To ask you...no, to BEG you...

[Yesitsbess]

Put your house numbers on your house people!

I lost my hospitality job during the lockdown and, as many people have had to, took up a delivery job to make ends meet. I have learned that delivery drivers are grumpy for a reason! Those reasons are numerous.

If you want to help us out for reasons that include: our safety, our being able to park safely, our being able to make the insane time targets we are set by our companies, our not wasting fuel looking for you (both environmentally and efficiency-wise) and you just getting your food/parcels/taxis on-time then please have a look at the following:

1. God tier - people with GIANT NUMBERS IN LIGHTS on their houses AND BINS ( we love you, especially if we deliver after dark) even if we're not delivering to your house, we use you as navigation because Googlemaps is shite.

1. Mid-tier - people who live somewhere hard-to-find but include directions on their order. Your street has 'odds and evens'. You have your number on your door in a colour that is discernible in the dark.

1. Poo-tier - people who live on a New build estate where the developer assigned house numbers by THROWING A CALCULATOR AT A CEILING FAN, and yet they think Google maps will see us right. It will not and we hate you.

1. Hell Tier - people who live on a main road, with long drives spanning off said main road, with NO indication of what house number/name they are at he end of their drive...

1. Seventh circle of Hell tier - you live very rurally and don't provide directions. Or in a very difficult to access place, or you have insane building works on the path, your dog is horrible (please stop your dogs humping and/or biting us - we're on minimum wage, we don't care if he "never does this usually!")

Anyway, if you've read this and think "We're golden!" on this issue, drive around your neighbouring roads at night and try to pick a random number to find - it's a fun game and might help you see what we see?

PUT NUMBERS ON YOUR HOUSES PEOPLE!

SHRIMPS, not strips, you bstarding auto-bloody-carrot!

(Those should be my three words: You B*starding Auto-bloody-carrot)

Where I live the houses have names instead of numbers. I didn't know that was a thing until I moved here. I'm forever being stopped on my dog walks by lost delivery drivers looking for such and such cottage. I've started learning the house names in my street as I was sick of being asked and and not being able to help. I would hate to be a delivery driver around here.

@YesitsbessI feel your pain. I used to have a job that sometimes required home visits and it can be a PITA trying to find places, and so many people don’t seem to think about what it’s like from visitors’ perspectives. Even an ex boyfriend was guilty of this when I tried to find his place for the first time. He gave me his full address but the sat nav took me to another road where I could see his block but there was no entrance. When I phoned him he said “oh yes, everyone has trouble finding it, you actually have to…” (the entrance was on a different road to the one on the address!) Then why didn’t you think to tell me you dozy git! 🙄😠 I always give instructions, especially when I lived in the sticks in a no-number house on a no-name road (I’d give loads of landmarks, distances, “left at the postbox, right at the thatched cottage” type directions, to help).

Anyway, on my first 2 houses I put up these reflective house plaques which are brilliant. As an aside, I bought the first one after the business owner was door to dooring in my neighbourhood, showing off his new business. I never buy from door to door salesmen usually but I really liked his products so did, and was so pleased I bought another one when I moved house (and will get another now I’ve moved again). Gives me a little warm glow to know I was one of his early customers and this little business is still going 😊

Thank you for highlighting this @Yesitsbess I've done jobs in the past where I've needed to find homes on new build estates. It's an utter nightmare..
My house is numbered, as are our neighbours', but you've given me the reminder I need to keep the light on if I'm expecting something.
Tbh it's worth doing of a dark evening even if I'm not, as it might help drivers find neighbours.
I'll also put more details onto online orders.
Later today I will rummage for some paint to number our bins with.
Sometimes, aibu threads are very useful.
to you and all delivery drivers. We do appreciate you!

My mum lives about halfway down her road which is split into sections that you would never assume is the same road. Her house has a name, the house to her left is number 3 and the house on the right is number 47. All the houses are light grey as well so it’s bloody impossible to get a delivery as there is just no point you can say it’s near.

@Yesitsbess

lovely posts ,have cheered and enlightened ( see what I did there ? ) .

I'm going to see if I can do anything to improve my address visibilty and encourage others to do the same .

The reflective plates look good candida
I'm also wondering about reflective paint. I'm sure that's a thing *goes off to look!
I also plan to investigate the 3 word thingy (have not read full thread yet but assume it's an app?)

I'm catching up on posts I hadn't even noticed yet!

@tabernacles I deliver food, so everyone, even the flat-dwellers has my full and undivided attention we can't just lob your dinner on a bin and take a photo saying you were out!

And another thing. Would people in those strange 60's built houses where the back of the house (usually hidden by the garage and a wall)
face the road put a big number on the back of the house as the fronts of this type of house are on a footpath with a nice green area?

YANBU, used to deliver poll cards and house names or irregular numbering patterns, or front doors that weren't actually on the same street as the address were a pita.
I live rurally with a house name- not much I can do about it but I do leave a porch light on and there is a house name on the gate. However more recently, inexplicably satnavs are now directing people to our back door?! So inspired by your post I have just ordered a house sign for our back gate, its been on my to do list for a while! All bases now covered 😊

@fnib I'm very conscious of wildlife getting bamboozled by lights at night, but it's a double-edged sword for me, lights really do help us find addresses, even if they're not yours if that makes sense.

Big fan of glow in the dark anything though.

I don't have my number on our bins (no point as the bins are kept in the back garden) but when we moved in last year I did notice that the hanging basket was right in front of the house number on our house front so I removed it. We have another number right by the front door but the door is sideways on (we go round a bend in the road) so can only be seen if you approach from a certain angle.

Google maps is no good in our street, the house numbering is wierd. Dh tried to deliver christmas cards to our new neighbours and gave up.

I really should have set up a business for house plaques and bin stickers before posting this shouldn't I?

I work in healthcare, and quite often am asked to attend and assess unwell patients by the GP. If I struggle to find an address due to poor signage I always tell the patient that if I can’t find it, how do they expect the emergency services to if they become more unwell, especially if they are not able to get to the phone to direct.
The other thing we have to contend with are keysafe’s. Please make sure these are up to date on the GP records, and write them somewhere obvious (on the phone if needed) as the amount of people who don’t remember the number as “only the carers use it” or “my daughter just lets herself in with it” is astounding.
While I’m on a roll, take the key out of the door lock so it can be accessed from the other side. Start the habit now so it’s second nature by the time you’re infirm, or attach a bungee or something so that they key is accessible and safe but can be left hanging by the lock as opposed to in it. Once memory problems set in its hard to teach new habits so start now

Oh no! I have moved from God tier to Hell tier!

I shall fix this pronto OP.

(I did add my house number to Google maps though - so my new build house is not yet shown in the map but the number shows up and is searchable)

Maybe there's a case for a by-law, if not a real law about house numbers being visible to the road where possible. So it's the presumed default, not a "oh, that's nice dear" feature ?

For reasons I can't quite fathom, /// appears to be going the way of Betamax. I put my location on my cv in /// form in 2016, and not a single company has known what it means. (And these are IT companies). Although with hindsight, I can see the problem. Because an awful lot of vulgar abuse is three word epithets.

Tier 4 here, and won't be changing our numbers due to a dodgy ex.

We do always wait outside for delivery though if it's dark.

@FudgeSundae I deliver food so people are mostly expecting me, even at night! But I agree, there should be a cut off point, we had a gas emergency at a flat and were told the engineer (because it was considered an emergency - it wasn't a leak or anything like that) could arrive at any point in a 24 hour period.

Another Vote for What3Words.

It really is a game changer.
Free App
Pin points you within 3 square meters.

We put out a yellow cone with a smiley face if we are expecting a delivery. It's massive. I knitted it a Santa outfit at Christmas. Others along our road are doing similar things now as all the houses have names and no numbers and it makes it easy for the driver to find us.

then all you'd have to do is put moon//tumble//box or whatever in your notes and you could be found.

The other thing people can do is update their location of their house on google maps - takes a day or so to update but massively improved the number of deliveries we had finding us first time.

I hear you! I have taken on board your advice and commiserate with you in your frustrating searches.

I am about to move to a brand new-build house in a tiny rural village so I will have to think how I can make things easy for delivery drivers. Thinking cap on!

Oh my goodness.
My parents used to live in a village.
There were no road names, as the whole village was one street. Execpt of course it wasn't, little off shoots with 4 houses down it.

There were no numbers in the vilalge at all except for 5 houses in a row at the beginning. All the rest were names, and the names went something like this:

The Manor
The Old Manor
Manor Farm
Manor Farm Barn
The Barn
The Old Barn
The Old Manor Barn
Manor Farmhouse
The Farm
The Farm Barn.

and no, I am not exaggerating.

no streetlights, and lots of driveways, but most houses did have the name clearly on the gate

I live at your number 5. Up a track you can't get a van up, in a village with no street names just house names.

However I live opposite the pub and despite providing very clear instructions not to follow the sat nav and to use postcode XXXX XXX I still get delivery drivers going to me neighbour who refuses to accept the parcels! Then the drivers get stroppy with me.

It works both ways.