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It's funny, even in the Netherlands we feel a (tiny, tiny) bit of this: all foreign websites have address entry systems that always ask for a state/province (an
by teekert 9y ago
It's funny, even in the Netherlands we feel a (tiny, tiny) bit of this: all foreign websites have address entry systems that always ask for a state/province (and even faithfully produce a list of all our provinces). We indeed have them but locals ignore them entirely, city, street, number and postal code are all we, and domestic companies, use.
- cr1895 9y agoPostal code and number is sufficient, isn’t it?
- contravariant 9y agoYes, but the city and street are typically provided for clarity / redundancy. Some fancy webpages fill them in automatically.
- JeanMarcS 9y agoIn Magento, you can choose by country if you want this field or not. So I guess it’s true for most of the online shop solutions. But as stated by others (about Ireland in their example), even companies that had their hq there asked for zip code at a time there was not any. So I guess if you start shipping internationally, it’s a big job to make a form that fits every cases. I wonder if someone have made a list of those particularities. Could be a good idea if not.
- bbrazil 9y ago> But as stated by others (about Ireland in their example), even companies that had their hq there asked for zip code at a time there was not any. Post codes are not generally used in Ireland. The launch was not really successful and even An Post (the government-run postal service) doesn't use them. Irish counties are fun, as the traditional 26 counties (in the Republic) don't align with the thirty-something administrative counties that now exist.
- thinkingemote 9y agoDo people on Ireland use townlands on the ground? They could be a more human kind of postal sector. See Townlands.ie
- Y_Y 9y agoAmazon has a huge base in Ireland, but there's no amazon.ie
- StavrosK 9y agoSame here in Greece, all the post office needs is your street name and postcode. Not even city (the postcode defines that uniquely, same as everywhere else). I don't know why forms get hung up on those.
- Klathmon 9y agoTechnically it's the same in the US. Street number, name, and zip code is all you need, but even the US postal service recommends keeping the city and state for redundancy. It sometimes leads to funny situations if you live near city boundaries where you can get mail sent TO multiple different cities that are all your address.
- abakker 9y agoYeah. A friend of mine lives in both Long Island City and Sunnyside and Queens. If you get the zip code and the street right, it all works.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ghaff 9y agoIt's fairly common in some areas of the US to have "villages" or some other historical place name that's now actually part of a larger town or city. And people routinely use both names.
- theandrewbailey 9y agoWhen my brother moved in, he gave the city part of the address as <neighborhood>. I told him that I've always given the address with <big city> and I've never had problems.
- snuxoll 9y agoMy mother, grandmother and sister all live in Garden City, ID - which is a small little area enveloped by Boise, ID on all sides. Every piece of mail they get has Boise, ID listed on it - and any time they give someone their address they do the same. Why on Earth we have zipcodes but still add the city/state is beyond me.
- lagadu 9y agoSame for Denmark, technically we do have regions but they're not even worth writing on any address. Same goes for Portugal, where I've lived: no state/province/region exists; on forms stupid enough to require that you just end up putting the city name again. Same goes for requiring city and postcode.
- maushu 9y agoTechnically provinces exist in Portugal. All 11 of them. But they are ignored in the mail.
- Symbiote 9y agoBut Denmark does require more than just a building number and a postcode. For the UK, "10, SW1A 2AA" is sufficient for an address [2]. To avoid mistakes, it's recommended to write "10 Downing Street, LONDON, SW1A 2AA", but this can be looked up in the database[1]. It's usual when entering an address online, or over the phone, to give the postcode, the number, and then confirm the street. The postcode for my workplace in Copenhagen, 2100, covers a good chunk of the city. I have to mispronounce the street name several times when speaking on the phone :-S. [1] https://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode https://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode — try something like W14 9NL for a normal street. [2] In fact, SW1A 2AA is sufficient for the Prime Minister's office. Places that get a lot of post are given their own postcode, it can be as specific as an office within a building.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoOne of my relatives has a house with 2 postcodes unique to that house.
- gumby 9y agoEven in the US I typically just address a letter these days (when I send one) with name and zip code. I’ve been doing this for decades.
- hden 9y agoReminds me of the article “Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses.” 1. https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/ https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- BrandoElFollito 9y agoSame in France (or at least close). We have regions and départements. These are formal structures/entities but are never used in addresses (you get a hint of the département in the zip code). The foreign web firms do list them, usually correctly. Sometimes they mix up the regions and the départements (usually using île de France, which is a region around Paris, and the rest being départements). This is not harmful (and ignored during delivery) but shows a one size fits all approach
- larrik 9y agoEven in the US stuff like that happens. I recently refinanced, and the lender kept getting hung up on how they needed to "contact my county" for verification. Well, in Connecticut a "county" is nothing more than a name on a map or an organizational method. It's not an actual government entity, there's no one to contact.
- ghaff 9y agoHeh. Yeah in New England (and I assume a lot of the rest of the US), counties are pretty vestigial. I think Massachusetts still has limited county governments in some cases but mostly they're just a legacy organizational scheme. On the other hand, when I lived in Louisiana, the parishes were an important level of government.
- pc86 9y agoHere in Pennsylvania counties play an important role in real estate, taxation, and dog licensure, but not much else.
- larrik 9y agoI'm under the impression that much of the country uses counties a lot. I know they are quite important in New York (my father owns property upstate). New England seems to be an anomaly there. Even Hawaii has county governments.
- ghaff 9y agoIn New England, it's probably at least partly that there is such a strong tradition of government at the town level. (Town halls and the like.) I've had friends who moved here from overseas and some of them were really amazed how every sleepy little town has its own town office, police, fire, school etc. Sometimes towns pool some things together but lots of things are town by town. Massachusetts does organize the judiciary (and some other things like deed registration) by county but in at least most cases, everyone is actually a state employee. Don't really know how it works in the country as a whole. My impression is that the South generally has more of a tradition of county government.
- ramses0 9y agoIn the early days of the web, you used to be able to tell NY v. CA dev shops online because all the NY shops only had "search by state" while CA had "near my zip-code". When you can pass through 3 states in 3 hours, it makes sense to "search for all McDonalds in NJ". However in TX and CA, "all McDonalds in TX" is worse than useless for what the customer is actually looking for.
- jessriedel 9y agoMcDonalds is probably the wrong example here. There are of order 500 McDonalds in NJ.
- ramses0 9y ago500 McD's in New Jersey, a state of 8,500 sq mi, ratio of ~0.05 750 McD's in New York, a state of 55,000 sq mi, ratio of ~0.015 1,250 McD's in Texas, a state of 270,000 sq mi, ratio of ~0.0045 1,500 McD's in California, a state of 165,000 sq mi, ratio of ~0.009