zlacker

> German apartments don’t have apartment numbers. If your name is not on your mailbox, postal workers can’t deliver your mail.

This can also cause delivery failures the other way around - a friend in Germany once sent me a package but didn't bother writing the apartment number on it because she assumed the postman would use my name to find the right box. Instead it got sent right back to Germany. (Austrian bureaucracy is just as unforgiving as German, they just have different rules to follow...)

>>FearNo+(OP)
Adding small texts about the importance of the input you provide is missing in so many forms. OP handled it perfect here.

>>FearNo+(OP)
Whereas the Irish post office (An Post) seem to pride themselves on solving puzzles to deliver to ambiguous addresses.

>>FearNo+(OP)
> German apartments don’t have apartment numbers

They do (at least sometimes?). They are just not listed anywhere and barely used. I have my number in my contract, and e.g. Vatenfall have it to connect the meter number to the flat number.

>>FearNo+(OP)
This reminds me that recently I, here in the Netherlands, had to send a letter and made the mistake of writing it in the wrong format (to/from), but still the address in where it should be 'from' was really small, and 'to' was really big. To make things clear, I decided to just prefix "To: " and "From: " thinking it would be enough.

Surely enough, 2 days later I received the mail back at my mailbox. Wasted 2 euros ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I just needed a single stamp, but they stamped on both so I couldn't even try to reuse it. And I also posted on the mailbox for "other zip code" rather than "close by zip codes".

I don't know if OCR or a person messed up. Well, definitely a person (me)...

>>FearNo+(OP)
Even within Austria there are differences: i used to live in Innsbruck with an address written 4-51 (meaning street number 4, door 51) and then moved to Vienna, street number 2, door number 14. But in Vienna 2-14 means the big building with street numbers 2 through 14. My building was not big, you could physically see it is street number 2. Well, i never got that letter.

>>FearNo+(OP)
My sister sent a parcel this week with presents for my daughter's birthday (Happy birthday Ruby!), from Norway to the UK. She filled in all the spoiler customs parts but must have gotten stressed and completely forgot to write our street name and house number. Just my name, post code and country.

3 days later our postie knocked on our door and asked if this parcel was for us!

We don't live in a big city but still it is a town of 20,000 so not that rural where everyone knows you, so I was impressed that they cared enough to try to figure out the address. Granted the post code narrows the search down.

I am certain had it been shipped the other way the post office in Norway would have rejected it immediately for not being 100% by-the-book.

>>TRiG_I+G
Same for England from what I gather, probably not on the same scale as Ireland though.

I wonder if some of the countries referenced in the thread have different laws regarding opening post - in England it’s illegal to open post that isn’t addressed to you, so if the postie did make a mistake it’s not the end of the world as the receiver would just pop it back in the letter box (in an ideal world)

>>flurdy+U3
> I am certain had it been shipped the other way the post office in Norway would have rejected it immediately for not being 100% by-the-book.

The postal office in Norway tries hard to deliver to the correct destination. I've heard of similar stories where they only had a name and a city to go on, and it was delivered at the correct location. During Christmas, they even have a team of dedicated "detectives" who tries their hardest to figure out who the packages should be sent to.

>>flurdy+U3
I have a theory that if a postman wants to deliver something, then it will be delivered. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

>>flurdy+U3
As long as the postcode is complete, there are only few full addresses that the postie needs to check against. If you got a letter the same day to your full address and your name is unique, then it would be fairly quick to find you.

BTW in Scotland at least, during the Christmas period, it is customary to leave a Christmas card for the postie outside with a small bank note in it. An easy way to say thank you for their efforts and to ensure that the postie will remember your name even better next time ;)

>>Tenoke+v1
They don't always. For my flat in a small block, it's "Erdgeschoss rechts" or EGR, in the contract or for the electricity.

>>throwa+J6
Maybe, but Norway do make it harder for themselves by having just a 4 number postcode that could include many thousands of addresses. A UK postcode is often down to just one street or similar size.

Once, someone I knew in Norway (ok, my sister again...) somehow managed to combine her old and new address when ordering something online. And that parcel back and forth between 2 cities for a long time... :)

>>prenne+r8
Customary (and extremely welcomed by the many postmen & women I've had the pleasure to know, my father having worked for Royal Mail / CWU) in England as well as Scotland (and I'm sure in Wales/NI too - probably elsewhere as well, and even in places where it's not customary it won't do any harm to thank people providing year round services to you with a small gift once a year!)

Also, while I agree with you that in this case (having a full postcode as well as name) it would have likely been an easy task for the local postie, Royal Mail do actually have a small team* of people who work in figuring out more tricky ones, so if a local person can't work it out for being on their beat it can be sent to the "address detectives" (great title!) to try to solve.

This is a great example of that from a year or two ago, including a few other similar stories at the end: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/07/lives-across...

* My knowledge is both 20 years out of date and fuzzy in my memory, so I've no clue how big a team it is nor if there's enough confusingly-addressed items to need anyone working on it full time, or if it's just one aspect in a wider set of responsibilities that a team does when needed.

>>flurdy+tf
> A UK postcode is often down to just one street or similar size.

It's even better than that. Unless you are incredibly rural or the street is tiny, most streets have at least two postcodes - one for the odd side and one for the even side. In most cases, there's only about 15-30 houses in a postcode, any more on a road and it's split up into smaller chunks.

>>croisi+j3
So how would street 2, door 14 be correctly written in Vienna?

>>Comput+Gn1
2/14 is the correct way, but if number 2 has several staircases (typically the case of a 2-14) it would be 2/3/14 (or typically 2-14/3/14) with 3 being the staircase number

>>xioxox+kd
In Denmark, abbreviations like that are the address.

  Amagergade 5, 1. th.

Means building 5, first floor, to the right (til højre).

>>flurdy+tf
I grew up in the country side of Norway in the 80s, and the small road to my house didn't have any name. I guess there was no need since that road serviced less than 10 houses. It wasn't until later (late 80s perhaps) when my road was given a name and my house was assigned a number.