Eircode discussion

plodder

ukoda wrote: »

And the very latest from them is: we're just a trade association, it's up to the companies themselves to decide if they want to use it.

The arrogance of FTAI In their previous statement is appalling. "Give us the code we want. And only the code we want. Screw everyone else. Screw the other industries that are implementing it and using it. Screw the freight companies who support it. We should decide the postcode of ireland because we have a God given right to it"

An Post, Nightline and Fastway have the lions share of the parcel delivery market in ireland. And they all are using eircode. The FTAI represent only 1 industry and not everyone in that industry. They need to pipe down.

No-one looking at this objectively would agree with that. The main criteria that were identified up front were ignored in order to create a profit making opportunity that the state hoped to be involved in. As for "screw everyone else" that is objectively false too. It is still possible to fix it without affecting its usability by anyone else. If anything, it's the "accept whatever is given to us" attitude of people like you that is arrogant.

They couldn't figure out how to use SAC's untill Autoaddress laid it out for them. They were told about them months before launch but ignored it.

You really are quite shamelessly, misrepresenting and misquoting them.

MBSnr

Did any one get in the post plastic eircode 'credit' card size cards with pictures by the artist Padraig McCaul on the back? Ours was in a hand written envelope with my wife's name on, sent to her parents house (along with two cards for them with a different picture on the back). Nothing else in with them in the envelope. They appear to be official eircode ones with the Eircodes correct for both houses.

Back in July last year we got the paper credit card sized one in the post.

Very odd to suddenly get these....

sondagefaux

plodder wrote: »

byrnefm wrote: »

One other thing I was wondering about .. one of the complaints about Eircode is that many people's addresses' counties change (I know it doesn't really). Why the need for the county to be included at all in the address if the Eircode is included? It's more granular than a county. It works in the UK .. the county is effectively optional.

I know people have already tried it with the Dublin district codes .. by forcing people to still write that with the Eircode just makes the code stand out a bit too much, as in, it doesn't appear to add value if included on an envelope since your post might get delayed if you leave out the Dublin district, despite including the Eircode.

If An Post "used" Eircodes in any meaningful sense then it would mean you could address a letter with a name and an eircode only, but they say you can't do that. You would also be able to drop parts of the address like the county.

You can actually. In the first few days after Eircodes were introduced, several people sent mail with just names and Eircodes on them. All were delivered correctly.

plodder

sondagefaux wrote: »

You can actually. In the first few days after Eircodes were introduced, several people sent mail with just names and Eircodes on them. All were delivered correctly.

You can't rely on that working. If An Post says (which they do) that you must use your full address, then you can't depend on your post arriving quickly, if at all.

sondagefaux

plodder wrote: »

sondagefaux wrote: »

You can actually. In the first few days after Eircodes were introduced, several people sent mail with just names and Eircodes on them. All were delivered correctly.

You can't rely on that working. If An Post says (which they do) that you must use your full address, then you can't depend on your post arriving quickly, if at all.

It's already been done. You didn't specify post arriving quickly.

If this item of post could be delivered by An Post, why would they have a problem with one addressed with an Eircode?

A sharp-eyed Irish postman demonstrated his detective skills after tracking down a Co Donegal house with only the vaguest of instructions on a letter to go by.

The letter was sent from Belfast across the border into the Irish Republic to the home of a PHD student.
In full, the envelope contained the message on the front: Your man Henderson, that boy with the glasses who is doing a PhD up here at Queen s in Belfast. Buncrana, County Donegal, Ireland.
A friend sent the letter to Barry Henderson who is studying for a PhD in history at Queen s University Belfast with the potentially confusing address at his home in Buncranca, which has a population of 7,000.
The local postman for the country s An Post mail service knew who Henderson was and then passed it on to his wife Roisin who works for a local newspaper in the Co Donegal town.
Inside the envelope was a terse message written by Barry Henderson s friend: If this has arrived, you live in a village.

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/18/postman-turns-detective-to-deliver-letter-with-cryptic-address-in-ireland[/font]

plodder

sondagefaux wrote: »

It's already been done. You didn't specify post arriving quickly.

Sure, anything is possible as your example shows. The question is whether it scales to being done efficiently by the whole country.

What do you think would happen if every single piece of mail was addressed with a name and an Eircode only from now on? Nothing would get delivered because the whole system of dealing with the quirky exceptions would be overwhelmed.

They could make it work and one way to do it, would be to print the address onto mail that doesn't have it already. But, I'm fairly sure they can't do that at the moment.

sondagefaux

plodder wrote: »

sondagefaux wrote: »

It's already been done. You didn't specify post arriving quickly.

Sure, anything is possible as your example shows. The question is whether it scales to being done efficiently by the whole country.

What do you think would happen if every single piece of mail was addressed with a name and an Eircode only from now on? Nothing would get delivered because the whole system of dealing with the quirky exceptions would be overwhelmed.

They could make it work and one way to do it, would be to print the address onto mail that doesn't have it already. But, I'm fairly sure they can't do that at the moment.

An Post is the designated universal service provider for regulated mail services in Ireland. It has a legal obligation to deliver mail of they type that comes under the regulations at least once per day at least five days per week to every home or premises of natural or legal person within the state.

Because of the unique characteristics of Eircodes, a piece of mail addressed with only an Eircode can be delivered to an identifiable postal address.

Therefore, An Post has a legal obligation to deliver it, provided it is within the weight and dimensions referred to in the regulations.

If everyone sent mail with only names and Eircodes, An Post would have to find some way of dealing with it or it would be failing to meet its legal obligations.

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2002/si/616/made/en/print

plodder

An Post is allowed to stipulate what is and isn't a valid address. So, they can decide whether Eircodes alone are to be allowed. If you don't follow their rules, they can decide to not deliver your mail

sondagefaux

They've already delivered post with just names and Eircodes so they clearly regard them as valid addresses.

ukoda

sondagefaux wrote: »

They've already delivered post with just names and Eircodes so they clearly regard them as valid addresses.

https://twitter.com/postvox/status/621419295667580928

They can, but won't

sondagefaux

ukoda wrote: »

sondagefaux wrote: »

They've already delivered post with just names and Eircodes so they clearly regard them as valid addresses.

https://twitter.com/postvox/status/621419295667580928

They can, but won't

They've already delivered post with just names and Eircodes on the envelopes. And they've delivered that weirdly addressed letter to 'Your Man' in Buncrana. Despite what they may say, they can and do deliver mail that doesn't contain the full postal address.

sondagefaux

I'm gonna go with what An Post actually do rather than what they say on the their Twitter account.

ukoda

sondagefaux wrote: »

I'm gonna go with what An Post actually do rather than what they say on the their Twitter account.

Yes that's what I said, they can do it. But they don't want to and tell people they must use their full address

plodder

ukoda wrote: »

Yes that's what I said, they can do it. But they don't want to and tell people they must use their full address

Their sorting machines can recognise Eircodes and can presumably sort post using it. But, what happens then, if a postman gets a sackful of mail with no address on any of it? It's not practical:-

a) to expect him to have a smart phone with the autoaddress app

b) to type in all the eircodes where it works out a delivery route

They can handle Eircodes on an exceptional basis, in the same way as they can handle the odd letter with a cryptic puzzle on the front. But, the mail will be diverted and delayed and the process does not scale. At some point, they could just decide to refuse delivery altogether. They would be within their rights until such time as they come with a proper solution that is integrated with the sorting system.

BTW. The Daily Mail is all over Eircode today. Not pretty.

ukoda

plodder wrote: »

Their sorting machines can recognise Eircodes and can presumably sort post using it. But, what happens then, if a postman gets a sackful of mail with no address on any of it? It's not practical:-

a) to expect him to have a smart phone with the autoaddress app

b) to type in all the eircodes where it works out a delivery route

They can handle Eircodes on an exceptional basis, in the same way as they can handle the odd letter with a cryptic puzzle on the front. But, the mail will be diverted and delayed and the process does not scale. At some point, they could just decide to refuse delivery altogether. They would be within their rights until such time as they come with a proper solution that is integrated with the sorting system.

BTW. The Daily Mail is all over Eircode today. Not pretty.

Yes that's why they don't want people to put just an eircode. It was never intended to replace addresses.


Nothing in the Daily Mail is ever pretty, coherent or entirely accurate. It's always 99% sensationalist nonsense with about 1% fact, if even.

plodder

ukoda wrote: »

Nothing in the Daily Mail is ever pretty, coherent or entirely accurate. It's always 99% sensationalist nonsense with about 1% fact, if even.

Have you read it?

ukoda

plodder wrote: »

Have you read it?

No way.

And before you say don't comment on the article before I read it, I didn't say a word about the article. I gave my opinion on the paper as a whole.

gizmo555

ukoda wrote: »

. . .
They also use it on their "address checker" tool: http://correctaddress.anpost.ie/pages/Search.aspx


its on their forms to apply for Prize Bonds, Household Budget, Savings Bonds

They do not use it in any meaningful way to sort and deliver post. For example, I got a letter two weeks ago addressed to Westport, Co. Mayo, [my Eircode].

Given the uniqueness of the Eircode, this should have been ample for An Post to deliver the letter. It arrived two days late with a handwritten note on the envelope asking me in future to provide my correspondents with my "full address".

On the other hand, letters to me from any part of the country without the Eircode but including my townland arrive overnight. Call Eircode whatever else you like, it is not a postal code.

ukoda

gizmo555 wrote: »

They do not use it in any meaningful way to sort and deliver post. For example, I got a letter two weeks ago addressed to Westport, Co. Mayo, [my Eircode].

Given the uniqueness of the Eircode, this should have been ample for An Post to deliver the letter. It arrived two days late with a handwritten note on the envelope asking me in future to provide my correspondents with my "full address".

On the other hand, letters to me from any part of the country without the Eircode but including my townland arrive overnight. Call Eircode whatever else you like, it is not a postal code.

An Post have asked people multiple times to include the eircode at the end of their full address. Eircode is used at the 4 main sort centres and your full address is used thereafter.

People have been repeatedly told to keep using there full address and just add eircode. So if you stop dropping the townland form your address your problem will be solved.

gizmo555

ukoda wrote: »

People have been repeatedly told to keep using there full address and just add eircode.

What's the point? So far as An Post is concerned it will not make any difference, the post will arrive on time without it.

ukoda wrote: »

So if you stop dropping the townland form your address your problem will be solved.

I didn't. It was an error on the part of my correspondent. I would always give my full address, because I know An Post doesn't use the Eircode to deliver my post.

ukoda

gizmo555 wrote: »

What's the point? So far as An Post is concerned it will not make any difference, the post will arrive on time without it.



I didn't. It was an error on the part of my correspondent. I would always give my full address, because I know An Post doesn't use the Eircode to deliver my post.

Your post arrived on time before eircode, you knew this, we all knew this. An Post can make use of eircode at certain stages in their process, at the 4 mail centres it can read and sort by eircode and maybe that saves them money or has other uses.

Eircodes weren't implemented with the sole purpose of making your mail arrive faster. They have far wider uses and that's where the real benefits come from.

gizmo555

"What is Eircode?"

Eircode, Ireland’s postcode system launched in July 2015

http://www.eircode.ie/what-is-eircode

A "postcode" system which almost a year after its launch is not actually used by Ireland's postal service to deliver post . . .

ukoda

gizmo555 wrote: »

"What is Eircode?"

Eircode, Ireland’s postcode system launched in July 2015

http://www.eircode.ie/what-is-eircode

A "postcode" system which almost a year after its launch is not actually used by Ireland's postal service to deliver post . . .

It's used in their 4 national mail centres and by various other An Post services. Parcel delivery, address checker, etc etc

gizmo555

ukoda wrote: »

It's used in their 4 national mail centres and by various other An Post services. Parcel delivery, address checker, etc etc

You wrote that "People have been repeatedly told to keep using there full address and just add eircode." Why should they? What difference will it make to them? (The answer, of course, is none.)

ukoda

gizmo555 wrote: »

You wrote that "People have been repeatedly told to keep using there full address and just add eircode." Why should they? What difference will it make to them? (The answer, of course, is none.)

Why shouldn't they? Eircode was not intended to replace a full address or any part of it. I'm not sure what your point is.

Do you just not like the fact it's called a postcode?

gizmo555

ukoda wrote: »

Why shouldn't they?

Because there is no reason to. As part of my postal address, Eircode is 100% redundant. It will not get my post to me any faster. Not including Eircode in my address won't slow delivery of my post or make it go astray.

ukoda wrote: »

Do you just not like the fact it's called a postcode

It's more that I'm amused that it's called a postcode when it has SFA to do with post.

ukoda

gizmo555 wrote: »

Because there is no reason to. As part of my postal address, Eircode is 100% redundant. It will not get my post to me any faster. Not including Eircode in my address won't slow delivery of my post or make it go astray.



It's more that I'm amused that it's called a postcode when it has SFA to do with post.

Well eircode is optional for mail delivery, so no one is actually telling you that you must add it. If you don't want to, then you don't have to.

gizmo555

ukoda wrote: »

Well eircode is optional for mail delivery . . .

It's not just "optional", it's completely and utterly irrelevant. Some "postcode system"!

ukoda

gizmo555 wrote: »

It's not just "optional", it's completely and utterly irrelevant. Some "postcode system"!

There are a lot of businesses reaping benefits from eircode that would disagree with you.

gizmo555

ukoda wrote: »

There are a lot of businesses reaping benefits from eircode that would disagree with you.

I am talking specifically about our national postal service and that the fact that it doesn't use our alleged "postcode system".

oscarBravo

gizmo555 wrote: »

I am talking specifically about our national postal service and that the fact that it doesn't use our alleged "postcode system".

Basically, you're saying that because a near-monopoly player in a market doesn't use a code that could be of use to its competitors (and opposed the introduction of any such code for precisely that reason), the code is useless.

Well played, An Post. Well played.

gizmo555

oscarBravo wrote: »

Basically, you're saying that . . . the code is useless.

I did not say that. Eircode may well be of use for other purposes that have been alluded to in this thread, such as SUSI's use of it to determine the exact distance from students' homes to their colleges or universities, to determine their grant entitlements, or your own use of it for your business.

What I said is that, despite Capita's claims, Eircode is not a postcode and that there is absolutely no reason for people to include Eircodes in their postal addresses.

PDVerse

A postcode is used to sort post. Eircode is used by An Post to sort post. Eircode can improve the speed and/or efficiency of sorting post to get it into the postbag of the relevant postal delivery worker. From there the post is delivered using the address. An Post use Eircode, and will modify existing manual sorting procedures when usage rates increase. Eircode is a postcode.

oscarBravo

gizmo555 wrote: »

What I said is that, despite Capita's claims, Eircode is not a postcode...

But in order to make that claim, you basically have to invent a brand-new definition of "postcode" that's carefully crafted to exclude Eircodes. And, even then - as pointed out by PDVerse - you're wrong.

gizmo555

PDVerse wrote: »

A postcode is used to sort post. Eircode is used by An Post to sort post.

How? It is not used in any way at the local delivery centres. An Post have been extremely vague about how it may be being used in national sorting centres.

PDVerse wrote: »

Eircode can improve the speed and/or efficiency of sorting post to get it into the postbag of the relevant postal delivery worker. From there the post is delivered using the address.

Again, how? I get all my post overnight without an Eircode in the address.

PDVerse wrote: »

An Post use Eircode, and will modify existing manual sorting procedures when usage rates increase.

An Post customer service have told me directly that is is not currently viable to use Eircodes for local automated or manual sorting. I admire your optimism, but I'd suggest "if" rather than "when" would be more realistic.

PDVerse wrote: »

Eircode is a postcode.

Not in any meaningful sense of the term and it is certainly not being used by An Post in the manner it was designed to be used.

ukoda

gizmo555 wrote: »

How? It is not used in any way at the local delivery centres. An Post have been extremely vague about how it may be being used in national sorting centres.



Again, how? I get all my post overnight without an Eircode in the address.



An Post customer service have told me directly that is is not currently viable to use Eircodes for local automated or manual sorting. I admire your optimism, but I'd suggest "if" rather than "when" would be more realistic.



Not in any meaningful sense of the term and it is certainly not being used by An Post in the manner it was designed to be used.

I admire your confidence that you can claim to be the sole authority on the definition of what constitutes a postcode in ireland.

It's also good to know that you have examined An Posts processes in depth to be able to represent them in telling us that they are certainly not using eircode in the way it was intended.

plodder

gizmo555 wrote: »

What I said is that, despite Capita's claims, Eircode is not a postcode and that there is absolutely no reason for people to include Eircodes in their postal addresses.

except possibly for non-unique addresses. In some of those cases, the postman might be able to distinguish addresses that were ambiguous before (people with the same name). It requires the postman to become familiar with the random part of the Eircode though and he/she has to figure out which code is which, ie that Johnny Murphy Senior has the code PQ21 and Johnny Murphy Junior has the code KY99 (though they live next door to each other).

But, for the majority of addresses that are already unique, eircode doesn't add any value as a postcode, .. except to give people something to type into the postcode field on websites....

gizmo555

ukoda wrote: »

I admire your confidence that you can claim to be the sole authority on the definition of what constitutes a postcode in ireland.

It's also good to know that you have examined An Posts processes in depth to be able to represent them in telling us that they are certainly not using eircode in the way it was intended.

Eircodes are designed to uniquely identify every postal address in the country. An Post is not using this information in its local sorting and delivery processes. I know this not because of my in depth examination of their processes, but because that's what they told me in January:

At the delivery stage the textual address is what is used by the Postal Operative to attempt delivery. With approximately three million mail items processed and delivered by An Post daily it would not be practical or economically viable to look up the Eircode to obtain the textual address.

With regard to non-unique addresses (circa 40%) the Postperson relies on the actual surname and on occasion the first name as well to identify the delivery point that the mail item is for.

With an insufficient address there is no guarantee that the Eircode would be correct and an error in the Eircode could, if used to find a textual address, result in an incorrect textual address being used and consequently the mail item would be delivered to the wrong address.

An Post will use Eircodes in manual sorting and automated sequence sorting of Postpersons routes when the volume of mail containing correct Eircodes reaches a critical mass that makes this a viable approach to sorting mail.

When this happens the correct postal address will still be required as the textual address is used by Postal Operatives on delivery.

I followed up with a query as to what the then current Eircode usage level was and what, for their purposes, would constitute the "critical mass" they'd need to use it at local sorting and delivery level. They said they'd get back to me on those points. Five months later, I'm still waiting.

sondagefaux

ukoda wrote: »

sondagefaux wrote: »

I'm gonna go with what An Post actually do rather than what they say on the their Twitter account.

Yes that's what I said, they can do it. But they don't want to and tell people they must use their full address

They tell people they don't want to but they go ahead and deliver this type of mail anyway.

Actions speak louder than words.

gizmo555

oscarBravo wrote: »

But in order to make that claim, you basically have to invent a brand-new definition of "postcode" that's carefully crafted to exclude Eircodes. And, even then - as pointed out by PDVerse - you're wrong.

We already know that An Post is not using the full code, because they've told us that. At most, it is using the routing keys. If we take Westport, the routing code is F23 and it covers all of Clew Bay from Louisburgh, to Westport, around by Newport to Mulrany and Achill, and extensive surrouding areas.

If someone sends me a letter with Westport in the address, then the routing key is completely redundant. An Post's existing sorting systems can read Westport as easily as an Eircode and route the post more accurately to the local sorting and delivery office. An Eircode in the address serves absolutely no purpose.

clewbays

The parliamentary questions continue: https://www.kildarestreet.com/wrans/?id=2016-06-14a.1321

ukoda

clewbays wrote: »

The parliamentary questions continue: https://www.kildarestreet.com/wrans/?id=2016-06-14a.1321

From the link:



"Contracts have been signed with satellite navigation companies and negotiations are ongoing with others. Google and Eircode are working together to bring Eircodes to Google Applications, including Google Maps shortly. TomTom have concluded their licence negotiations for Eircodes and are currently integrating the codes into their products."


I could take from that that they haven't nailed a contract with Garmin yet. Probably because they will want to negotiate Loc8 code off the devices first

gizmo555

ukoda wrote: »

I could take from that that they haven't nailed a contract with Garmin yet. Probably because they will want to negotiate Loc8 code off the devices first

I note that the minister was directly asked "if the Loc8 code was considered for use with the Eircode autoaddress application in the introduction of two additional postcodes to be used with the application; if not, the reason;".

He simply ignored the question and instead answered questions he hadn't been asked, making no reference whatever to Loc8 in his reply

Sam Russell

Mod: Can we keep off loc8 please. It is not relevant anymore.

ukoda

gizmo555 wrote: »

I note that the minister was directly asked "if the Loc8 code was considered for use with the Eircode autoaddress application in the introduction of two additional postcodes to be used with the application; if not, the reason;".

He simply ignored the question and instead answered questions he hadn't been asked, making no reference whatever to Loc8 in his reply

I don't know why anyone would ask such a question. They don't ask if Open postcode Go code or any of the others were considered.

Loc8 have made themselves out to be some sort of charity offering thier code for "free" and have duped people into thinking that 1, it was suitable (it wasn't) and 2, it would be "free" (it wouldn't have been)

ukoda

Sam Russell wrote: »

Mod: Can we keep off loc8 please. It is not relevant anymore.

I had already submitted my post below yours before I saw this. Is there a general ban on mentioning Loc8?

gizmo555

ukoda wrote: »

I don't know why anyone would ask such a question.

I don't know either. And I don't know much about Loc8 and certainly have no particular view on its suitability as an alternative to Eircode.

But I do know the deputy was entitled to a straight answer to a yes or no question and he didn't get it. Which would make me wonder why the minister and his civil servants are being so evasive on the point.

Sam Russell

ukoda wrote: »

I had already submitted my post below yours before I saw this. Is there a general ban on mentioning Loc8?

Previous threads were closed because of trolling related to loc8. I have no wish to return to that scenario. As far as this thread is concerned loc8 is dead and buried.

[Except that Garmin support it - if the post relates to Garmin then I think it might be relevant but that is all.]

ukoda

Sam Russell wrote: »

Previous threads were closed because of trolling related to loc8. I have no wish to return to that scenario. As far as this thread is concerned loc8 is dead and buried.

[Except that Garmin support it - if the post relates to Garmin then I think it might be relevant but that is all.]

That's fair enough so. In relation to Garmin, they have a contract with loc8 and on the front entry screen of every sat nav Garmin sell in Ireland it says "enter address / loc8code" I would imagine eircode would want to replace that with "enter address / eircode" and I think it may be a sticking point in the negotiations as Garmin have a contract with loc8. I'll leave it at that.

I think Garmin will be forced into eircode adoption if both TomTom and Google Maps use it. Without support of eircode then effectively they've killed sales of their devices in ireland as who'd buy their device over ones that support eircode.

At least we've moved on from the whole "it won't fit on a sat nav / can't be used offline" nonsense that so many people were spouting on here.

Sam Russell

ukoda wrote: »

That's fair enough so. In relation to Garmin, they have a contract with loc8 and on the front entry screen of every sat nav Garmin sell in Ireland it says "enter address / loc8code" I would imagine eircode would want to replace that with "enter address / eircode" and I think it may be a sticking point in the negotiations as Garmin have a contract with loc8. I'll leave it at that.

I think Garmin will be forced into eircode adoption if both TomTom and Google Maps use it. Without support of eircode then effectively they've killed sales of their devices in ireland as who'd buy their device over ones that support eircode.

They could go with 'Enter Address/loc8/Eircode' - that would work.

My Garmin asks for 'Address/postcode' but it was bought in Currys - UK.