zlacker

Yes, unfortunately, their assertion that everyone knows their zip code is wrong. People often write a neighboring code, and the post office just delivers it.

Similar issues for city name, of course.

>>nitwit+(OP)
Very common in NYC. People will use all of "New York, NY", "Queens, NY", or "Astoria, NY" all interchangeably and the post office will still just deliver it to the same place.

>>nitwit+(OP)
This sounds like the person doesn't know the receiver's zip code. Why are you extending that to not knowing their own zip code? Are they mailing something to themselves?

>>steeze+Dd
People often give out their mailing address, and may be misinformed about their zip code.

If you get close enough, it usually gets handled in the local sort, but not always.

On cities, the mailing address city really is the name of the post office that handles your delivery route. Often there's a relationship with the city you live in, but there's cases both ways --- I used to live outside city limits, we had a census designated place name, a municipal sanitary district and had a fire department at one time... but never a post office, so our mailing address used the nearby city name, where our post office resided. The place name had an incorporated city on the other side of the state, so using that wouldn't be great.

Nowadays, post offices often have a list of alternative place names, so where I live now, I can pick between the incorporated city name, the nearby large city where a post office that processes all my mail is located, or any of the numerous small post offices that once served my city.

>>nitwit+(OP)
They know their ZIP code far, far better than any other plausible geographic cell.

>>steeze+Dd
People more or less mail themselves parcels all the time, with online delivery.

>>wisty+jK
Ha you make an excellent point actually. I wasn't even thinking of that.

>>toast0+pf
> On cities, the mailing address city really is the name of the post office that handles your delivery route.

Bigger cities can have multiple post offices and zip codes with the same mail address city.

>>VWWHFS+D3
This is sort of apocryphal - and also anecdotal because I have my own personal experience living in an annexed Boston neighborhood to draw on - but in a lot of the towns/neighborhoods that have been annexed by Boston, people still use the neighborhood name[1] as the city name because you are more likely to get your package when you indicate which “Washington St,” “Boylston St,” etc. you actually live at.

According to one commenter on the subject:

  It doesn't matter, as long as the zip code is correct

[0]: https://www.city-data.com/forum/boston/601106-mailing-addres...

[1]: https://www.city-data.com/forum/boston/601106-mailing-addres...

>>steeze+Dd
I will occasionally still try to use the zip code for my old work address (from about a year before covid) when what I want is my home address.