Hail Hail The Royal Mail

December 25, 2015 5:14 AM

A German Christmas card with just "England" on the envelope has reached the right address in Gloucestershire.
posted by marienbad (32 comments total)

A Royal Mail spokesman said: "Royal Mail's team of 'address detectives' are renowned for their ability to ensure poorly addressed items of mail reach their intended recipients however, even by their standards, this is pretty impressive."
posted by oheso at 5:26 AM on December 25, 2015

I am assuming they contacted the sender because otherwise it just isn't possible.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:28 AM on December 25, 2015

Meanwhile my correctly addressed parcel hasn't arrived. *sideeyes news story*
posted by kariebookish at 5:32 AM on December 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Don't assume, RTA, FfA.
posted by marienbad at 5:36 AM on December 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

It already was in the right place when the address field came off, and they figured it made it this far for a reason and then the local delivery wandered around and asked sensible questions until someone took it off his hands. Good local postwoman or -man.

Since I don't see how else the address detectives would figure into it I strongly suspect it was them who stole the address label off the card in the first place.
posted by Ashenmote at 5:58 AM on December 25, 2015 [9 favorites]

Meanwhile, my friends living on Avenue, St Albans, UK have *twice* received an envelope addressed to Road, St Albans, New Zealand. They put it back in the post box after the first misdelivery, and it came right back to them!

It seems like the Address Detectives were snoozing on this one.
posted by leo_r at 6:07 AM on December 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

I sat next to a Canadian on a plane, and we got to talking about how Europeans just don't get the scale of North America, and she said that she and her husband met some people in Germany who said that they knew some Canadians, and maybe my seatmate knew them, too. She went on to explain how she was preparing to explain how incredibly unlikely that was, then she stopped and looked at me and said "it turned out we did know them."

Maybe it's just a German superpower. (although I once had a very misaddressed envelope make it to my house, although curiously after spending some time in post office of the town my father was born in....)
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:14 AM on December 25, 2015 [25 favorites]

"And coming up at 7:30, it's The Address Detectives on BBC 4."
posted by valkane at 6:15 AM on December 25, 2015 [19 favorites]

Can we keep these address detectives on standby for dealing with Secret Quonsar postal mishaps?
posted by metaquarry at 6:24 AM on December 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

"And coming up at 7:30, it's The Address Detectives on BBC 4."

I can't wait for their Christmas Special. I hear this year it's going to be set in Victorian London and they'll be wearing Victorian letter carrier garb!! So steampunk!!
posted by Fizz at 6:42 AM on December 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Ack, shared the wrong link. That photo is of a guy from the era but it's clearly a U.S. Postal worker.
posted by Fizz at 6:48 AM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

It already was in the right place when the address field came off

In the right bag, even, or does the UK have one mail sorting facility per postman?

My own favourite address detective story that involved actual detective work involves a friend living in Portugal and the Swedish word for "postage".
posted by effbot at 6:54 AM on December 25, 2015

I sent a wedding invite to a friend in Cardiff whose address I didn't know, but I knew how to get there from a nearby pub, so I just wrote those directions on the envelope.
It got there just fine.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 6:57 AM on December 25, 2015 [47 favorites]

Can we keep these address detectives on standby for dealing with Secret Quonsar postal mishaps?

That's AD: IPS*, the new spin-off show coming this Spring!

Address Detectives: Impossible Postal Situations
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:01 AM on December 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

>It already was in the right place when the address field came off

And got into the one carrier's bag that delivered to the correct recipient. I say the Mail detectives were not even involved, the adhesive address label fell off with the carrier who then asked each customer if they were expecting mail from Germany.
posted by DBAPaul at 8:05 AM on December 25, 2015

The envelope picture shows the postal printed bar code on the envelope, which is probably plenty to get it to the correct neighborhood. Much like in the US, a ZIP+4 will get something down to a pretty small area.
posted by Badgermann at 8:56 AM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile, my friends living on Avenue, St Albans, UK have *twice* received an envelope addressed to Road, St Albans, New Zealand.

I think, if you just put it back in the post without writing anything on the envelope, the scanners just read the red dots barcode thingy and it ends up back with you. I had a similar problem with an obviously wrong address, not quite that wrong though, that kept returning to my house.
posted by Helga-woo at 9:13 AM on December 25, 2015

Yeah, if it's got the RM4SCC code on, it's actually got the address (postcode + house number) fully encoded. That said, it may well take it being (scanned and) sent to the Mail Detectives in Belfast to confirm that that's the reason the machines can only see the barcode.

But it was a nice heartwarming press release story-lie. Yay for journalism that seeks to obfuscate instead of inform.
posted by ambrosen at 9:16 AM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's less impressive when you learn that it's an O(n) search that happened to terminate early. In an alternate universe, there's a mail carrier who has spent 3 years asking everyone in London if they were expecting a letter from Germany.
posted by indubitable at 9:42 AM on December 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

An artistic housemate painted a large alien on our letterbox. Years later I received a letter addressed to Alien Wharf St. It began 'I hope you get this...'
posted by adept256 at 10:27 AM on December 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

Aside from the four hours spent inside a container with a malfunctioning surveillance cam, the card was under observation from the time it left the wholesalers. Combine that with a rubber-stamp motion with the secret pan-European "security court" based on the hand-writing matching that of the card's purchaser, meant a quick cross-index of their outlook contacts, Facebook friends and record of the past five years cards sent pinpointed the intended addressee with a 99.6% probability.

Choose the "press release" option, quick scan of the contents for possible terror and tax-evasion triggers, and a good few minutes work for the "postal detectives". Time for a cuppa!

---

"I can prove to you the 'surveillance state' is real."

"You're on that again?"

"I'll drop a card I purchased a couple of weeks ago into the post with nothing but 'England' written on it. A beer next time we meet says it will be at your house within a couple of days."
posted by maxwelton at 10:42 AM on December 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I have a job where we are pretty frequently having what we mail out get lost in the mail. Especially internationally. So this makes me go "hah, really, wtf?" My theory is that people don't know where they live. (Not even said sarcastically.)
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:42 AM on December 25, 2015

This example from France to Russia is still my favourite piece of mail unlikely to arrive.

(Also sort of related: A talk on “Postal Hacking” in the US.)
posted by wachhundfisch at 10:57 AM on December 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

In an alternate universe, there's a mail carrier who has spent 3 years asking everyone in London if they were expecting a letter from Germany.
Even this residual problem will be solved, however, with the coming generation of high-performance quantum postmen.
posted by Wolfdog at 11:09 AM on December 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

I understand if you just write Jessamyn 05060 on your postacard, one retired mod will receive it.
posted by AugustWest at 12:14 PM on December 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

The card, it is believed, may have originally been addressed correctly and so was sent to the right area of England - but with an address label that fell off at some point.

Slightly less impressive than the headline led me to believe
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:34 PM on December 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

This example from France to Russia is still my favourite piece of mail unlikely to arrive.

Nice one, but not that unlikely — anyone who’s ever used a computer outside the English-speaking world recognizes mojibake, and everything turning into accented vowels is characteristic for KOI8/Latin-1 mixups. They probably have a printed krakoziabry table nearby.
posted by effbot at 1:09 PM on December 25, 2015

That is quite amazing. The worst mail service I have encountered is from the US to Canada. I have given up sending anything by mail to my son who lives in Vancouver, and even getting a card from NJ to friends in Toronto can take weeks. My Toronto friend says she has trouble as well getting mail from the UK or US.
posted by mermayd at 2:25 PM on December 25, 2015

I moved a few months ago to a new place that happens to be just a few blocks from a best friend. About a week after I moved they brought over the piece of mail labeled to my new address but delivered to them in error.
posted by meinvt at 3:05 PM on December 25, 2015

I remember hearing a story about how the Royal Mail once got a letter addressed to "March 25" and correctly delivered it to the wife of Sir Day (March 25 being Lady Day). Probably apocryphal, but it says something about their reputation.
posted by uosuaq at 4:36 PM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

One time a letter arrived in my college mail room addressed to “Matt” (no last name). All 700-some students on campus shared the same address, and at least a dozen of us were named Matt, so I convened a Council of the Matts and we opened it all together. (I don’t remember which Matt ended up claiming it; it wasn’t me.)
posted by mbrubeck at 7:17 PM on December 25, 2015 [15 favorites]

I understand if you just write Jessamyn 05060 on your postacard, one retired mod will receive it.

Absolutely true, but my town is sort of small.
posted by jessamyn at 4:24 PM on January 2, 2016