squarewave said:
That's because USPS actually doesn't have a database of "correct" addresses for each location. They just scan the addresses of stuff and build a validation database of likely addresses. That database is largely used to detect mail that needs to be forwarded when someone moves. But it also has "leaked" to mail validation services like when you try to "validate" your address with the cable company or with some larger retailers. So it's because you use a PO they haven't collected enough data to recognize your street address. You can't just tell them what your address is. You could send yourself a bunch of mail periodically with one clear consistent address on all of it. After a while that should train their validation database.
Thanks I didn't realize it was so f'n simple (must be more of my sloppy thinking). :
You would think after 30 years they might have figured it out by now? I have been wrestling with them that long.
Perhaps amusing story, several years after I bought my house back in the mid 80s, I received a notice that my house and property was being auctioned off to pay outstanding county tax liens.... I was receiving and paying the local town tax bill, but did not know that there was a separate county tax bill. Thankfully the USPS managed to deliver the auction notice to my POB, so I was able to personally visit the tax office, pay my back taxes in full, then strongly request that they actually send me the tax bills in the future (I was a little angry). In the decades since that they have combined the town and county tax billing into a single bill, that I get. Back in the day the local postmaster who pretty much knows everybody in this small town would deliver our street addressed mail into our PO Box no problemo. Now this level of personal service has evaporated.
Regarding the USPS database, it is not leaked but actually sold (licensed) to other shippers (like fedex/UPS) to use for address verification (I have talked to them too and they were not helpful). This conundrum causes no end of grief when web merchants inform me that my address does not exist. This gets even funnier (not hah ha funny
) when they inform me that they are not allowed to deliver to my PO box, while depending solely on the USPS address data base for addresses (catch-22 :
)
There is an alternate E911 address data base where street addresses are assigned logically (geographically) to make it easier for first responders to find locations using just those house numbers. The USPS does not care.
I have been waiting for the USPS to close down this small PO in nowhere MS, but so far they haven't. If they close down I could put up a mail box like normal people and get delivery. But I live across the street from the PO which is why I inherited the PO Box when I bought this house. A number of my nearby neighbors are in the same situation. I probably should go ahead and build a mail box. Back in the 80s the postmaster would put my WSJ into my box by 7:30AM or sooner. This gave me time to read the front page with my morning coffee and still be in my office (7 miles up the road) by 8AM, now the low service postmistress doesn't put my newspaper into my box until 9:30AM or so... Being across the street from the PO I would actually get my paper delivered by the carrier sooner (assuming they deliver me first, not last).
A work around the new postmistress doesn't hassle me about is to fudge my street address by adding #297 (my PO box number) to the end of my actual street address (7489 Hwy 503 #297). Otherwise they put the mail in my box and sticker it telling me to inform the sender of my PO box, or just return it to sender as undeliverable (like my insurance and tax bills). I kind of expected the census forms to come stickered, but apparently they just deep sixed them all.
This makes me angry because IMO the USPS and e911 address databases should be syncronized. If I installed a mail box, I could save the PO Box rent, and probably get my mail sooner... hmmmmmmm. 8)
JR
PS: For some more funny business (not ha ha funny) related to the E911 addresses, some web map services interpolate street addresses from known references, logically assuming similar numbers would be located nearby. I just checked and mapquest still shows my physical street address almost a mile south of actual and on the other side of town. No doubt a quirk of the street numbering that stops and starts up again on the other side of town. I have to warn delivery services not to use mapquest and sometimes see them first driving past my house and then back again. 8) Google and other map services locate me accurately, while I haven't checked them all.
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