Eircode - Why did they bother?

grogi

maryishere wrote: »

Why do you think car registrations were not made up of 7 random digits / letters Nopbody would remember them..

Why would you need to remember your registration number?! In the era of cameras in smartphones I can always take a picture of the plate...

dxhound2005

maryishere wrote: »

Actually London was the first city to see the beginnings of post coding. In 1857 it was divided into 10 postal districts based on compass points: N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW, EC for East Central and WC for West Central. It quickly caught on.

In the modern UK post code system, the first two letters refers to the nearest large town or city - the postcode area and there are 124 of these in Britain.
So most people there can remember the first 2 letters of their postcode, at least. Most people here have not a clue and never will.

Why do you think car registrations were not made up of 7 random digits / letters Nopbody would remember them..

I don't see much use in knowing the first two letters. Some of them are easy to link with a city, but for instance AL is St Albans, not so easy. St Albans is where the An Post AddressPal is.

I know mine, and I know that all of those in Louth start with A91 or A92. That shouldn't be hard for anyone to remember, even if a bit useless.

storker

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

In the UK, the advice is (or was) to put the postcode as the last line of the address. There's no advice on this on the Eircode site, but if I do a reverse lookup on my Eircode on the relevant An Post webpage, it gives me the address in this format:

Chateau Storker
Storker Street
STORKERTOWN
County Storker
X11 Y222

They don't actually specify that the town should be in uppercase, but that's the norm in the UK and I got into the habit there and never lost it. I also like how it looks.

Edit: And as G_R says, the Ireland should go at the bottom, because if something is posted from abroad, the Eircode will mean nothing until the post reaches the Irish system.

flaneur

Actually, the most important thing is to put :

IRELAND on the end of the address, after the Eircode on a separate line.

Otherwise, you get the risk that the letter might get sorted to someone guessing "oh that's the UK" or, "oh! that's probably Canada".

Jakey Rolling

Eircode is turning out to be brilliant for (most) courier deliveries to our rural house.
No more getting multiple calls and having to give turn-by-turn instructions, they just turn up at the door.
Even Fastways, who I have slated in the past are doing a great job now. Their foreign drivers are delighted to have a foolproof way to find us.
I think the big difference has been that you can now look up the Eircode on Goggle maps.

Had a tradesman come to look at a job yesterday and first thing he wanted was the Eircode.
Happy days!

flaneur

I think this notion that people won't remember the code is kind of nonsense. We remember / mange to use long 10-character phone numbers and the area codes are no more or less logical than the routing keys in Eircode. We're just familiar with them because they're around since the 1950s in some form or other - and they don't follow any particular logic either as they were rolled out for P&T/TÉ technical requirements for technology that hasn't been around for decades.

The volume of Eircode usage in An Post will suddenly go up as you see the system being rolled out in banks, insurance companies, utility companies and so on as they probably generate the majority of printed postal items.

It's already being asked for a lot more by companies doing deliveries of packages so, I think you'll see fairly rapid adoption.

Alun

I agree, I had mine remembered within 5 minutes of receiving it.

In the UK, for rural locations, the first two letters are pretty irrelevant really. A small pub in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales national park I know well has a Bradford postcode for instance. But go a little further north in the same area to Hawes and they all have a Darlington postcode.

Greentree_uk

my postman can't even get the house numbers right, so he has no hope of understanding an eircode!

Alun

Alun wrote: »

I agree, I had mine remembered within 5 minutes of receiving it.

In the UK, for rural locations, the first two letters are pretty irrelevant really. A small pub in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales national park I know well has a Bradford postcode for instance. But go a little further north in the same area to Hawes and they all have a Darlington postcode.

The first two letters are vital in getting the post to the correct sorting office for onwards delivery, without the routing key the deliveries would get lost in a system that required them.

Greentree_uk

Greentree_uk wrote: »

my postman can't even get the house numbers right, so he has no hope of understanding an eircode!

There's an app for that.

Alun

[Deleted User] wrote: »

The first two letters are vital in getting the post to the correct sorting office for onwards delivery, without the routing key the deliveries would get lost in a system that required them.

I know that!

I was just adding a counter argument against the people who claim that the first two letters of the postcode referring to the "local" town somehow helps in remembering it.

Alun

Alun wrote: »

I know that!

I was just adding a counter argument against the people who claim that the first two letters of the postcode referring to the "local" town somehow helps in remembering it.

In the UK, the first two letters have the name of a town associated to them so are easier to remember in that respect, the eircode has a random prefix that has no relation to the name of the town that has the sorting office, with the exception of Dublin that retained the old postal regional codes.

flaneur

Except they're not random, the routing keys seem to be clustered pretty much like telephone area codes.

The only bit that makes absolutely no sense to me is the H-code, which is split.

One half of it is in Galway and the other is way up at Monaghan and Cavan and various F and N codes split the area.

They're still not that challenging to remember though.

The randomness that I'm referring to is the choice of prefix letters, not the area they cover which is obviously the sorting office that covers that area.

RobertKK

Love Eircode, made life so much easier in the countryside for deliveries.

TheChizler

Anecdotal but any time I've talked to someone who's struggled to remember their Eircode it's the second half they forget, not the first 3 letters. Doesn't really matter what initials the letters relate to, it's the mental act of partitioning them and knowing they relate to a wider group is what makes them memorable.

I remember back in the day if someone was asking what phone network I was with (for sending free texts) they'd ask "you're 087 aren't you?" instead of asking was I with Vodafone.

Alun

Deleted User wrote: »

In the UK, the first two letters have the name of a town associated to them so are easier to remember in that respect, the eircode has a random prefix that has no relation to the name of the town that has the sorting office, with the exception of Dublin that retained the old postal regional codes.

But they're not, that's the point! For someone living in the small town I mentioned, Hawes, the letters DL, for Darlington a town 65km away, have as much relevance to them as XZ, or QG.

andrew1977

In the past month, I had to call 3 tradesmen/service people to come to my house to do some jobs.

Each asked for my eircode and arrived hassle free at my doorstep , I live in the country in a house with no number, and was always having to direct people to the house.

Random number/random code , couldn't give a dam what format of it, it appears to be working as intended now.

I now use my eircode on all deliveries/addresses I complete for online purchases.

murpho999

Deleted User wrote: »

The randomness that I'm referring to is the choice of prefix letters, not the area they cover which is obviously the sorting office that covers that area.

You don't need to remember them. Just look them up.

Why do people think they know how eircodes work? Only people in the business do, and they use IT solutions.

Alun

Alun wrote: »

But they're not, that's the point! For someone living in the small town I mentioned, Hawes, the letters DL, for Darlington a town 65km away, have as much relevance to them as XZ, or QG.

Darlington is obviously their "post town", and their post arrives via Darlington, whether they like or not.

murpho999

murpho999 wrote: »

You don't need to remember them. Just look them up.

Why do people think they know how eircodes work? Only people in the business do, and they use IT solutions.

:rolleyes:

Jakey Rolling

Greentree_uk wrote: »

my postman can't even get the house numbers right, so he has no hope of understanding an eircode!

Well, if his employer gave him an Internet enabled device with GPS (eg a smartphone) he'd be able to look up the Eircode and turn up on your doorstep.

Or better still they load the Eircode database onto a dedicated device, so no Internet connection required.

murpho999

Deleted User wrote: »

:rolleyes:

My point is that the randomness of the prefix, which are not really random, has no impact whatsoever.

Joshua J

We hire out equipment up and down the West coast, based in Donegal. The eircode has been a godsend for finding houses in rural areas.

Bacchus

No idea if the postman or couriers use the code or just the address on the parcel but I've had two tradespeople just ask for it to find me and I've used it a couple of times to find clients homes in Google maps. Works a treat.

I know mine by heart and it doesn't bother me in the slightest that it is a random code, nor that I can't infer what my neighbours one is from my own.

Fann Linn

Bacchus wrote: »

No idea if the postman or couriers use the code or just the address on the parcel but I've had two tradespeople just ask for it to find me and I've used it a couple of times to find clients homes in Google maps. Works a treat.

I know mine by heart and it doesn't bother me in the slightest that it is a random code, nor that I can't infer what my neighbours one is from my own.

Same here, just drop it into google drive and bingo!

Alun

Deleted User wrote: »

Darlington is obviously their "post town", and their post arrives via Darlington, whether they like or not.

Look, I know Darlington is their postal town, just as only a few km south of them, Bradford is their postal town, and slightly further to the west, either Lancaster or Preston is their postal town, I get that.

But in the context of making remembering their own post code easier, which is the gist of this particular strand of the thread, it is totally irrelevant, it's just two letters. The town of Darlington probably hardly even enters their consciousness living in the centre of a National Park, so if someone finds themselves wondering what their postcode is they're not suddenly going to think, "Oh yes, we're 65km away from Darlington, a sh!thole that I never go to, my postcode must begin with DL!" are they?

The system was obviously built with rural Ireland in mind and that's not a bad thing. For this reason, I can understand why they went with a random pattern rather then sequential, all it takes is a one-off house to be built in the middle of two existing houses and the sequence is out of whack. It's much handier than giving directions.

TheRiverman

Great system,unfortunately it's the humans that are creating problems with it.I know my code off by heart,and I use it as much as possible particularly for courier services,no more giving directions to my house when the delivery driver rings to let me know he or she is on their way.

Cienciano

No idea why the start of this thread has such negativity towards it. It's dead handy for finding places. Probably will take a while before everone starts using it, but that's to be expected.

duffer247

Random point, whilst on holidays in Portugal I sent a postcard to myself with my name, eircode and country.
It arrived
I was impressed
Bit sad I know!

KellyXX

I love it.
Now I can find anyone's house using my GPS.

MayoForSam

Yep, I have to say its grown on me, I have used it a few times to tell couriers/delivery men where I'm living out in the sticks and I have no problem remembering it either. Maybe Irish Water charges would have grown on people too.....

Un1corn

I use it all the time now to send stuff to my parents. Mothers Name, A88 K8DN, Ireland. Job done. No need to write addresses anymore.

TheChizler

Un1corn wrote: »

I use it all the time now to send stuff to my parents. Mothers Name, A88 K8DN, Ireland. Job done. No need to write addresses anymore.

That's not technically true, it's designed to be used in addition to the address. It'll probably get to the local distribution centre ok, but at some stage it'll get flagged and a human is going to have to intervene and write the address on manually for the postman who doesn't use the postcode (officially).

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Un1corn wrote: »

I use it all the time now to send stuff to my parents. Mothers Name, A88 K8DN, Ireland. Job done. No need to write addresses anymore.

You have no comeback if they fail to deliver, as Eircodes are most definitely not designed to replace a postal address for deliveries by An Post. They are actually going above and beyond if they do deliver post addressed that way.

WestWicklow1

KellyXX wrote: »

I love it.
Now I can find anyone's house using my GPS.

I'm still waiting for TomTom to get it right.

What GPS are you using?

swampgas

Jaylah Low Kidnapper wrote: »

You have no comeback if they fail to deliver, as Eircodes are most definitely not designed to replace a postal address for deliveries by An Post. They are actually going above and beyond if they do deliver post addressed that way.

On top of that, if you get the eircode wrong or write it badly there is no way to figure out what it should be. And getting an eircode slightly wrong will mean that the address that comes out will be a long long way from what was intended, as this is how it's designed.

A combination of address and eircode is the safest bet.

swampgas

swampgas wrote: »

On top of that, if you get the eircode wrong or write it badly there is no way to figure out what it should be. And getting an eircode slightly wrong will mean that the address that comes out will be a long long way from what was intended, as this is how it's designed.

A combination of address and eircode is the safest bet.

Yes, you should always treat the eircode as a checksum when verifying addresses.

KellyXX

WestWicklow1 wrote: »

I'm still waiting for TomTom to get it right.

What GPS are you using?

Anything accept TomTom

Google maps or Waze.

WestWicklow1

KellyXX wrote: »

Anything accept TomTom

Google maps or Waze.

Ah right. I thought you meant a stand alone dedicated GPS.

ToddyDoody

The true answer to this, I believe, is that the ever powerful amazon (no, not the rainforest which is irrelevant) said it was too costly to deliver stuff to Ireland without a computer friendly post code delivery system, and even threatened to stop service to Ireland should we fail to implement one in a half arsed manner.

flaneur

Actually, the entire logistics sector has been looking for rational Irish addresses for years.

The low density population is enough of a struggle without having addressss that are like something out of the Chronicles of Narnia and are often non unique or utterly useless for actually finding a location.

It results in extra costs, delays, extra fuel burn, more CO2 and so on.

The state knew that any attempt to rationalise addressss here, which would be necessary for a continental or US style addrsss and short code system, would result in issues.

Then throw in the official languages act which means that addresses can be in either language and you can’t actually use the county names without possible legal challenges. Even using D for Dublin resulted in complaints and was risky.

Then add the political chaos likely if you started to define postal districts and they impacted house values ...

The result was they went for a pseudorandom code that avoided all of that. It does the job but it’s very much a solution to a lot of Irish issues that are rather idiosyncratic.

Atlantic Dawn

ToddyDoody wrote: »

The true answer to this, I believe, is that the ever powerful amazon (no, not the rainforest which is irrelevant) said it was too costly to deliver stuff to Ireland without a computer friendly post code delivery system, and even threatened to stop service to Ireland should we fail to implement one in a half arsed manner.

This would be reason for the Irish government not to create Eircode to protect de local jobs.

Atlantic Dawn

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

This would be reason for the Irish government not to create Eircode to protect de local jobs.

As it is, they delayed it for as long as possible and quite likely pushed kicking and screaming into setting up one.