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!

@Tinydinosaur

House names are the worst. What is the value at all in having a house name. It could be anywhere. WHY?????

Particularly people who have a house name only on a rural road that's 2 miles long and has a 50mph speed limit.

Do they expect delivery drivers to kerb crawl the entire road hunting for their house name?! I've started making people with such fucking inconsiderate addresses provide a What3Words code.

@AvocadosBeforeMortgages Yes, this is an actual picture of Hell. We have not one, but five of these on our patch. They all have stupid road names that aren't phonetic when phone orders are taken. Some of them even have the same road names as other roads in the same village

Faints

@Lacucuracha Delivery drivers love bin day, because on bin day ALL THE BINS WITH HOUSE NUMBERS ARE OUTSIDE ON THE ROAD where we can see them, we literally navigate by bins .

Also on non-bin days we can usually see them in a garden and work out if we're even vaguely close to where we need to be, usually in the rain and dark because we are so frustrated we have pulled over rather than cause a hazard looking for a house with no number or name plate.

and my favourite non delivery story

my parents village (the one above with all the Manor Farm houses)

It is a tiny village in the South West.
It has the same name as a large town in Yorkshire.
Unfortunately the OFFICIAL name of the Yorkshire town has another word in front of it. So something like Redtown (villagename) and Greater Redtown (Yorkshire town)

But it is always just called Redtown. If you look up Redtown in an atlas or on a SatNav, you will get the tiny village in the South West, not the large town in Yorkshire.

In the 10 or so years they lived there, they had a number of people who were in the wrong place. memorably - one coupdl looking for the B&B they had booked.
One large artoculated truck, just arrived from Dover, full of a delivery, and looking for the Industrial Estate....

@steppemum I actually lost it laughing at the bemused B&B people.

@AvocadosBeforeMortgages and another thing I always wonder about the new build estates made like spiderwebs (because developers seem to get permission as long as there is only one road in and out, hence the design) what happens to everyone on those estates if their one road is blocked?

Some of ours have hundreds and hundreds of houses, one burst watermain on the arterial road(?) and everyone is stuck.

I couldn’t possibly put my house number on the outside of my house OP, it would be far too outing. In fact, I won’t even put my address on online orders.

Only joking, my housing association have kindly equipped our houses with plates that say the number and the street name.

[quote Yesitsbess]@steppemum I actually lost it laughing at the bemused B&B people.[/quote]
I could understand a delivery driver from somewhere in Europe just looking it up in an atlas.

But if you booked a B&B in Yorkshire, wouldn't you notice that you were driving down the M4 and not up the M1?

I mean I think it was even prior sat navs, how can you be that unaware?

My Mum is so nice, she didn't even laugh, but invited them in, gave them a cup of tea and rang round some local B&Bs for them.

Then waved them off

Then laughed.
A lot!

@Whatisthisfuckery are they the sexy ones that light up with a motion sensor when someone goes past? I bloody love those. Good for delivery drivers AND MOTHS.

Sounds like my city.

Old roman place, lots of listed buildings and weird numbering everywhere where housing has been slotted in around it.

@MumsThewordw02

This is us too...house name, village, larger town.

And the village mostly has no street names, just drives off a narrow road with no street lights.

And....we (our house, others in the village are allowed) aren't allowed/able to put numbers or fixed signs up as we're listed.

I always give (pretty excellent) directions. Always put a light on. And we have propped up the house name outside by the road (not fixed down of course)

As a flip, do I win brownie points as I don't mind if the delivery drivers use our drive as a place to stop and rearrange all their parcels? Sometimes they're here for 10 mins shifting things about. I guess it's hard to find places to stop around here.

And I always give directions to Manor Farm....they clear need some lessons in directions giving.

I live in teh countryside and teh people who don't have names at the end of their long drives are the wealthy - I think it's a snobby 'I'm so important of course the postie and everyone else' knows my house. y

It's not so bad now there's satnav but previously I go lots of people stopping to ask directions.
Though one neighbour was harrassed by a stalker and don't have a name up.

@BigPyjamas you are doing all you can so you win several Besspoints (TM pending)

I don't really get to organise much as I drive food around, but I imagine they do really appreciate the time to get all their ducks, and indeed parcels, in a row!

@eternalopt

It would be hugely helpful if we could all access what3words but I think that's mostly emergency services-related.

It's just a location app - anyone can download it. Pull up the map and find out what 3 words represent your location and give them to someone else to find you. I use it all the time!

The first app that got downloaded on my DDs’ phone was this.

[quote Yesitsbess]@MumsThewordw02 My nan had that kind of address in the old days:

Nan,
White house
Town name,
Near larger town
Sussex

[/quote]
yes our village was

house
village name
county

and pretty much every address system online broke down under the pressure of no house number and no street name.

We used to have to tell them to put No Street Name in! So we got:
House name
No Street Name
Village name
county

I'm loving this thread. I work for a Council bin department and we have these issues all the time. And delivering wheelie bins to new builds - aargh! We use what three words a lot for rural flytips.

I turn my outside light on if expecting a delivery at night as easier to read door number
I love in houses added later to a street and the numbers make no sense at all

This is a really good post. It makes everyone have a good think. Another subject but what about letter boxes that are near the ground? Or letter boxes so small that the post has to bent to get anything in. This only effects me at Christmas when I deliver neighbours cards. But it is an eye opener when we consider the job our lovely post lady has to endure.

My mother lives in a road with a very similar road name next door, angry delivery men will often complain she's not home when in fact they're outside the wrong property, and she has a very clear sign. When I order things I put a note telling them if there not outside a bungalow they're at the wrong address.

[quote Yesitsbess]@Lacucuracha Delivery drivers love bin day, because on bin day ALL THE BINS WITH HOUSE NUMBERS ARE OUTSIDE ON THE ROAD where we can see them, we literally navigate by bins .

Also on non-bin days we can usually see them in a garden and work out if we're even vaguely close to where we need to be, usually in the rain and dark because we are so frustrated we have pulled over rather than cause a hazard looking for a house with no number or name plate.[/quote]
Ah I get ya! About 10 years ago we had a compliment from the postman about the large door numbers on Spanish tiles on my mum's porch. I looked around and realised mum's house was the only one in 6 houses to have a door number. The postman said he uses mum's door number to navigate.

See everyone? Your bins are vital navigation tools not just waste receptacles.

The more you know...

I think delivery drivers must hate my parents' house. It has no number, just a name. It's also called something like Beechwood and just round the corner is Beechwood Cottage. They do have a stone with the house name at the end of the drive but it's so old and weathered you can't really read it anymore. And it's on a corner such you can only turn into the drive if you're approaching from the right direction. Everything seems to be delivered OK, though, apart from some mix ups with Beechwood Cottage (which didn't exist when my parents bought their house and god knows why it was named that).

I live in Iceland and something clever they do here is naming all the roads in a neighbourhood all with the same ending and often with a theme. This means it's really easy to tell whether you're in the right general area when you're looking for a road, e.g. you're looking for Vatnsholt and you're on Skipholt so you know it's close. Doesn't help with house numbers but I always think it's such a good idea for general navigation.

@HappydaysArehere this thread has actually taught me that I need to replace my letterbox - it's a bitey one. THE SHAME!

Absolutely. It's bad enough trying to drop the kids off at a new friend's house, trying to find where the bloody house is on a massive street with names only, I have often thought how on earth postmen and delivery drivers go on. It's so poncey and wanky and it should be a legal requirement that every house on a street has a number. This could be waived for tiny hamlets with five houses but not on a suburban street in a small town. Wankers.

@PuffinShop repaint the stone PAINT IT! or get them a smiley cone. I'm still obsessed with the smiley cone idea.