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

No, nowhere near West Yorkshire.

It sounds like dim councils are very much not in short supply across the land!!

Our house is number 13. We found out that it used to be number 7, but the patches of land in between existing houses were built on and the resulting numbers became all higgledy-piggledy - so in around 1950, the council decided to start again and renumbered them all in a more logical fashion for the street layout as it had become.

If anybody is familiar with the town of Redditch in Worcestershire, which was a very old little village but which became a planned large 'new town' in the 1960s, they not only used logical sequential numbers for the houses in the town, but they also named most of the side streets in alphabetical order - so, when travelling along a major road, the first road is, say, Albion Close, then the next is Burton Road, then the next is Charlton Avenue (not the actual road names).

Really handy when you know that you're looking for Wordsworth Close, so no need to crawl to see the street signs too intently when you've just entered the main trunk road.

Not to derail, but W3W can also be a lot of fun for children to occupy themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon, if you tell them to think up actual 3-word sentences and see if there's a little part of the world with that exact name designation.

Warning: they WILL look for rude sentences or phrases. My DS was over the moon to discover that there's a tiny bit of water the edge of the Indian Ocean designated as Eggy.Puff.Puff

I've seen that done in other places. I think it's sensible as it helps you find streets much quicker!

Our village is quite typical I'd have thought in that streets of houses have been built around the first few buildings that stood. So next to us is the old schoolhouse, we're another older building, and then there's a row of houses built about 40 years ago. We all have numbers (sequential) but the older houses also have the original names as part of their address.

You can't just number your house randomly. A friend moved to a road where all the houses had names and he felt it was pretentious so contacted the Post Office and local council to ask for the corresponding number for his house. He was told there were no numbers on that road and he therefore couldn't have one.

You could add no 2 to front of your house?

Or add number 573.

It’s a downright dangerous system with serious flaws, particularly in emergency situations.

On the phone, their vs there sends you to the wrong place. Autocorrects on mobile devices changes words automatically and will give the wrong place. Plurals are easy to accidentally search - wrong place.

theres a reason it’s been a free consumer based tool for some long and not widely adopted as ‘the’ way to find places.

nice idea but useless in reality, but clumsy as best, downright dangerous at worst.

this is a nice article about the issues.

https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-suitable-for-safety-critical-applications/

I think you are being unreasonable returning the mail. Someone returned my husband’s bank statement to the bank last month (we’ve lived at the same address for nearly 20 years and never had problems before) and they put a stop on our joint account. We couldn’t access our money for nearly a week until it was resolved.

The neighbours have created the problem though. Why should OP go out of her way to help them? It's not her problem if it causes issues with the bank, phone company etc.

That's their problem, I would keep doing it personally!

If you are at the end of the street where the numbering begins (i.e. the end where No.1 is the nearest odd numbered house), odd numbers will be on the left, even numbers on the right. I don't think it is a universal rule, but I think it is true that most streets are like this.

Having had to do a load of letterbox deliveries for a local organisation lately, MOST people don't know about the rules regarding clearly visible numbers for their houses.

And don't get me started about hidden or inaccessible letterboxes

Posties are heroes!

They were unreasonable because you hadn't done anything to cause them a problem

Not quite the same as the OP's neighbour

same here -what's worse is the electric gates, with no buzzer on them or no letterbox. why have gates with no buzzer

Exactly, there's a big difference between misdelivered mail and a constant issue with mail being delivered to the wrong address. Our postie often misdelivers correctly addressed mail even though he knows people's surnames as both he and all the residents have been in situ for years.

Because our lane has neither house numbers or a street sign that correctly indicates the address, everyone goes to great lengths to ensure landmarks are given, coordinates and what 3 words clues as well. Whether the delivery drivers take any notice is very hit and miss.

@UprootedSunflower neighbours can't be getting upset at things going astray when they're just adding to the confusion.

I would put things back in the system with Misdelivered and the date written on, or you could put an empty plant pot or something where you could dump all their stuff and notify them anything received in error will rest there for collection, then you'd see just how keen they are to gather in their stuff.

Sounds similar to our next-door neighbours, who are tucked behind a house and not visible from the road, and have a house name. No one new can find them and they get loads of packages and food deliveries. I've had torches shined in my living room any number of times. What are the deliverers looking for in there! I always tell them where the house is but sometimes it is food delivery after 10 when we have gone to bed. They ring and ring the doorbell! The neighbours often don't answer the door even when they are in so we get people wanting to leave us their packages then too. And they never come get them or answer the door to us. I wish I was brave enough to do your approach. I bet you get a result!

Where I live, the rural properties have a number. That number is the number of meters from the junction. Makes place very easy to find.

What do you suggest then ? The neighbours are causing this problem and OP is having to deal with the consequences. Perhaps if something similar happens and they have a major inconvenience, it will make them think again.

But, as OP says, there are no house numbers allocated. The properties all have names, which was fine until neighbours decided they were number one. Which, legally they are not entitled to do. The local authority allocates house numbers in conjunction with Royal Mail for post codes.