Aaaaaaaaaaarrrghhh!!!!  This is *spooky* timing for this thread. As
mentioned in an earlier episode, I have recently found the new nice flat
I was looking for, and am now going through exactly this kind of address
torture with various intransigent computer systems.. :-(

I'm very pissed off, so my contributions to this thread will involve
varying amounts of swearinginess..

SAm wrote in ed.general

So, I have to ask, why the fuck has the Royal Mail never sent out an
official letter to each address saying "Here's our official record of
your address: please use it and we'll try not to lose your mail, and
irritating call centres and computer systems, if you're lucky, will
probably, not definitely, but probably, not tell you that you don't
exist."

It may be a fucked-up system, but it's the system that the Royal Mail
have decided to use, so why don't they actually *tell* people what they
(RM) think their (our) flat number is?

Want to enter your flat number in the house name field?
=> YOU CAN'T HAVE A SLASH IN THE NAME!!! Go away.
(This is, I suppose, the sole saving grace/useful bodge of Edinburgh's
inelegant and confusing nfm flat format, rather than the more normal n/m,
although I doubt the Victorians were thinking of disallowed characters,
centuries down the line..)
or
=> Our database doesn't have house names for these addresses, so we're
not going to let you enter one, even if that is the only way you can
somehow try to stuff your real address into our data.

Want to enter your traditional flat number in the flat field?
=> Our database only has the canonical number that nobody knows. You
clearly don't really exist, even though the Royal Mail have been
delivering mail to the traditional flat number for decades. Go away.

Of course, when it says "Go away", what it actually says is: "Phone us
on a non-free (fuckers) 08xx phone number during some restricted hours
(sorry, but dinner and chilling-out come first at the end of the day),
and of course we don't actually have a 'Contact Us' link on the website
where you could tell us the information that you'd only have to repeat
to some bored minimum-wage school-leaver, who'd still tell you that you
don't exist."

Actually, one almost wonders if this is part of our beloved Government's
grand Databodge\\\\\base and National Identity Card plan: "Oh, I'm
sorry, your address isn't in the database, you evidently don't exist, no
Government services for you, non-citizen.."

As I said, you could usually get the desired result with the "stuff your
flat number into the house name" field bodge, but it seems that the
bastards are really starting to get picky now and I'm finding that's no
longer working in many, many cases.

I've got so fed up that if the bastards are going to insist on the Royal
Mail version of my address, then Royal Mail can damn well tell me what
it actually is. So I emailed them, and, to be fair, got a quick reply.
I'm just not very convinced that it's a correct reply..

My flat number is (something like ;-) 99 2f1.

There are no flats on the ground floor, 2 flats on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd
floors.

Royal Mail's address finder reckons we are 99/1 .. 99/6. So far, so sort
of sensible (but why the fuck have you never actually told anybody which
flat gets which number?).

So I filled in Royal Mail's contact form, and gave them my full address
and asked them what flat number 99 2f1 corresponded to.

And they (and why I do I get the feeling that it was the proverbial
minimum-wage school-leaver who just typed the numbers into the website,
the same as I had done) replied and told me that:

 99 2f1 would be 99/2.

Uh-huh. Why do I get the feeling that the PMWSL is a non-Scot and
doesn't understand our flat numbering conventions and just stripped off
the last part?

I'm going to assume that Royal Mail actually had some sense and that
their numbers do follow some kind of logical order.

Given that I'm on the 2nd floor, and given that there are also flats on
the 1st floor, I'm thinking it's very very unlikely that my flat is
going to be 99/2, as surely /2 would be used by one of the 1st floor
flats? I reckon it's more likely that my flat would be 99/3 or 99/4, but
the question is, *which one*? Do I feel lucky, punk? No, I don't.

And it is a genuine problem, even though, for most mail, the postie will
come in to number 99 and realise that the envelope with my name on it is
clearly meant for the door with my name on it, and will deliver the mail
through the right door, even though the address doesn't exactly match. But
there are circumstances where you've got to have the right address:

TV Licence: I'm sure they'd love to find an excuse to attempt to fine you
if it turned out you'd unwittingly been paying for your neighbour's TV
licence instead (fortunately, the TV Licence website is one which does
still let you manually enter your address!)

Credit ratings: potentially far more serious, with the wrong flat number
you might find your credit score gets associated with a neighbour with
serious financial problems..

Banking and internet shopping: card payments refused because your bank
and the shop have different opinions over your address, not good..

I've lived in many flats over many years now, and this system has always
been a disaster, and it's always a real pain whenever you move. Is anybody
up for some kind of organised lobbying campaign to get our MPs (once
they've taken a breather from guzzling at the trough, that is) to try to
sort this out once and for all?

Bah. I feel marginally better for getting that off my chest, though.. :)

David.

That said I much prefer the xFy system and, since the local authority
has the power[1] (and possibly obligation) to number premises and they
consistently use that format it's the one I think we should all use.

Sam