Can a fictitious address receive post?

[leepuddifoot]

A hypothetical question about postal deliveries.

If an address doesn't exist for real and it's not on the paf, say for example I addressed a letter to number 20 main street but number 20 doesn't exist, although main street does, would the letter have any chance of trying to find its way there. Obviously if there is no letter box then the letter is not actually going to be delivered, but would that letter end up in the postal workers bag for delivery anyway or would it never make it's way out of the sorting office? Say the postcode reading machine thingy filters it out as undeliverable. Does the postal worker actually have to try to deliver the letter anyway? Say, its a postie that doesn't know main street, would he/she actually look for that address? I've read articles where letters have been delivered minus an address, a sort of deliberate riddle for the postal worker to solve. Just wondering, it would be interesting to know how the postal system works and what is limits are!

[Snaggletooth]

The first part of the answer to that is that Royal Mail's machines don't check addresses in transit. There is probably some level of checking of postcodes. So if you put a real postcode on the item then it will get as far as the relevant Delivery Office. This might be different for items without postcodes.

[NWpostie]

I do know Sherlock Holmes letters do get delivered to a bank at 221b Baker St for years, it got to the point where they employed somebody to deal with it full time.

[fishtank]

We get bogus/fictitous addresses all the time on delivery. There's still hand sorting in the mailcentre and it'll come through on a "best guess" basis on the off chance that the duty holder will know the name. In the old days if we didn't know it the letter would be marked for enquiry and do the rounds until some senior guy would recognise it but now it's more likely to get a cursory glance before being killed off.

[NewPostieUK]

Today I got to 20 The Street. There is a 20, a 20A and a 20B. I pulled out my bundle and there was a letter for 20C. I took it back to the office and killed it off. Stuck a sticker on it and ticked the box 'No such address'.

It would always find it's way to my sorting frame, but what happens then depends on who does the prep. Personally, as there is no 20C and no slot for 20C I would not put it in the frame. Someone else preps my frame and he just stuck it with 20B because that's the kind of thing he does. A bit pointless as I'm just going to take it back to the office again. (if there is a letter with the number missing, he just sticks it in any slot for that street )

So in answer to your question, if it has a correct postcode, then it will find it's way to the frame for the duty that covers that area.

[leepuddifoot]

Interesting comments, i'd have thought letter would stop at the sorting office, although if there is no postcode on the letter then the sorting machine wouldn't be able to read it anyway and it would go for manual sorting like you said.

[NewPostieUK]

It makes sense that the item would find it's way to the duty that covers the postcode. After all, when there's a question over the addressing of the item, who has the local knowledge that would help? The local postman.

[baldrick]

Interesting comments, i'd have thought letter would stop at the sorting office, although if there is no postcode on the letter then the sorting machine wouldn't be able to read it anyway and it would go for manual sorting like you said.

Not necessarily. The Optical Character Recognition sorting machines, or video postcoding staff, can read the address and if it contains the name of a post town t can recognise that and code it to that town, though it wouldn't have the second part of the postcode, so would have to be sorted manually at the delivery office.

[NewPostieUK]

Yes but if the address is 21 The Street and there is no 21, what good would OCR and video be?

[yubin282]

Does anybody still get letters addressed to cash machines, phonebooths or electricity box things?

[fishtank]

I once got a letter with the address "The house across from where the old fire station used to be but isn't anymore".
It got to where it was going.

[fishtank]

And another addressed to "Big George who always sits at the front table in the cafe on West Main Street".
I found Big George eating a bacon roll.

[NewPostieUK]

I had one last week to the Big New House down the bottom, and often get them with just a name and the village.

Everyone knows everyone, so even if I didn't recognise the name, I'd just have to ask the first local I see.

[t3mcIUQWE2]

Does anybody still get letters addressed to cash machines, phonebooths or electricity box things?

Parking spaces is the latest Council wheeze.

[WOBBLY]

I get one at Xmas that was always addressed "last house on left next to school" the school was demolished and a housing estate built. It now comes addressed as "last old house on left next to new housing estate"