[Tagging] Addresses with PO Box, and other delivery type addresses.

[Paul Allen]

On Fri, 20 Mar 2020 at 13:50, Tobias Wrede <list at tobias-wrede.de> wrote:

> Am 20.03.2020 um 12:30 schrieb Paul Allen:
>
> One of the parcel
> delivery companies noted for delivering to the wrong
> address (Hermes and DHL, I'm looking at you) has
> dumped a package outside my door.  The address is
> PO Box 123.  Which of the houses near me has that
> mailing address?
>
> I don't get your point here. Either someone wanted a package delivered to
> his residence. In that case they gave the wrong address information to the
> delivery guys.
>
Around here, the delivery guys get it wrong even when they have the full
address and no PO boxes involved.  The problem comes when the package
is addressed to the PO box and then the delivery guys do the "last mile"
getting it from the PO Box to the physical location, and get that wrong.

I now have a package with a PO Box address and I wonder if it's for one
of my neighbours.  If I can identify the physical location I can save myself
the hassle of waiting all day for a collection, only to find they decided
they'd turn up tomorrow, instead (that happens too).

> Should have given them a street/number or whatever is needed in your area
> to find the place. Or they wanted to have the package delivered to their PO
> Box, then the address information needs to be tagged to the post office
> where the PO Box is located and they need to chose a delivery company able
> to deliver to PO boxes.
>

See above.  Hermes, in particular, are crap.  Deliver days after they were
meant
to.  Deliver to the wrong address.  Etc.  One area has gone through several
different Hermes deliverers in the past year, only one of them was competent
but Hermes was late paying him (maybe they wanted to force him to quit
because he was ruining their reputation).

> I personally cannot really see a usecase.
>
I can see usecases, but they're a bit contrived and would be very rare.
Like wanting your lawyer to write a cease-and-desist letter to the noisy
neighbour who doesn't have an address other than a PO Box.


> But as long as we tag phone numbers, websites, fax numbers etc. I cannot
> see why we should discourage it, either.
>
If we're just mapping things that a paper map shows, we wouldn't map
post/zip
codes either.  In some cases this other information, even PO Box, is useful,
so people WILL map it.  It's better we come up with a way of doing it than
have all those people come up with their own way.

-- 
Paul
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/attachments/20200320/9554bf04/attachment-0001.htm>