Correct Address

[Garry]

Every time an issue of Pagoda World is printed and distributed, using our address list, there are one or two returned to the printer with “Address Unknown”. Between the Membership Admin and PW Editor, we try our best to find out a correct address.


Whilst JonnyB our esteemed Editor, goes to great lengths to get a PW to every Full Member, some Members continue to incorrectly list their address.  We just received a PW returned that was posted out six month ago as part of the Volume 27 issue in addition to a return of the 28 issue both from the same Member.


For all our newer Members, I cannot stress enough that you need to make sure that you have listed your address correctly so that issues of Pagoda World reach you in a timely manner or in some cases, are received at all.


Garry
Membership Administrator

[mdsalemi]

Having gone through the elaborate USA mailing process for all the Pagoda books, AND just completing the same for all the Canadian, I can tell you that any time you enter an address into a USA and or Canadian postal system, the address is "corrected" to a "standardized form". I'm about to find out the same for the shipments to UK and Australia...

You'd be surprised at how many people DO NOT KNOW THEIR OWN LEGITIMATE ADDRESS. It's actually astounding to me that ANY of them were corrected. It is one thing if "Lane" is truncated to LN, but counties were wrong, towns are wrong, erroneous and superfluous information is added, suite numbers/apartment numbers left off...you name it, the errors were all over the map. All this does is ensure that some mail doesn't get through.

I just did all the UK mailing labels and a large number of those had to be corrected to Royal Mail standards as well.

Everyone would do the club a favor if you went to your own Postal System's online system and verified your address and corrected it.

[Peter van Es]

Every time you renew your membership, you are reminded to check and correct your mailing address. This is a DIY action, so please follow it up. Even if only to make work for our volunteers easier!

[Merc_Girl]

You'd be surprised at how many people DO NOT KNOW THEIR OWN LEGITIMATE ADDRESS. It's actually astounding to me that ANY of them were corrected. It is one thing if "Lane" is truncated to LN, but counties were wrong, towns are wrong, erroneous and superfluous information is added, suite numbers/apartment numbers left off...you name it, the errors were all over the map. All this does is ensure that some mail doesn't get through.

That’s because you got a big country so people easily confused with all the options available

Surprised folks in UK were bad, we’re usually well trained by the time ones reached ‘our time of life’, albeit it doesn’t stop people still putting in the correct county! Luckily the post office/Royal Mail is pretty good at finding people 😁

[Garry]

One of the biggest errors is putting Afghanistan as their country.  That is, they don’t actually put the country in and it defaults to Afghanistan.
Usually picked up by Membership Admin if a new Membership and logic prevails.

[Benz Dr.]

You should try asking someone how to get to their place by using simple directions.

The conversation goes something like this:

 " So, how do I get to your place?"
" Don't you have GPS?"
" NO....... how do I get there?"
" Uh, I don't know? I never look at the street or road signs. I just do what GPS tells me to do."
" So, if you didn't have your friend with you, you probably could never find your way home even though you've probably gone that way 100's of times?"
" Well, yeah, I guess so. Isn't that the same for everybody?"
" Uh........no, not really." 

[Peter van Es]

Ask people to find a place, and then navigate to it using a map...

• ...turns map at every corner...
• these blue things, what sort of roads are they?
• find the spot at coordinates 6°, 45', 42" and 45°, 33', 21"
• https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/carte

Have fun!

[Merc_Girl]

One of the biggest errors is putting Afghanistan as their country.  That is, they don’t actually put the country in and it defaults to Afghanistan.
Usually picked up by Membership Admin if a new Membership and logic prevails.

Now that’s funny!!!

Didn’t know the Taliban had such good taste in cars, thought they were more in Toyota pickups with big guns bolted onto the flatbed 😁

[JamesL]

Ask people to find a place, and then navigate to it using a map...

• ...turns map at every corner...
• these blue things, what sort of roads are they?
• find the spot at coordinates 6°, 45', 42" and 45°, 33', 21"
• https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/carte

Have fun!

Particularly fun if you’re viewing the map on a tablet and it also rotates

[Peter van Es]

Didn’t know the Taliban had such good taste in cars, thought they were more in Toyota pickups with big guns bolted onto the flatbed 😁

It's simply because Afghanistan is the first country (alphabetically) on our country-drop down list. Perhaps I should change the software so that it adds the US first. Notably is it only people hailing from the US that make this mistake. All others do find their correct country...

[Peter van Es]

Implemented.

[Garry]

Thanks Peter,
I was being diplomatic and I didnt want to single out the one particular country that it appears to happen to.  😂😂😂
Mind you the Taliban must enjoy reading Pogada World every so often. They are never returned from there.😱😱

[mdsalemi]

Thanks Peter,
I was being diplomatic and I didnt want to single out the one particular country that it appears to happen to.  😂😂😂
Mind you the Taliban must enjoy reading Pogada World every so often. They are never returned from there.😱😱

I should point out to EVERYONE that the Australia Post website was perhaps the "friendliest" when it came to this matter. Instead of listing every known country on earth in alphabetical order, on the "pull down" list for countries, they had the favorites list based upon where packages normally go through their system. So, at the top were Australia, New Zealand, United States and a couple of others. You had to go "beneath a line" to get to the rest. No accidentally choosing Afghanistan.

[mdsalemi]

That’s because you got a big country so people easily confused with all the options available

Surprised folks in UK were bad, we’re usually well trained by the time ones reached ‘our time of life’, albeit it doesn’t stop people still putting in the correct county! Luckily the post office/Royal Mail is pretty good at finding people 😁

Katie, no, not really. The size of our country has nothing to do with it I'm afraid.  USA addresses are very simple, and generally no more than 3 lines. You have a name, (Kate Smith) sometimes a company name (Mercedes-Benz of UK)  if a commercial address, a street name with number (123 Main Street). SOMETIMES you may have a Suite number, Apartment Number. (Suite A, Apt 2). Then you have the town, and the ZIP+4. (02345-1234). And, that's it. Zip+4 has been around for over 30 years and still most Americans don't know theirs, and few use it. Every legitimate mailing address can be verified and standardized by going here:

https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm?byaddress

For bulk mailers, it is required that the addresses be standardized, and also bar-coded which actually pre-sorts the mail right down to the specific mail person ("carrier route") who will eventually deliver it.  Where this can get tricky is a "physical address" may not be a legitimate mailing address. For example, for over 20 years, we maintained a weekend home in a resort area in central Michigan. There was a physical address, but by our choice we did NOT receive mail there and there was no legitimate mailing address; the USPS would not and could not deliver mail there. However since it was a real place--a home with a street and house humber, the package services like UPS and FedEx could. When me moved there briefly from 8/19--3/20 we had to go through a process to add the address into the USPS system by a visit to the postmaster in town.

UK is a bit different as you know. First you have all these "quaint" addresses.

John Smith
Rose Cottage
Halloran House
Petunia Lane
Dilworth, Abersham
Staffordshire 1X4 W3Q

The key is the post code: that actually locates the address to the "rooftop" as they say. In reality for post delivery, or GPS location, you don't need anything but the post code. Genius.

In the UK you can standardize the address by going here: https://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode

You will probably find, that the "quaint" address you know from growing up, may be slightly different.

In Canada, you can standardize the address by going here: https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/info/mc/personal/postalcode/fpc.jsf

I'm certain that ALL mail operations in all countries have something similar. Some are even tied together; when I was creating and addressing a package to Japan on the Australia Post website, it verified and standardized the Japan address for me.

When I created the labels for USA shipments out of PayPal, it automatically standardized the addresses for all but a few; these I had to default to what the member provided even though the address wasn't standardized. The saving grace for UK and Canada was the post code; Australia standardized and corrected.

The largest batch of packages is leaving Ireland for all the European Union and I'm looking forward to seeing how well AnPost works...

[John Betsch - "SADIE"]

This is an excellent post for our members to read.  It shows exactly what volunteers go through to get tasks done behind the scenes.

Often, no actually all TOO often, this is not recognized as they make the task look easy. Thank you to them

JB

[Garry]

As an example, just this week we have had one Afghanistan, one that did not have a street number before a local  countryman advised that the address must be wrong (unfortunately we had already sent out the welcome stickers) and a third that listed Antartica that we suspect is not quite where they live. 😂😂

[Brenco]

Thanks again Michael for all your work and that of the rest of the team on this major undertaking. Interesting to hear we in Ireland have the largest batch in the EU. Looking forward to seeing the results of your efforts!

[mdsalemi]

Thanks again Michael for all your work and that of the rest of the team on this major undertaking. Interesting to hear we in Ireland have the largest batch in the EU. Looking forward to seeing the results of your efforts!

Brenco, you don't have the largest batch in the EU...quite small actually. What Ireland IS, my friend, is the only English-speaking country IN the EU since UK decided to Brexit as they say...

...thus in order to do this "Tran-shipping" plan I devised, I needed exactly that: English speaking (so I could navigate the website of the postal shipping platform) and in EU (to minimize the taxes, customs delays, etc.). So, all the shipments to France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Ireland, etc. are all being dispatched from the Emerald isle. Kudos to your fellow Irishman David Robinson who rose to the challenge of assisting here.