please empty your brain below
On the plus side you do get take-out food delivered intended for someone else, you have no idea who actually ordered it (they just knock on the door and disappear).

Still Anon | 12.10.21 - 7:27 a.m. | #

Alternatively, deliveries could be grouped into rounds which are then undertaken by the same person each day who gets to know all the little idiosyncrasies of the area. Someone like a postal delivery worker.

kerspatula | 12.10.21 - 7:44 a.m. | #

My scheduled delivery is late on a Friday and I know that deliveries late on Fridays somehow mysteriously don't arrive for a curiously long list of reasons but I'm waiting in specifically for this so don't pretend that I'm not and I paid extra for delivery today because I really need it for tomorrow so please please please actually deliver it this time and I'll wait outside in the rain even so that you don't need to press the buzzer and go up any stairs. Please.

ST | 12.10.21 - 8:00 a.m. | #

Don't try and deliver at the front of the house; nobody ever uses that door. Instead drive up the road at the back of the property and come through the back gate. There used to be a sign on the garage.

Petras409 | 12.10.21 - 8:42 a.m. | #

Some delivery drivers seem incapable of reading instructions on the address label itself; a separate database of tips wouldn't help them much!

Andrew S | 12.10.21 - 8:57 a.m. | #

A mate who is a driver sent me a screenshot of the instructions for an address in SE10.

It said, "Please deliver to Shrewsbury address."

Chris | 12.10.21 - 9:00 a.m. | #

Although it's not the same thing, having loading and waiting restrictions available as GIS open data might help delivery companies. Camden do something like this, but others like Newham have a pathological hatred of open data.

Rob | 12.10.21 - 9:01 a.m. | #

Deliveries to the properties in my cul-de-sac seem almost constant during daylight hours. In the evening the food deliveries commence. I claim no expertise in the subject, but feel that the fragmented multi-vehicle delivery model of recent times is most likely disastrous from an environmental perspective. I doubt that tailored delivery information will minimise such impacts.

Frank F | 12.10.21 - 9:02 a.m. | #

My Amazon standard address first line reads: "Put parcel in the milk box to the left of the door." Only once has that actually been done in several years.

Doug Robinson | 12.10.21 - 9:55 a.m. | #

Dear Person Delivering, If you are going to fill out the form saying we are not in before you get here please push it through the letter box and not just drop it on the path. Unfortunately this means that we might hear you and you will actually have to deliver the parcel we have waited in for.

JohnA | 12.10.21 - 10:00 a.m. | #

Having delivery problems?!

I think our address is known by heart to every delivery driver in the area as my other half seems to be spending the GDP of China on their plastic tat, and my kids have every fast food delivery service app known to mankind! :/

The little man form Hermes always greets me with a cheery smile when I open the door. Soon we'll be on first name terms!

Cornish Cockney | 12.10.21 - 10:04 a.m. | #

I’ve had one delivery this year.
It went very smoothly.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 12.10.21 - 10:11 a.m. | #

I found this post amusing. T save any bother by telling them, just leave it at the Post Office across the road.

Andrew | Homepage | 12.10.21 - 10:21 a.m. | #

Even if they could be bothered to look up the entry they'd fail here ... no mobile signal for miles. It's a regular occurrence for us to give directions for the next drop to some poor sod who's now stuck in the middle of nowhere with only Google maps as a (inaccessible) navigation tool because the company is too tight to supply proper sat nav. Not helped by the fact that official addresses round here are simply {House name}, {Parish - covering several hamlets}.

Putters | 12.10.21 - 10:22 a.m. | #

What3words gives a precise location

Carl | 12.10.21 - 11:01 a.m. | #

What3Words only gives a precise location if the location it's derived from is accurate, but the 3m resolution isn't actually achievable by most mobile phones, particularly if the app is used indoors.

You can get very accurate GPS coordinates for any UK address from it's Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN), but using that to generate a W3W address would be pointless.

Rob | 12.10.21 - 11:44 a.m. | #

Hilarious indeed! Actually, I think it would be more useful to instruct drivers that if they want to find road X look for a sign at the end of the road saying "X Road", and if they're looking for number twenty-two, look for a sign outside the house with two adjactent numerals in the shape of a "2".

cau1khead | 12.10.21 - 11:56 a.m. | #

Route scheduling systems aimed at transportation companies can include (reasonably) up to date details of location & time based delivery restrictions, to use in routing calculations.

Some supermarket delivery systems allow entry of detailed delivery notes; since the drivers have to hand over quickly at a fixed time they are more likely to follow the instructions (although may refuse if carry distance is too long i.e. lift broken or they feel unsafe)

MilesT | 12.10.21 - 12:48 p.m. | #

You remind me of an old story.

I worked at Vodafone Retail and built their original Intranet, and one of the sections unsurprisingly had a long list of shops.

When I got the list, it was ordered by the regional office groupings, which is pointless, so it got cleaned into something call-centre staff/customer friendly, but lurking on a network drive I found another document used by the area managers, and it was a human description of each store's location.

Which got quickly added to the intranet store address pages, and as we monitored calls as part of the routine work, it was clear that customers were really impressed to get not just "17 high street", but helpful hints such as "opposite M&S".

It's odd that I have never seen that in the wild on company websites as it's a minimal amount of work to collect, but is such a customer friendly way of presenting geographical information.

ianVisits | Homepage | 12.10.21 - 3:13 p.m. | #

what3words is very good for this in rural areas or anywhere that getting within 10m is very helpful..eg building sites with multiple entrances. They could also just add a digit to our postcodes and make them to-the door specific.

All other notices can be in a passive aggressive laminated card on your front door.

Alistair Twin | 12.10.21 - 6:13 p.m. | #

At the moment my "Delivery instructions" either never get to the delivery driver or the driver just ignores them. I have zero faith that companies' systems would bother to integrate with such a central database.

As several have suggested, if most companies used the same last-mile delivery service that would solve most of the problems.

Jon Jones | 12.10.21 - 6:34 p.m. | #

Tesco's delivery drivers often seem to get aggrieved with us when their sat nav sends them to the wrong street. Despite us putting a note on the instructions to point this out.

martin | 12.10.21 - 7:22 p.m. | #

Deliveries have been more accurate since I've been able to mention the new house opposite the gate. Though I ask the Calor Gas deliverer to phone, because if he turns the wrong way at the fork in the drive, he'll get stuck and I like to explain in person.

Some of the instructions you give are very like the ones for my house.

Z | Homepage | 12.10.21 - 7:56 p.m. | #

You have to hand it to the guys who thought up W3W - making money out of knowing where places are when there is an even better free system (it’s called latitude and longitude). My fairly old ‘phone works to about 1 m accuracy.
I wonder when someone will think of monetising time - ‘four, forty, five’ : anyone want to invest USD500,000 in my startup?

RogerB | 12.10.21 - 10:38 p.m. | #

This set me wondering. Everything you and everyone else talks about depends on the ability to read and comprehend.
People who can't read and comprehend well aren't necessarily stupid. What exactly is the reading age of a person who's well equipped to drive a van?

Caroline | 13.10.21 - 10:11 a.m. | #











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