Reply to post: Re: "GPS is often of little help finding an address much outside Dublin"

Re: "GPS is often of little help finding an address much outside Dublin"

I was writing some till software for use at trade shows for a company. It needed to take addresses of new customers to set them up an account with the company.

I wrote it in what I believed was a rational and sane way, requiring a house name/number, street etc.

This worked great in the UK. However, before the Dublin show, I got one of the Irish staff to test it.

"It won't let me put in my address"

I had a look, and she wasn't entering a house name or number. When I told her she needed to enter that, she told me, "I don't have a house name or number. Noone on our street does."

"How does the postman find your house, then?" I asked.

"Oh, he knows who lives where."

It sounded insane to me, but apparently it's fairly common, and it's why couriers over there insist on having a telephone number. They can turn up at a street with many houses on and have to figure out which house it is, with no indication at all!