »

I think what is meant is the name matching to an Eircode. Obviously an Eircode is an address.

So we can't match an Eircode to a name, but we can match it to an address and an address could be matched to a name? At least with the right authority, I guess...

TheBustedFlush

The security procedure in a bank or other financial institution is based on answers to a number of questions, not just one. Staff are trained to identify how accurately and easily a customer responds to these questions. Name on the account, address, eircode, recent transactions, overdraft limit, etc, etc. The eircode will become one of the questions asked in time. This is not rocket science. And is fairly standard practice in other jurisdictions that use postcodes. There is no prohibition in the proposed bill that would prevent that scenario occurring.

dr.fuzzenstein

TheBustedFlush wrote: »

The security procedure in a bank or other financial institution is based on answers to a number of questions, not just one. Staff are trained to identify how accurately and easily a customer responds to these questions. Name on the account, address, eircode, recent transactions, overdraft limit, etc, etc. The eircode will become one of the questions asked in time. This is not rocket science. And is fairly standard practice in other jurisdictions that use postcodes. There is no prohibition in the proposed bill that would prevent that scenario occurring.

The banks are making one fundamental error, though.
The guy who has every single scrap of paper, knows all the answers (you have to play 60 bloody questions to open an account these days), passes the lie detector test and has everything ready when he comes in, arrest him, he's the crook!

larchill

See item on Late Late tonight re eircode launching in July!

Trouwe Ier

larchill wrote: »

See item on Late Late tonight re eircode launching in July!

NO ACCESS TO THAT PROGRAMME AT PRESENT.

SO DOES THE "LAUNCH" COME AFTER THE GREAT MAILSHOT ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FOR LATE JUNE?

OR IS THE GREAT MAILSHOT THE LAUNCH.....AND IS THIS THEREFORE YET ANOTHER DELAY?

Bayberry

larchill wrote: »

See item on Late Late tonight re eircode launching in July!

I'm not sure why, but Boards is getting a bit stroppy when I try to follow up to this - I've spent the last 30 minutes trying to get it to accpet a reply.

This was the last episode of the Late Late before the summer break, and it was a "Dancing with the Stars" show to raise money for charity. Most of the audience were dressed up, with most of the men in the audience wearing dickie bows, etc.

Just before the 50 minute mark, Tubs compliments the audience on the sartorial elegance and says that they deserve reward.

"Now during the summer a new postcode system, it's called Eircode, is going to be launched in Ireland, because as of right now we're the only eu country without a postcode. This new system is going to give each address and each business their own unique postcode which you add to your address. You don't need to apply for one because everyone is going to be sent a letter in July containing the eircode for your address. To mark all of that, they've teamed up with Harvey Norman to give us a supper stylish GoTab Android Tablet for everyone in the audience."

After the usual Late Late Show audience cheers, he says "And there's more where that came from", but it looks as though he was referring to a second giveaway by CityJet at the end of the program, and nothing to do with Eircode.

Bayberry

Bayberry wrote: »

I'm not sure why, but Boards is getting a bit stroppy when I try to follow up to this - I've spent the last 30 minutes trying to get it to accept a reply.

There's a brief shot of a Tablet standing on a desk with the Late Late Facebook page on it, and the box with an Eircode flyer covering the bottom 2/3rds. The Flyer has the Eircode logo, with the slogan "Find life easier" just below it, and some text below. It's a bit blurry, but it looks like:

You'll find life easier with Eircode -
the new postcode system launching in Ireland in Summer (2015?)

To find ot more about Eircode, visit www eircode ie

The tablet covers the right hand side of the box, so I'm guessing that the actually says Summer 2015 - it looks like it's summer, and the lines are centered, suggesting that the line continues behind the tablet, but I can't tell for sure.

(just realized that the eircode URL above was what was preventing me posting - I've removed the dots this time!)

(As a new user, I'm not allowed to attach an image yet)

It looks like the GoTab GTD7C which is sells at Harvey Norman for €99, or £50 from Amazon.UK, and it was clearly a co-promotion with Harvey Norman, who probably got more out of the spot than Eircoode did, so at least they didn't break the bank, and if the further delays mentioned above actually happen, it's not likely that anyone wil be complaining that they haven't received their eircode by the time the August Bank Holiday rolls around! (Though they might have to pulp those flyers and get new ones printed :-)

recedite

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

So we can't match an Eircode to a name, but we can match it to an address and an address could be matched to a name? At least with the right authority, I guess...

Only with the consent of the person, and even then that info is not to be passed on to a third party.

Bayberry wrote: »

There's a brief shot of a Tablet standing on a desk with the Late Late Facebook page on it, and the box with an Eircode flyer covering the bottom 2/3rds...
You'll find life easier with Eircode -
the new postcode system launching in Ireland in Summer (2015?)

It could be an Indian Summer they are thinking of
Anyway, I'm glad to see Harvey Norman's involvement has enabled them to give away more than the measly two tablets they were giving away a month ago.

TheBustedFlush

That's clever product selection if it's the Go Tab GTD7C tablet

Maybe they'll have the new Go Code for Ireland app on them that they've been talking about launching in the summer?

Impetus

MBSnr wrote: »

I'm with you here. I get deliveries on a regular basis at my work address - being as it is pretty generic in the business park - I've aways had to talk them in, like a pilot in fog, if they have not delivered to the address before.

Not one driver in over 10yrs has mentioned Loc8 or said it would have been handy to have your GPS co-ords..... I'm sorry but those suggesting there isn't an issue as they don't ask for Loc8 is BS.

Even if the delivery vehicles are equipped with a GPS that has an Eircode database, and even if every package comes addressed with the correct Eircode, with no typos etc, the GPS system is not that accurate in terms of road guidance. I have had perhaps a dozen GPS devices since the technology became available. GPS frequently sends one around the world for sport. If you know a town or city and know the streets, chances are it is better to use the knowledge in your head rather than following the step by step instructions given by a GPS system.

And then you have the "arrived at destination issue" - it could be any of 10 or 20 buildings if you are dependent on GPS. However if every street name has a sign and every building has a clearly visible number no problem. And no need for Eircodes.

Eircodes will join the top ten "dumb Oirish" ideas list - which includes

1. The property developer explosion of the 2000s and the bank borrowings that will have to be dealt with by the tax payer. 65 € billion outstanding debt.

2. The sale of the Aer Lingus brand, control over the national airline, its landing slots at LHR and JFK, and the huge expenditure that will have to ensue at Dublin airport to handle the BA traffic to and from the US, causing massive queues at security checkpoints, and landing and take-off queues on a single active runway. Meanwhile BA have capped the landing charges so the state will have to pay for the investment required. All for 350€ million net from BA.

3. Third world public transport leading to peak period vehicular chaos - eg around Naas on the E20 virtually every day.

Truncated at the expense of going off topic.....

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

Impetus

I had a look at the new gocode.ie website. A re-branding of eircode.ie.

I did a search for an address in the centre of Cork city.

The dumb interface does not use Ajax to pre-fill the address from the initial characters entered. You have to manually enter the address in full.

To enter the house number, you have to delete the field prompt “house number”

You then enter the street name – in full – no Ajax lookup to speed things
up, and delete the field prompt.

You then enter the town – the town should surely be first to act as a sieve of valid street and road names. And the prompt should not require deletion.

Even though I entered the town, it offered two postcodes – one for the address in Cork and one for the same street name in Fermoy, Co. Cork. Confusing and error prone.

Worst of all you then have to enter the county – no country with postcodes uses county, province or region names.

Finally the address I entered was in Cork city. It showed it as being in Cork County which is a different jurisdiction. Dublin 2 or Dublin 4 is not in Co. Dublin.

The code bears no relationship to the location name – and yet uses mainly alpha codes.

Cork postcodes look like west London postcodes to the un-initiated. Eg W7 etc. Many Dublin postcodes will look as if they are in Liverpool. This will cause massive confusion in delivery and sorting of post – causing post destined for an Irish address to be sent to England, and all sorts of problems with credit card validation, online ordering, address entry systems etc.

It would be more difficult in the extreme to come up with a more stupidly designed system. Those responsible should be sent to P45 land.

Dumb, Oirish, incompetent, incompatible internationally, a breach of privacy - ideal for hackers to put data obtained from several sources together, and so it goes on.

www.gocode.ie

Impetus

The "gocode" has no provision for PO Boxes, so there is no GoCode for po box addresses. Presumably the same issue arises for large users of the post.

Nasty, dysfunctional, business-un-friendly.

P45 time for the anybody involved with eircode/gocode...

Bayberry

Impetus wrote: »

Worst of all you then have to enter the county – no country with postcodes uses county, province or region names.

In fairness, any form that I've ever seen that asks for a US address asks for both State and ZIP code, even though the State name is redundant if you know the ZIP code.

Looking at those go codes, I am left wondering if the last four characters will end up the same as the "eircode" ones and become the second half of the postcode?

Bayberry

Impetus wrote: »

And then you have the "arrived at destination issue" - it could be any of 10 or 20 buildings if you are dependent on GPS. However if every street name has a sign and every building has a clearly visible number no problem. And no need for Eircodes.

GPS databases don't usually contain the location of each individual address, as far as I know - they have the actual GPS coodinates of the ends of the street, and a calculation is made as to how far Number 57 is, and that calculation is not always reliable. Obviously, in those estates that apparently have house numbers that were assigned in the order that houses were connected to the ESB, rather than the order that the houses sit on the street, you can't do any such calculation!

This technique is completely unusable for Eircodes, because there is no relationship between adjacent eircodes - you have to store the full set of coordinates for every single eircde. So it's likely that the Eircode database in a GPS unit would have to be much, much larger than the GPS database for other countries. But the accuracy of domestic GPS units is more than sufficient to get you directly in front of a specific eircode, once you get the acual geo-coordinates from the eircode database.

a65b2cd

Impetus wrote: »

www.gocode.ie

Worked fine for me and the location displayed for the address was accurate. There was no need to delete any text as the fields cleared automatically. At this stage, I would take any code rather than keep waiting - we have LOC8, GoCode, Eircode, and the long W8 code.

Impetus

Bayberry wrote: »

In fairness, any form that I've ever seen that asks for a US address asks for both State and ZIP code, even though the State name is redundant if you know the ZIP code.

That is just dumb American. Most of their city names are copycat town names of England or other countries. The rest of the world has original town names with little overlap. The postcode and the town are totally unique The way Americans sound - eg "I live in Chicago, Illinois" almost sounds like an insult to intelligence. As if most people don't know where Chicago is etc.

Impetus

Deleted User wrote: »

Looking at those go codes, I am left wondering if the last four characters will end up the same as the "eircode" ones and become the second half of the postcode?

Is the gocode not the eircode in a desperate re-branding attempt? Is eircode not = gocode

Bayberry

yuloni wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

So they look just like Eircodes, but they're not. They list the Gocode for their office as L6G 56LP, which is somewhere in Sandyford, which would have an Eircode that starts with D18.

The codes also appear to be heirarchical, so if you change the 5th or 6th character, you get a point just a shrt distance away.

While they'll probably be smart enough to treat any eircode entered into their system as an gocode (by doing a database lookup to get the geos, rather than doing whatevr algorithmic transform applies to a "real" go-code, it probably won't work the same way in reverse, so causing trouble for people who think they're entering an eircode, and finding it rejected, because it's really a gocode, and most people won't understand the difference. (At least a Loc8 code looks visially different from an Eircode!)

Impetus

a65b2cd wrote: »

Worked fine for me and the location displayed for the address was accurate. There was no need to delete any text as the fields cleared automatically. At this stage, I would take any code rather than keep waiting - we have LOC8, GoCode, Eircode, and the long W8 code.

In relation to the field prompts, you have obviously not tested this system with various o/s and browser combinations.

I would advise you that any further time wasted on this code is dead time. It will not be used by any intelligent person. Get real..... Dublin codes look like Liverpool Royal Mail postcodes. Imagine spending 20 € mil on a house in D4 and getting a Liverpool postcode! And I don't believe that people in Cork city will like having "West London" postcodes. And so it goes on. The gocode is a total screw-up. Perhaps the last person to leave would turn the lights out?

Impetus

gocodes, Eircodes, Locate8 codes, a confusing shambles. In the absence of a proper, standards compliant postcode.

a65b2cd

Impetus wrote: »

In relation to the field prompts, you have obviously not tested this system with various o/s and browser combinations.

I wasn't trying to trick it, did you test it on an old IBM machine with punch cards? There is an algorithm behind it to convert coordinates to a compressed format. I suspect people and machines will notice Ireland on international post and make a wild guess that it is an Irish postcode.

Bayberry

Impetus wrote: »

That is just dumb American. Most of their city names are copycat town names of England or other countries. The rest of the world has original town names with little overlap. The postcode and the town are totally unique The way Americans sound - eg "I live in Chicago, Illinois" almost sounds like an insult to intelligence. As if most people don't know where Chicago is etc.

That just sounds like Dumb Irish!! You go on about copycat town names and then you refer to "Chicago, Illinois", both of which are derived from Native American names! The "copycat" names are duplicated quite regularly - Newark DE is about 100 miles south of Newark NJ, Portland ME is a couple of thousand miles from Portland OR, and that's only talking about fairly major cities that are well known - there are thousands of much smaller towns and cities that have the same name as another town in another state - even in the same state in some cases.