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New England, old England, it's so confusing
By adamg on Mon, 12/15/2014 - 10:29am
UPDATE: Oops, they did it again.
Ren Jender reports the US Postal Service delivered this letter to the correct street number (but the wrong street) in Boston. Unfortunately, as you can see, it was supposed to go to that number on another street in London, on the other side of the Atlantic.
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Comments
wrong country
this just happened to me. i got a letter meant for Charlestown, Australia last week. very strange. i returned it to the sender.
I got one in July
It was a wedding invitation from New Jersey, intended for London.
The street address and city DID NOT match, but, given the handwriting, I could see why they may have mixed it up.
Seems to be a regular USPS autosorting messup.
Swirls , it good to see you
Swirls , it good to see you pop up here. There was a story of a cyclist struck on Holland street , I was fearful for you.
Thanks, Kvn!
I appreciate your concern!
I hope all is okay on Holland St. I don't usually ride it (easier to avoid Davis if I'm not holing up in the Burren or Redbones). I worry as my son usually goes through there, though. Finals week means he won't leave until 3, however.
Glad ur ok , really .
Glad ur ok , really . Redbones , that would be the Coronet in my radar scope. Don't like the Sligo or the Rosebud ?
I'll eat at Rosebud sometimes
The Burren is a peat fireplace shy of somewhere in Western Ireland and my friends play traditional American sets there on some weekends.
Redbones has an awesome beer list and lots of middle-aged cyclists dropping in = good conversation for other middle-aged cyclists.
What's really frightening
I could see it more if this were a Boston to Boston letter or even intended for Boston in the UK. This came out of Tarrytown, NY - how the hell did NY send it to Boston and then Boston sent it to a local address? London looks nothing like Boston and even the postal codes are vastly different. Must've been an angry Yankee fan that didn't know what to do with it so he sent it here.
Here is my theory
I don't think there are humans involved. That is the problem. There is a bug in the automated address recognition and sorting system.
Any mail that lacks a readable US Zipcode causes to system to find an appropriate address in the data to send it to. It probably just "thinks" that the zipcode is illegible.
What then happens is that it starts sifting through until it finds something "close enough" and routes it accordingly via barcode.
Thus a piece of mail with a handwritten address for "21 Peckham Lane, London" will wind up at the first 21 Peckham or even 21 Bechtel Lane it can find as it mulls through the directories.
We have low zip code numbers ... so ...
Also, the one I got had "M4" and then a "2" after a space ... which it may have thought was "MA" and a garbled zipcode with a 2 (as in 02155) in it.
Hopefully a human delivered
Hopefully a human delivered it.
Wrapped up with a rubber band
Presorted according to bar code. I doubt Cheryl even saw the envelope.
She wrote upon it, "return to sender'
This happened to me a couple of years ago. I used to live on St. John street in JP, we got a letter to somewhere in St. John's Wood, England.
We also got at least one letter meant for somewhere in Jamaica.
Also
England isn't a country.
The English, and even the British, may disagree
The United Kingdom considers itself to consist of several "countries" -- England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
However, if you want to send
However, if you want to send a letter, and have the postal service deliver it, to England, then it's best to comply with international conventions and address it to GREAT BRITAIN.
Damned Brits
Great Britain (what's so great about it anyway?), United Kingdom and then the whole England, Wales, Scotland, N. Ireland thing. For the love of God folks - if you take over a country, take the whole damned thing and come up with a new name for it.
That will be all. Go about your day. Cheerio. (which is a breakfast cereal BTW, not a social greeting)
8- )=)
Well, they did. It was called
Well, they did. It was called LLoegres before those damned Germans crossed over and took it.
shouldn't it be addressed to "UNITED KINGDOM" ?
"Great Britain" definitely isn't a country or a nation-state. It's an island.
Well, it's technically the
Well, it's technically the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but saying that each time will rot your teeth faster than English food.
ENOUGH!!
You're welcome.
but ... but ...
I came here for an argument!
No you didn't.
No you didn't.
GB is not the UK
Great Britain is the island (does not include Ulster), it's more geographical, is my understanding. When posting to London (England), "London, UK" is used. I can't help but include England in parentheses.
My best friend lives in
My best friend lives in Notthern Ireland. Whenever I send something, depending who's behind the counter that day they prefer I use United Kingdom or Northern Ireland. I prefer Northern Ireland, because why not be as specific as possible and list the actual country? The United Kingdom isn't a country, it's a sovereign state. But I don't want to ponder the politics of it when I'm sending a birthday card. I'll do whatever the PO thinks is best, but it would be nice if they were more consistent.
Even if that were true, the
Even if that were true, the letter was still delivered to the wrong country.
Of course England is a
Of course England is a country.
Congratulations!
You've just passed the USPS entry exam.
Autosorting vs. delivery
I live near Green st. in JP. My mailcarrier does the best she can do, I am sure, but we constantly receive mail intended for addresses (clearly written} not five minutes walk away from our tiny little street, and on her normal route. What's more, the names on our boxes are not congruent with the names for whom said letters are intentioned. Its clear to me that autosort has worked to get all mail for a particular route into the right bin, however the deliverer regularly manages to fumble others mail into our box... Guessing that reading is not fundamental to our mailcarrier.
Same
I live near you, so we probably have the same mail carrier. I've noticed that the kind of mistakes you mention are usually made on days when there must be a substitute mail carrier - one who doesn't have the master key to our locked mailboxes and just leaves all the mail on the shelf inside the building entry. I guess if you're a substitute, there's less likelihood of having a customer complaint attach itself to you, and/or there's a reason why you're a substitute and not a full-time mail carrier...
Not spending a little time at
Not spending a little time at Kilgarriff's , is she ?
I thought only JP had the worst postal service
I received an evelope clearly addressed to a different street. Placed it into a postal box hoping that human eyes would put the envelope into the right bin or that the postal carrier would pay attention. It was redelivered to my address. So I wrote something to the effect, "Delivered to wrong address. Please deliver to correct address." My human notes on the envelope notwithstanding the item was again delivered to my house. Put the envelope back into the mail system with yet more notes, exclamation marks and a witches curse or two and finally the envelope did not come back to me. Whether it was actually delivered is another question.
You need to cross out the bar
You need to cross out the bar code.
I received one today as well
Laughed when I read this earlier, and came home to a letter intended for Abingdon, UK from Sunderland, MA.
They got the house number and part of the street name right, but the Atlantic Ocean, Boston Harbor is not.