A plea from a new postie

[Zingy123]

If you haven't got your door number displayed please get some stick on numbers or a sign. I have recently started working for Royal Mail. I can't believe the amount of doors without numbers on. It's so hard trying to deliver to the right doors a lot of it is guess work.

Other services must struggle too like Ambulances etc.

Thank you

Speaking as an ex-Deliveroo biker, the clarity of your numbering also has direct influence on the warmth of your takeaway. Which is less important than an ambulance finding you, but could be a an important motivator!

I recently delivered a flier to all the houses in my road/side roads about a future street party (street closure) in a road of @ 100 houses. The number of them where the numbers aren't visible and they dont have an outside light (must be a nightmare for deliveries), parcels left on doorsteps (I would have made a fortune as a porch pirate!), or I almost lost the skin off my fingers putting the flier through the letterbox as the spring loaded flap was maladjusted. Or they have steps in the path to the house that aren't visible until you fall down them (thank you kind postie for helping me home after I fell and hurt my wrist!) I'll be boozing it up at the Jubilee street party for sure as I bloody earned it!

The first time I visited my late brother at his house in the country, He'd put up a huge scruffy board hand painted with his address, 1 South Farm. That afternoon he took me for a short walk to show me round the hamlet where he lived, where he pointed out 1 South Farm Cottages, 1 South Farm Lane, and South Farm House. He'd got to know everyone really quickly as they redelivered mail to each other!

My first two houses both had ridiculous addresses. First flat was 18 Frida Mansions, Frida Road. There was also an 18 Frida Road and an 18 Frida Close. Maddening.

Then we moved to a street where instead of the whole road having sequential numbers it’s was a long series of pairs of “whatever” villa. So we were halfway down a totally normal street of little semis but the only way to find 2 Pine Villas, Stupid Road as opposed to 2 Maple Villas, Stupid Road was to go down the whole road reading the names off the houses.

Honestly if I’d known how much trouble this world cause I’d have not bought the house.

Sorry that was long! I feel strongly about it. Such a relief to now just live in a street with proper numbering.

I used to live in Germany...you HAVE to have your door/house/postbox clearly numbered there! Houses have 'boxes' for post - they don't get put through the letterbox - and these have to display your actual family name as well as the address. So mine would say eg: Dumpling/3650 Markt Platz

Very easy for posties 👍

Glad you aren't around here, the roads have multiple spurs and the numbers are all over the place, where I previously lived there were no numbers!

When we moved in, our neighbour changed the name of his house to ours with farm on the end. It wiped us off the address system as it was assumed to be a replacement address rather than a new address or a change to his previous name.
Took bloody ages to sort out and now we get all his parcels because he has an intercom to get past and no one can be bothered with that.

There's also an address (only 6 houses here) that no one knows how to get to. No one recognises any of the names on the mail and no one knows how to access the property. So we get stuck with their Mail too. As far as we know no one lives there but there's always weird Mail arriving.

@statetrooperstacey those mailboxes are annoying. The slots are only big enough for a tiny letter. They are usually the people ordering boxes upon boxes of lateral flow tests and you have nowhere to put them. Loads of these new composite doors have no letterboxes. People don't think what they are doing.

@Bonbon21

Covenants mean we can only have hedges at the front, no gate so I can't affix a number there. We all have slate numbers by our doors, all part of the design. Moan to architects and council planning depts! Thankfully in our case we don't have a long drive

Your mind would be blown by rural Ireland -- farms don't have names, and postcodes are in their infancy and still not used by everyone, so a an address will just be the townland name (smallest trad land division, could be under an acre or could be 1000 acres, could have two houses or 200) followed by the name of the nearest town or village and the county. Townlands have no divisions on the ground, and you might have dozens of families with the same common names on your route.

Our postmen and women have (and need) brilliant local knowledge, instincts and memories. They've always done an important service in checking in on elderly, isolated people who might see no one else from one end of the week to the next, and stepped up even more during Covid, doing shopping and making sure people were ok. They are brilliant.

@statetrooperstacey

Also as an aside if you have a grey door with three square windows in it and a letterbox at the bottom , you are a Royal Mail meme. And a cunt, and everybody hates you 👍 Also if your going to get a wall box don’t buy the cheapest tiniest one you can find. Get one that’s fit for purpose .

Oh. I'm so sorry. I had no idea. Why the hate?

We do have clearly displayed house number if that helps.... 😂

I have a number on my gate, my door and my house. Still no one finds us

@JuliaSways it's the letterbox at the bottom it's hard bending over with a full bag of post on your shoulder.

I like living incognito.

Yes it's a free app you can download. Emergency services recommend it it too. The whole world is split into 3m squares and they all have 3 word "addresses". You can use the app to get the 3 words for a place to give to someone or you can use the app to navigate between 2 locations. It has a map or compass option for that.
I first used it so my brother could find us in Epping forest rather than saying turn left at the big tree, then right at the holly bush. He found us in dense trees in no time

Our front door is at the side of the house so when we moved in I did remove a hanging basket from the front of the house as the previous owners had sited the bracket where the basket would hide the house number.

Added to the fact our street is strangely numbered I thought it best!

I can totally appreciate how annoying this is!

I live in a small block of flats, but it only has the building name on the outside, along with the buttons to ring the buzzers for each flat (numbered). It doesn't have the actual house number anywhere.

Even worse is nextdoor is also a block of flats with no number displayed too, so it is always difficult for takeaway drivers to find us. More often than not they phone and we have to direct them.

But we can't do anything about it as we're just leaseholders so can't put a new number sign up.

I used to live at 3 Smith Avenue. It was a semi circle road with another road, Jones Avenue going from top to bottom ( like a capital D shape) and a 3rd road going through the middle of the D, .

On our road all the odd numbers were at the bottom half of the D, even numbers were at the top.

I was number 3 Smith Ave, often got post for 3 Jones Ave and number 2 Smith Ave. It was a 10 minute round walk to return the post. I got so annoyed one week when I had a pile of post to give out, that I decided to be petty and write on the letters "incorrectly delivered to 3 Smith Ave" and posted back in the post box across the road.

Everything was OK for a few months and then it started up again 🙄 thankfully I now live in a culdesac with 6 houses.

@statetrooperstacey

Also as an aside if you have a grey door with three square windows in it and a letterbox at the bottom , you are a Royal Mail meme. And a cunt, and everybody hates you 👍 Also if your going to get a wall box don’t buy the cheapest tiniest one you can find. Get one that’s fit for purpose .

Are posties aware that people are advised to have low/no letterboxes for security purposes?

[quote Zingy123]@JuliaSways it's the letterbox at the bottom it's hard bending over with a full bag of post on your shoulder.[/quote]
Oh! I am so sorry, feel quite bad now. Was so proud of my first ever new door too (having previously lived in rented accommodation!). The amount of post we get too.... I think I owe the posties a Christmas tip!

Thanks @Mysa74 have downloaded now.

Hopefully our local delivery drivers have too!

I put a lovely big no 3 on our front door when we moved in as the numbering on our estate is weird, and there's a number at the end of the driveway too, and on our wheelie bin.

Despite this we get a lot of delivery drivers knocking on the door asking if we are no. 1.

@Hathertonhariden they were supposed to be banned
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47457758#:~:text=In%20a%20victory%20for%20long,dog%20bites%20and%20trapped%20fingers

Having had a paper round many moons ago, I am a great fan of a) clear numbers and b) huge letter boxes at a sensible height.

I have twice had a district nurse in ppe gear burst into my house on a Sunday - once when I was sitting in my dressing gown and once I was in the bath!
She hadn’t bothered checking that the address she wanted was M… Place, so marched into my unlocked house when I didn’t hear the door - because I am on M…Drive, and she reached that first. M… Place is five turnings away down the street!
The street is clearly named, and my house numbered. The postie never has a problem.