Originally Posted by Beatles
ok, enough of that *g* As you can see, it's all about those pesky englishmen and their nutty postal system
Admit it, who is from the UK, living there temporarily, been there on vacation or had a near-death out-of-body experience, stepped into the light and came out in an english post office ?
In Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands ( countries we are working with so far ) an address consists of streetname, housenumber ( or name ), city and zipcode. In different variants and languages. Well, enter Britain.
In the UK, you can have a street, housenumber( or name ), city and zipcode. Plus you need a dependent city ( smaller part of the city ) if the street isn't unique to the city you gave, until it is unique to the cities you have cited. As the zipcode references less then 100 households this makes little sense, but manages to break our existing database design that would probably work for all of continental Europe
The first question that popped up in my head is: How the hell do you get to know your own postal address ? Imagine I just moved into 1a Smith Street in London. How am I supposed to know if there is a second Smith Street in London so I can inquire about the next smallest city part I have to put onto my letter instead ?
What is printed on your personal documents ? My passport doesn't even have a line for more than one city. To make matters worse, we got a complete telephone register from the UK... but only with the simple addresses. Without the dependant or double dependant localities or streets. Formatted just like any German or Dutch or Spanish address. Huh ?
I have asked 4 english partners so far and as you can guess, everyone had it's own oppinion about what is needed. I even got two different answers from the royal mail, which really should know.
So is there anyone out there who can enlight me ?
What is really needed ?
How do I get to know my own address, especially the dependant parts ?
From out of the blue, we have to be ready for UK addresses by the end of the next month. So if you know anyone I can bribe or bully to change their postal system to a normal version, let me know their address ( ugh... ) I will take the next plane.