Postcodes

[Macy]

On boards, it seems that's exactly the point. Apparently the postal service is getting deregulated from 2010, and An Post won't share their current sorting system, so we have to design a new one to allow new entries to the market because Monopoly Is Bad.

Oh goody, just look how competition has driven down utility prices... I think it's An Post won't share their system for nothing, after spending the money developing it.

As well as ESB having their own private code system, An Post also have one, and they are the main opponent of publicly available postcodes for the simple reason that it makes it easier for potential competitors to challenge their monopoly.

As above, it's available to anyone that wants to pay the licence fee! As I understand it An Post are actually in favour of it, as they see the short term gain of the increase in junk mail, and the management couldn't give a flying about the social role of the company

Personally having lived in a number of countries, I think An Post provide an fairly poor residential service, at least in Dublin. I've lived in a number of different areas of the city and whilst I'm not there during the day to verify, I'll be damned if I get anywhere near a daily service. Evidenced by the bunching of mail deliveries a few times a week I reckon its one day out of two at best. A bit like bank opening hours, no weekend deliveries is a relic of the past also.

Have to say I'm happy with our service, both in delivery and the local post office. Our post goes to the wifes home place (our choice) (along with the inlaws) - they'd be post everyday but not necessarily for everyone. Bunching happens, so it's some conclusion that it means they're not doing daily deliveries. Any evidence, rather than a hunch? One things for sure, the service isn't going to get better if it was purely commercially driven - we'd probably be 15 miles from a post office, a couple of deliveries a week, no parcel service (you'd be told to pick it up).

As a general btw - the cost is going to be at least €20 million to develop a system. Still, it's not like we were cutting cancer vacinnes that cost half that or anything...

[Sam_Heggy]

It doesn't address the underlying poijnt though: An Post already has an automated sorting system that works very well. I can't cite statistics but I have seen them and their hit rate is very high. If it ain't broke.

Intended?

[Pauro 76]

I love the quaint Irish rural way of..

Townsland,
Village,
County.

It's the one thing that's stayed the same with us for generations...

[dahamsta]

Intended?

Heh, no.

[Bluebeard]

There is no choice we have to go for postcodes. Every year on my birthday I receive no cards or presents. I ask my friends and family, and they all assure me that they put it in the post the week before. About 50% of those cards make it to me on a good year normally a couple of weeks afterwards, and almost none of the presents. There must be something wrong with the system, the same way there is with the buses (a similar story, but for a different thread).

[Bluebeard]

Went to that site about the PON Codes, or PONC as they want to call them. Correct me if I am wrong, but is "ponc" not the Irish for "trouble"?

[kingdom hoop]

Went to that site about the PON Codes, or PONC as they want to call them. Correct me if I am wrong, but is "ponc" not the Irish for "trouble"?

No, I think ponc is the Irish for "another daft wastage of public resources in recessionary times."

Seriously though, the only contexts I've come across ponc in Irish vernacular is in internet addresses when it means dot (like foot ponc ie for example), or as a crude translation of punk (like, "who the flip does that ponc think he is, coming in here, turning on his rubbish ponc music?").

[pineapple stu]

It doesn't address the underlying poijnt though: An Post already has an automated sorting system that works very well.

I knew there was something really obvious that I was overlooking; thanks Adam.

[John83]

It doesn't address the underlying poijnt though: An Post already has an automated sorting system that works very well. I can't cite statistics but I have seen them and their hit rate is very high. If it ain't broke.

This is interesting. I was under the impression that a significant proportion of their sorting was still manual - not a huge proportion, but enough to raise costs substantially. Irritatingly hard to argue this without more information though.

[dahamsta]

AFAIK automation started in 2005 and the bulk of their mail is automatically sorted now. I think I saw it on telly, which is why I don't have stats, and I was surrpised at the time at their hit rate, the amount of mail sidelined for manual checking - by video - was very, very small.

[soccerc]

AFAIK automation started in 2005 and the bulk of their mail is automatically sorted now. I think I saw it on telly, which is why I don't have stats, and I was surrpised at the time at their hit rate, the amount of mail sidelined for manual checking - by video - was very, very small.

It was a decade before that automated sorting began.

Hit rate for standard sized DL and CL is 85% +/- 2% for typed addresses.

For hand written it's considerably lower.

[John83]

85% for print? That's not great. Any source on that?

[dahamsta]

I was under the impression it was way higher than that, high nineties. And it was the handwriting recognition I was truly surprised by. Perhaps it was another sorting system, but I was sure it was Irish.

[soccerc]

I was under the impression it was way higher than that, high nineties. And it was the handwriting recognition I was truly surprised by. Perhaps it was another sorting system, but I was sure it was Irish.

The figures I used were for the first OCR sorting machines installed in the Dublin mails centre with an early version of the software. One of the problems at that time was large mailers were still using 9 and 15 pin dot matrix printers.

As I finished working on that project in '96 I can only suggest there have been vast inprovements plus handwritten correspondence was dropping considerably year on year back then.

[John83]

Oh, I thought you meant the current figures.

[dahamsta]

They had horrendous problems at the start, but sure that's par for the course with a state or semi-state technology rollout. The postal workers probably couldn't figure out where the pencils went.

[Billsthoughts]

My understanding is that they can, to quite a significantly higher level of accuracy.

Bear in mind also that handwritten addresses form a small minority of mail.

99 per cent accuracy.

[dahamsta]

I actually thought it was higher than that. Where did you get that figure from?

[Billsthoughts]

I actually thought it was higher than that. Where did you get that figure from?

My oul lad was head of post offices in ireland for years. he is also on the board of the company that operates this system. yeah think it is higher. was asking him about this recently cause we had a similar problem in work. might be 99.9 per cent...