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!

Should all use what three words app. Gives precise location

Sorry see it's already said

We seem to be the marker for all Our neighbours! All the delivery drivers stop at ours to ask if we are number and their face drops when I tell them
its across the road and up a bit!
I do feel sorry for them getting in and out of the car in all Weathers

Bigger door numbers are on the list xx

So many times that I'm going to write to the CEO of the company I work for and make a compelling argument for it to be included both on our website and in the phone training for instore staff. Because I am a plucky little sod and will badger them until something happens!

I hear you op! I do think using what three words would be handy for delivery drivers though.

I'm just about to get a new front door which has the number in the glass plus I have the number on my bins (one neighbour used to steal them) and I'm going to get a number for the front of my property (front door does not face the street).

In my great and glorious reign I am also banning door wreaths if they obscure your house number. Bastard things!

Bloody Easter wreaths

I used to deliver newspapers in a fairly rural area, so I feel your pain. We have nice clear numbers.

We have relatives who live down the fork of a track off a tiny lane off a small lane off a main road. In the days before Google maps, they had a photocopied sheet of map and directions they'd post to you before your first visit. Now, of course What3Words would solve the problem.

I belong to a dog training club, and we've taken to using it to clarify exactly where we'll be meeting.

I just realised I'm in 7th circle territory.

Rural property, with just a name. Pitch black at night. I will add lights around the name on the gates.

@Serin Don't start me on hedges
I may demand hedge numbers also.

@Countrygirl2021

YES GIRL! LIGHT IT UP!

You'd love me OP, I have my house number and Street name etched into my glass porch, large A5 characters. We have our external spotlights set to come on as soon as visibility is compromised. I'm Tier God 😁

[quote Yesitsbess]@Serin Don't start me on hedges
I may demand hedge numbers also.[/quote]
Maybe we should demand large, well-lit topiary numbers, jutting from the top of each hedge

I'm one of those people you hate - google takes you about 50 yards past my house. But I've only just moved here and don't actually own the land between my house and the road, and haven't even met the people who do. When I do I will see if there is someway we can put up a better sign to indicate my house.
But unless it was illuminated at night it would still be very hard to see - and I live in a national park.

Err I'm hell tier. How do you get lights outside? How do you get numbers stuck to crumbling brick wall? I'm not cut out for home ownership, I know...

@OddsNSodsBitsNBobs I DO LOVE YOU! I have just finished work and the only remarkable thing was being menaced slightly by a duck.

@AvocadosBeforeMortgages I do demand it. I want every bush in Britain to be trimmed, numbered, and regimented.

@Bunsenbulldog paint? Projector? That would be cool. Projected numbers. Put something distinctive out like a really massive gnome? I'm spitballing here...

@mollyButton the fact that you're even having a think earns you several Besspoints!

This has reminded me, I need to redo our bins.

We do have a number plate and a lantern thing so you can see it, but we're the bottom of a cul-de-sac so if our driver gets lost they aren't close enough to find us (usually up the top at number 3 where google maps drops the pin for the postcode.

We only have odd numbers, down one side and then back up the other, so 1, 3, 5, 7 on their own on the left, very sharp bend that you could mistake for the end of the street, then like 69, 67, 65, 63 on the right, another bend, and then houses on both sides, counting up on the left and down on the right until they meet at the end, with 31 and 21 in the corners only accessible by narrow driveways between other houses.

I might petition for some signposts like you get in hotel corridors pointing at the room numbers.

OP I feel your pain. I’m a property inspector. Domestics are bad enough but try finding many commercial properties. Go down your high street and see how many shops are numbered, 1 in 15 I’d say.

I'm with you op, really pisses me off. Being told by a horrible pretentious asshole, "you don't know Rose Cottage on Lavender Lane" er no because it's not special, it's just an ordinary house.

@gah2teenagers I hear you, we get lots of deliveries to flats above shops. I don't understand why shops don't have sodding numbers on.

It’s going to get worse with the diversification of property uses. At least I’m in the day so I’m “helllooooo are you no 9” and quite often they say “I’m not sure”. I’ve just downloaded what3words so will give that a go. Fingers crossed.

Tonight was "is this number 45?", opened gate with torch on and was immediately menaced by ducks. Menaced.

Co signed, a district nurse

I have personally known 2 estates in the UK that were built in the 1980s and 1990s that were "creative" in the extreme - and a fucking nightmare to find anywhere on them.

One of them has achieved wider notoriety, although maybe not any more - the Peachcroft estate in Abingdon. Absolute disaster zone, especially if you went in the Wrong Entrance (there were 2, not sure about now) and this was before mobile phones and sat nav etc. It's probably ok now.

The other one was near my parents and was of similar ilk, but with more "Walks". Little blocks of 3 or 4 houses, set at angles to the next little block, on curly roads, with no direct parking access etc. that you had to walk to, as described. Definite "calculator in the ceiling fan" effort, that one.

I don't know WHO thought these things were a good plan - the architect/planners apparently thought it would be more "interesting" for the people living there than having them all in straight lines with sequential numbers.

Hopefully they've learnt by now? but it doesn't sound like it. :(

My own road in the UK had its issues - I was no. 1 but before me there was a 1A and a Hall. 1A was particularly hard to find, so I'd often get the door knocked after 10pm with Pizza Delivery Guy looking for 1A, and I'd have to pretty much walk him to where it was. You could always tell when it was a new PDG, because he'd knock my door again...

We had a very irritating issue when we moved to Australia - kept getting post for Not Us, Lot X, Our Road - when our address was Us, X Our Road. Turned out that a new build quite a way down the road had been parcelled off as Lot X, but the post office hadn't twigged, and quite often companies left off the "Lot" so it would just be numbered X Our Road.
And then there is the issue of us being on Our Road, Our Town, Postcode - when there is another Our Road in Next Town, same Postcode (because Aussie postcodes are considerably less specific than UK ones - they cover whole towns/suburbs). Next Town is the same name as Our Town, just with Park after it (so Our Town Park)

And then if THAT wasn't all bad enough, there is no front access to our house, because it's on a busy main road and there is a named service lane behind us, which we use to get to our house. So our directions are always to use the named service lane behind us - which can still cause issues because our address is still main road, not service lane. Sat navs/ Google maps try to send you to the main road side of our address

It’s the same for ambulance drivers

Just saying