[Talk-GB] Codepoint duplicates

[Andy Allan]

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 11:26 PM, Tom Hughes <tom at compton.nu> wrote:
> On 20/03/11 22:20, Matt Williams wrote:
>
>> Ahh, looking at the map [2] it seems that they are all located at the
>> Royal Mail distribution office. My question still stands though: are
>> these just surplus postcodes or some error? There are still other
>> cases of duplicates though like can be seen nearby at [3].
>
> They're for things like freepost addresses and other specialised delivery
> arrangements for large companies.

By now I've forgotten who told me the story of someone trying to get
to BA headquarters near Heathrow - he was walking through an
industrial estate following the sat nav he was carrying, and ended up
in a royal mail sorting office, with the BA headquarters a few miles
away on the other side of Heathrow.

A cautionary tale about inferring too much from postcodes - the
positions given are the position of where the mail should be delivered
to, and sometimes doesn't correspond to where you would expect given
the name and the rest of address.

But in reality society uses postcodes for a lot, lot more than
delivering mail, and generally people don't know about the edge-cases.

Cheers,
Andy