Freebie newspapers, property guides and other advertising junk is a feature of living in an urban or town enviroment. We don't get any freebie newpapers or property guides, the only advertising junk is that delivered by the postman.
Having delivered The Phone Book round here I know why we don't get any of the freebies it's just not economic. Took me a couple of hours to do the
75 houses on the one estate but several days to get round all the houses and farms outside the centers of population.
Ditto. Nor Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.
You can avoid that as well if you want:
Many years ago, I found that Ordnance Survey actually had my house number wrong on their extremely detailed maps. But my point is that they might well wish/need to know what the property is called.
Some years later, I moved into a house where the owner had changed the name. I wanted to revert to the historic name - and did so. Turned out that the owner had simply had a word with the postie. Everyone else still had the old name on record so there was nothing to do except tell the new postie.
In the same street, there were actually two houses with the same name. Out of three houses. Mine was the odd one out!
It is. However no-one these days cares about what the place is really called, they care about what the PO has called it in the PAF. If you're not in the PO's database, then you no longer exist.
I live in a house that used to be a house over a shop (physically it still is). When the shop ceased to be commercial for council tax purposes, the PO managed to delete the entire address and place a gap on the terraced street. Bank accounts were no longer openable here, various sorts of ecommerce checks no longer worked. A damn nuisance all round, yet the PO were uninterested in doing anything about it.
The message from Andy Dingley contains these words:
The Royal Mail database uprooted my house (not physically obviously) and plonked it down in a different road with a different postcode. Judging by the the postcode they moved it about a quarter of a mile. When challenged they claimed not to know who provided them with the bogus information but said it must have been someone they trusted. The said trustees could have been the Dept of Environment in their guise as TV licence enforcers who bombarded my house name under yet another road address* with threats for more than a decade.
They did however modify the address on the database at my request and I actually ended up with a more informative address than the one I should have. Now I have an address in the form of house name, road, parish, town. The local authority had previously refused to include the road in the address presumably on the grounds that the road wasn't actually in the same parish as the house so now it is only official communications such as polling cards that turn up sans road reference. OTOH I do occasionally still get mail addressed to the bogus address despite the false address being removed from the database in 1998.
*That at least was the name they had resurrected for a small group of also unnumbered houses that are my closest neighbours on my side of the road. Incidentally that renaming had put another neighbours nose out of joint as said name was the name of their house on an adjacent road.
I changed the name of my house by emailing my District Council. I then sent another email confirming the details were correct after they had checked there was no conflicting name in my village. If you give your local planning department a call, they will be able to tell you who to contact. You then have to do all your utilities/accounts etc. but it will eventually work its way through the system.
Regards
T
Or if it's wrong in the PAF, you're screwed. Apart from living in a house with no number off a lane with no name, the PAF is wrong for our house. The address should be;
{house name} {street name} {village name} {nearbye town} {county}
But they omit the village, causing enormous confusion. It's a wonder we ever get any mail at all, but the PO are far and away the best of the people who attempt to deliver here. Fedex Business Post are the worst, having never successfully delivered anything here at all.
Why should they GAS? They're a State sponsored monopoly.
You obviously believe thatt 'where_I_ Live' is the reason for the PAF data; however that's _not_ its purpose -the PAF is actually 'How does the RM deliver something to my house' data. The two sets of data -referring, to one house, - are different; compiled for different reasons.
[In my case, I live approx 400 yards from the county border. I pay my 'county' taxes to the county council somewere about fifty miles away, as far as they're concerned my address is $town, $County - but to the PAF it's $next-door-(postal sorting)-town; $Next-door-county.]It's a mistake to think that your 'postal address' should bear any relevance to geography. However for the majority of the population its 'close enough for government work'!
I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK the county is not part of anyone's postal address. Not in England, anyway.
It really annoys me when the county is a compulsory field in an online address thingie. Given I live in London.
Londonshire?
Owain
Middlesex, innit.
All I do in a compulsory field is put a full stop, which is usually accepted.
All of it? You live and learn.
Ah.
It's often asked for but not necessary. Where I live is in an ex county. It is now a unitary authority. the postal town is something different. the postcode predates the ex county, from a previous larger authority. The unitary authority spans the traditional (and present ceremonial) counties.
Which do I use?
Altogether it is a mess.
I've had mail delivered to ..... postal town, England successfuly.
On line ordering insists usually on a county. I usually use a space. It always (well mostly) arrives on time.
The local authority (and (differently) my ex employer) insists on putting in the unitary authority name. Without postcode this will add at least a day to delivery times, according to the local sorting office.
I always stick to what is in the royal mail postal addess book -- number (or name), street, postal town, postcode. This seems generally to work well.
A space is usually sufficient, and usually results in that line being omitted from the address.
Most computer databases identify your house by simply postcode and number. Dunno about those houses with no number. Moving to one that has might be the answer.
Ah - again. I'll try that one too.
Don't you just hate those occasional 'intelligent' systems which try really hard to stop you from omitting your phone number?
First, you just skip the field - result: invalid entry. Next you enter "exdirectory" - sorry, try again. Grrr. So you try 00000000000000. Nope. Next up: 00000 000000. Yawn. Then 01000 000000. Bzzzt! Then 01302 000000. Nooooooooo!
And finally in despair you end up submitting "01302 234756", where
234456 is a random number which will cause the company to waste their time phoning the poor sod who owns it.Why can't they just accept that it's totally impossible to force people to submit their number against their will?
A google of the ofcom site should produce the "reserved for drama" phone numbers - intended for use in TV/films - that can be used fairly safely for fictional purposes.
Or just use the website owner's own phone number.
Owain
I've not come across one of those. Have you tried entering *their* phone number?
I hate online forms where you're required to specify a title. What's the point?
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