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!

@PickAChew

We had to submit a correction to Google maps because it had our street incorrectly extending across a junction, so drivers kept stopping at our number Wrong Street then calling us in a panic. How the occupants of Wrong Street put up with not even existing for do long, I have no idea.

@PickAChew for the love of god PLEASE tell me how you do this!! The postcode used to go straight to my front door, until someone has managed to edit the postcode to 3 miles away!!

My postcode is ABC 123 and someone has managed to move to to ABC 124.

I don't have a house number or even a street!!

My address is

House Name
Tiny Village
ABC 123

It was fine when postcode worked, but now Ahhhhhhhhhhh ....

In the UK, local government assigns house numbers not developers so you're directing your criticism of calculator throwing at the wrong people.

As for what3words, why a delivery driver would want to use a system that gives no indication that goat blue soccer is on the same street as nuns shoes door is beyond me? There's been a big push to adopt a proprietary algorithm instead of using freely available GPS coordinates, ask yourself why that might be

@SchadenfreudePersonified

What if your property has never had a number and has been known by a name since it was built in 1913?

Pray for an Art Deco delivery driver?

Slightly different note, I've recently (2 days ago) signed a petition to Amazon asking for them to give their drivers more time for deliveries and allow them toilet breaks. Insane that a company as wealthy as that has all their frontline staff on minimum wage and in such Victorian conditions.

I know many of the supermarket deliver drivers have similar problems, too.

I was just confused by the OP's suggestion that you should inform the PO that your house has changed from a number to a name - ours has never changed. It always was and still is a named house, since 1913.

I spent years as a claims inspector in the 1990s. Before Sat Nav. I had a nice set of road atlases. And got adept at stopping at Florists and Estate Agents to ask for directions. And phone boxes to call people on their landline to tell them I couldn't find them.
Now their is What 3 words.
Why everyone just doesn't use that I don't know
Just put "puffin window mountain" on your order and it should arrive!

@SleepingStandingUp

Deliveroo man knocked my door at 10 am this morning with food.

No idea why he picked my house or how many houses he'd tried.

The order had a street name (only 20 houses....) but no number.

No phone number.

Just a first name and initial.

What circle of he'll is that @Yesitsbess.

I was good and didn't pretend it was mine even tonight I wanted to

I am going to have to create a new circle of Hell for that one.

@en0la

I'll put a bigger house number up when you stop putting parcels in the rubbish bin that has the non-recycling rubbish. At least put it in the recycling bin and don't do it when the bin is at the end of the drive.

I deliver food - I promise you I am not putting parcels in your bin :)

I’m golden 😇
I also tip every delivery £2/3. Having watched ‘sorry me missed you’ (depressing Ken Loach film) and realising the impossible job it is, it’d make a real difference if everyone tipped.

I do home visits as a Dr and I 100% agree with all these. I love people who have great big numbers on their houses. It helps even if it's someone else's house I'm trying to find. Its a community service!

I hate the crazy numbers in new builds but most of all I hate being on a really busy ring road crawling along holding up traffic trying to spot the tiny number in the dark in time to indicate without causing an accident. Usually it doesn't work and I do a lot of U turning.

My absolute nemesis are 2 roads in my town that I guess were bisected by a new road so that the road appears to come to an end but in fact it carries on on the other side of a dual carriageway. It now looks like a totally separate road but the numbers carry on. The first time I found that out I was nearly crying in frustration at how no 101 could exist when the numbers ran out at 99.

Houses in the middle of nowhere in the Fens give me the Heebie jeebies. I once had cause to go to Benwick (non work related) and it was like a scene from deliverance out there.

@NewYearmorestress

Sorry, I can't. Wouldn't get the planning permission needed to do that to my house.

Lasers. You need lasers to help us find you :)

@Etinox

I’m golden 😇 I also tip every delivery £2/3. Having watched ‘sorry me missed you’ (depressing Ken Loach film) and realising the impossible job it is, it’d make a real difference if everyone tipped.

You are a legend, it's always very much appreciated.

All houses need luminous numbers on the guttering outside the house. In Australia it is done automatically, so ambulances / police etc can locate houses at night. It should be compulsory everywhere.

I'm loving the fact that this thread appears to be universal and not just my delivery area!

To the person who has had their house with a name since 1913, I'm not sure what to do about that, do you have a big sign? and a bigger sign on your bin?

We’ve had several delivery drivers thank us for the big house number (under a light) we have. I was bemused the first time, but subsequently realised what a pain in the arse finding addresses must be.

Sat nav sends people 200m away. I’ve had arguments with taxi drivers about where my house actually is.

I have a friend who always used to get free pizza because she lived in such a difficult to find flat that they never got there within the promised time. Every time she called the pizza place to order, she'd say 'let me explain how to find the address because it's difficult' and they'd say no, no need and then turn up 45 minutes later looking dishevelled and clutching a cold pizza.

@starrynight21

All houses need luminous numbers on the guttering outside the house. In Australia it is done automatically, so ambulances / police etc can locate houses at night. It should be compulsory everywhere.

PREACH!

And it's a serious thing - if it takes me 10 mins to find you to bring you some delicious dinner, how much time will be wasted looking for you if you're poorly? I imagine if your house is on fire that's quite obvious, so you guys can keep being poorly numbered...

*I spent years as a claims inspector in the 1990s. Before Sat Nav. I had a nice set of road atlases. And got adept at stopping at Florists and Estate Agents to ask for directions. And phone boxes to call people on their landline to tell them I couldn't find them.8

My dad used to sell central heating in the 1970'80s when people didn't all have a landline let alone a mobile, he always used to ask for the nearest pub and directions from there. If he stopped to ask people they often would not know the road names but would know the nearest pub.

Could I also add that if you know you live in a location that is difficult to find tell the sender BEFORE they send the parcel so they can add directions to the parcel. Getting sick of having to refund buyers when a parcel does not arrive because they have not given me sufficient detail or told me to avoid anything but Royal Mail who seem to be able to find addresses when other couriers can not.

@Grinch48

My rd is strange The driveways are all in front on the houses but no numbers until you go down the path . So I painted my number on my drive and put my number on my entrance to my path I have a gate at the end of the path where I put a big sign that says “please put parcels over the gate “ and I have ring doorbell . I also have an outside mail box that’s bright red and another sign with my number and a sign warning delivery guys of my vicious french bulldog 😂 I also have a floodlight that comes on when anyone approaches My bin has a big sticker that’s says Keep Calm I’m only a bin and I belong to number 1 😂

Opposite is even worse as you don’t have direct access you have to walk along a path or go up some steps to get to any of the houses
Whenever I see any delivery driver I always ask them what number do they want 😂
I always put delivery instructions in my orders

Grinch you are the God of the God-tier!

I feel your pain about the badly numbered new estates. We live on an estate where they built the 1st 5 houses in our road 30 years ago and numbered them with odd numbers 1-9. Phase 2 of the development wasn't built until 16 years later. They built 20 houses and gave them all even numbers and our street name. Numbers 2 - 20 have front doors facing into another road so as you turn into the street the 1st House on the left is number 22 and then runs up our street so No 1 is opposite no. 30. If I had £1 for every visitor/delivery driver I've helped find an even numbered house I'd be quite rich now. WTF are these developers/the council thinking?

@Daleksatemyshed

Op, we've just put in a new front gate with our house number on so hopefully we will get a gold star

GOLD STARS A-GOGO FOR YOU!

@darefullyciverse

In the UK, local government assigns house numbers not developers so you're directing your criticism of calculator throwing at the wrong people.

As for what3words, why a delivery driver would want to use a system that gives no indication that goat blue soccer is on the same street as nuns shoes door is beyond me? There's been a big push to adopt a proprietary algorithm instead of using freely available GPS coordinates, ask yourself why that might be

I am honk-laughing at this. HONK LAUGHING! Yes, I agree on the nuns shoes.

@CovoidOfAllHumanity I feel your pain on all of that, except the being a Dr part...

ooh look, I've learned how to do replies! BRACE YOURSELVES!

@bigbluebus I am feeling quite lost even reading that!

@Yesitsbess

Ghosty - I feel you, we have a street here that goes, and I shit you not, 24, 25, 26, THIRTY SEVEN, 27, 28, 29.

Nightsky, we really do appreciate it, newbuilds take forever to show up on maps, we all try to help each other with new estates so we can keep ADT down, but the big numbers really help us - see above! :)

How on earth does THAT happen?

I was just confused by the OP's suggestion that you should inform the PO that your house has changed from a number to a name - ours has never changed. It always was and still is a named house, since 1913.

Sorry if I can across as a bit sarky, Lucie - I didn't intend to.

FWIW, I wouldn't have realised that you had to inform the post office either.