Literal minded machines

[msmemory_archive]

Stupid address checker.
Our last mailing list run bounced One Glen Square (it's 1 Glen St.), 6801 Jerichp Rd (Jericho) and from 245 Rodger Ave (Roger Ave.).

Back in the oooooollllddd days, the letter carrier would be allowed the brains to intervene on these things. Now, if the address doesn't conform exactly, it's kicked out as Undeliverable. The USPS is saving their money by making our company spend the money (me) to clean these things up.

I can see a future where we don't even have human letter carriers, we just have little automated jeeps who put only the correctly addressed mail into the correctly sized boxes located an appropriate distance from the curb.

Comments

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

I think this has become accepted because of the literal nature of email addressing.

[talvinm.livejournal.com]

I could deal with that.

But then, here in Philly, you can't trust the mail carriers. "Don't mail anything urgent, expensive or irreplaceable via USPS" is the rule. Junk mail gets here fine.

[profesor.livejournal.com]

It depends on the size of the post office. I'm amazed at some of the letters that have made it to my house in my small town (we're so small that we share a zip code with another town).

[aneirin-awenyd.livejournal.com]

Where I work, we take credit card payments via the Internet. Our system can only accept payments where the 'billing address' matches, character for character, what is in the credit card company's computer when the charge is processed. If one character is off, the system rejects it. It can be very frustrating. So...I hear you.

At the same time, I am cherishing the fact that I live in a small rural town that has its own post office and zip code and there is no one else in town with our last name. So I can still use the return address:

MYLASTNAME
ZIPCODE

And it still works. And I've had things returned successfully before. I know it probably won't last, but it's fun to feel like we can still do it the old-fashioned way for awhile longer here.

[palegreyminion.livejournal.com]

As profesor said, I think it does depend on the size of the post office. We get stuff to our box that's addressed all wrong, but right enough that the carrier can tell it's ours. It might just be because we're on a road that's really wacky so they know in advance that there will be lots of misdirected mail to all the addresses on this road.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

As long as they leave it in the correct correctly-sized box. I wouldn't see our neighbours in No. 8 half so much if it weren't for exchanging each other's mail.

OTOH in the Good Old Days, we had three Caleb H's in our not-large town--one infant, one teenager (me), one retiree. We kept getting mail for each other because any one post office sorter knew one of us, would see "Caleb H" in the address, and wouldn't bother looking at the rest of the address because, hey, they knew where Caleb H lived (and there couldn't be more than one of them, could there?).

[cat9.livejournal.com]

When I lived in Burlington, Vermont, I got a piece of mail one day that was addressed to my brother who did not live with me, or live within thirty miles of me, as a matter of fact. Our last names are the same, and our first names are kinda similar, but the address was totally wrong. I just gave it to him and chalked one up to helpful postal carriers :)

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

I've often been impressed with what the humans in the USPS will get delivered. Since they've got local knowledge anywhere you're sending mail, they can work with postcards, for instance, sent to "the little red house on the south end of Main Street".

Of course, they can only do so much.