Neighbours have numbered their house…

[UprootedSunflower]

Not with the post office formally, just decided it’s awkward to have a name instead of a number and started using it.

No houses here have numbers and never have. All named from before the area was built up.

It’s really really annoying as they have named themselves ‘one’ but they are set well back from the road and have a high gate/ alley to enter. Mine is the first obvious house front at the end of the road. So I get their post a lot.

It also makes delivery drivers get angry- no one else has numbers, like we should, or knock constantly to ask which end of the road number one is (most houses are set back so it’s me who gets the brunt).

Ive tried talking about it, but they are determined houses need numbers and it’s easier. I’ve tried stopping the postman, but it’s constant agency staff changing over.

So… I started simply marking anything through my door with the made up address and not our names ‘not at this address’ and popping it back in the post box. Aibu? They have got really cross!

They are the kind of people who order constant parcels and get post still

Ps you don’t have to put in your gps coordinates the app will know those. Just run the app and it will give you 3 words that identify your location to the nearest 3 metres!

I would put a number 2 up on your door/gate post etc.

They sound ridiculously difficult neighbours.

I don’t think it works like this, there are 3 words for our property and I didn’t choose them, surely they already exist?

I love MN threads like this 😃

We begin with a CF neighbour story and go on to encompass several of life's daily mundanities plus their related aggravations. We engage with enjoyment on the topic, we bicker gently about bureaucratic rectitudes and even educate ourselves on new tech along on the way.

I used to live on a labyrinthine council estate with one big access road in and out and hundreds of homes reachable only by pathway. Good luck finding the house you wanted there; the naming and numbering system was inscrutably opaque and illogical.

Elsewhere, my dgm used to live on Suburb Road, probably built in the 60s. Less than four miles away, in the same postcode area, was another Suburb Road. Mail was always getting muddled up and I often wondered why someone thought that was a good idea.

Yes they already exist but there may be lots of them depending on the size of your property. 3 words for every 3m squared. Pick the 3 that you can remember the best.

Your neighbours could solve their problem for themselves - by adding the What3Words location to their address.
All the mail organisations they use - Amazon, bank statements etc.

It’s amazingly effective.

Our house was named when we bought it, only named house in a cul de sac of 8 houses. According to our deeds we are number 7 as there is a 3a and 3b... but we're the 8th house and the RM/post office database doesn't recognise 7 (only no 8) so we have to use number 8. We've had gods own game trying to sort it out with the borough council as we don't appear on the electoral roll as a result and apparently need to apply to change the number. So we've never done it! We now realise why the previous owners used a name.....

If delivery drivers turn up why do you pretend you don’t know where their house is? I totally get that its annoying but why not just say ‘ it’s the house next door’

Or are they expecting you to take the parcel in? Just say sorry I don’t accept other people’s parcels.

As for RM - just write incorrect address and send it back.

Your neighbours have not understood the postal system. You cannot just invent a house number you have to go through the post office or the council. So YANBU!

I understand that Mongolia already uses W3W officially, instead of a postcode system.

Genius!

Could you enlist the help of another neighbour - one who will sympathise with ndn whilst getting them to understand your pov? Then they can get the ndn to put a sign on their gate. Otherwise it's just going to be a constant battle that will piss off everyone.

Our house only has a name. Less than half a mile away is a mahoosive house with incredibly similar, related name (eg we would be The Ashfield Pigsty, they would be Ashfield Castle). It's hardly the fault of the delivery guy, and fortunately our vair vair posh namesakes are reasonable people.

yes. Definitely the way to go.

It’s not her name or her address!

If she doesn’t want to follow their advice for fear of it just coming back to her again then fair enough but it doesn’t make sense to follow the royal Mail’s advice for parcels that are correctly addressed to her address but just the wrong name. Then she has even less chance of sorting this out!

How on earth did you get it to work offline??? I was slightly lost about a month ago and tried what 3 words..got nothing. Just my home address.

I've bought a new phone with decent gps so I don't need for navigation but it's useful for emergencies

@SleepToad here you go

support.what3words.com/en/articles/1524098

Really, it's not.
What Three Words is deeply flawed. It's a private venture and the system used is not open source. They even acknowledge some of the flaws, but trivialise them and don't recognise the most dangerous flaws in the system even when they're demonstrated and pointed out. It uses an illogical structure, it's language specific, and because it relies on an app there are already far better options built in to your phone's navigation system or available through existing position systems such as Ordnance Survey coordinates that do follow a logical structure.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56901363
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57156797
https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-suitable-for-safety-critical-applications/

Numbers don't always make a difference, it depends on the intelligence of the delivery drivers. I live in a row of terraced maisonettes at, say, number 51 and my upstairs neighbour is 51A. Our front doors are next to each other and we both have clear numbers next to the doors. How many times do the bloody delivery drivers have to knock on my neighbours door when it's my delivery and vice versa?! It's really not difficult!

Edited to add I usually do manage to intercept them and we are friends before anyone accuses me of upsetting my neighbours!

It really is down to the new neighbours and the people that are delivering the post/parcels to sort.

As stated it doesn't necessarily have to have the name of the person that resides at a property written on it...I still get post for previous owners that lived here 6 years ago...but no one should be putting letters or dropping off parcels at yours that have a totally different address to that of your own.

Whether delivery people think you're the first house is irrelevant here...
Number 1....Green lane.
And...
Primrose cottage....Green lane
are two totally different addresses.

I’d keep sending it back marked as misdelivered with a new misdelivered written below each time - I assume the postmen will notice eventually if they keep getting the same stuff through.

I wouldn’t go with the suggestion of putting a diff number on your house - why should you have to when you don’t have one.

Reminds me of when my elder dds teacher told her she was wrong when dd said she didn’t have a house number just a name as it wasn’t possible - we definitely don’t, most of the village is just names. It’s not pretentious - there’s literally not an option to use a number.

Hrft but previous owner told me postman begged for them to name what is now our house, as at that time there were no less than six "Number 2, Something Road"s in our village (this was before postcodes really took off as well.) Reason being every time a largish house with garden was up for sale, developers promptly flattened it, put several new houses on the land and numbered them 1, 2, 3, 4 etc with a made up bit of name that always got forgotten e.g 2 The Paddocks, Something Road, which would end up being written on envelopes / entered on computer systems just as 2, Something Road.

There are now at least 10 "2, Something Road"s, with more in the pipeline no doubt.

ETA: our house was clearly an example of that, given it's ten doors away from number 62!

It depends how long you want to keep having the same piece of mail delivered to you. ‘Not known at this address’ will get items returned to their senders to sort out and if it happens frequently enough the neighbour will be inconvenienced enough to do something about it. Anything else just results in the item going back into the system and OP will end up with it again. It’s not up to her to sort it out - she’s not the one causing the problem.

Thank you I think it was my previous phone as it's working brilliant now

If the address on the label say "1" and you are saying "not at this address" then you are unreasonable because the letter hasn't been delivered to the correct address, so "not at this address" isn't the right thing to say. Is it easier to take it to a post box or to next door? If you wanted to put it back in the postbox, fine, but don't say "not at this address", say "delivered to wrong house - please check address carefully and redeliver correctly".

That said, if their house is the second or third along, then they are hugely unreasonable too because now even if everyone on the street numbered their house, what number could you pick? "0"? "-1"? "1A"?

Why on earth should she take it next door? I certainly wouldn't be doing them any favours. They are lucky she's putting it in the post box! Several posters have said that 'not at this address' is correct according to the Royal Mail as it will trigger the mail being returned to sender.