[net.consumers] ZIP code -> city name blues

presley@mhuxj.UUCP (Joe Presley) (03/09/84)

Any of you been bitten by companies which ignore the city/town name that you
live in but use the USPS' ZIP code to city name data base?

ample, I placed an order with Penney's and gave my mailing address as
Warren, NJ 07060.  Since Warren and Watchung are considered by the USPS to be
"too small" to have their own ZIPs, we share a ZIP code with North
Plainfield.  (Warren's "branch" office is larger than many "main" post
to find the street in North Plainfield.

Another problem I can see with having the same ZIPs is that if ZIP codes are
used to determine risks, the rates can be affected by higher crime and auto
accident statistics in the larger city. 
-- 

   Joe Presley (mhuxj!presley, ihnp4!j.presley)

presley@mhuxj.UUCP (Joe Presley) (03/09/84)

[reposting since the first got garbled - also slightly amended]

Any of you been bitten by companies which ignore the city/town name that you
live in but use the USPS' ZIP code to city name data base?

For example, I mailed a catalog order to Penney's and gave my mailing address
as Warren, NJ 07060.  Since Warren and Watchung are considered by the USPS to
be "too small" to have their own ZIPs, we share a ZIP code with North
Plainfield.  (Warren's "branch" office is larger than many "main" post
offices I've seen).  Apparently when my address was entered into their
computer system, the town name was thrown away and the mapping f(07060) ->
"North Plainfield" took place.  My package was delayed a day or so while
United Parcel tried to find the street address in North Plainfield.

In New Jersey, it seems every town has a Mountain [Ave, Rd, St, Blvd], and
the same road can change from Mountain to Valley to Spring to Mountain as it
passes through different towns, so you can see where havin the wrong town
name could get confusing. 

Another problem I can see with having the same ZIPs is that if insurance
companies use the ZIP to determine likelihood of theft, etc., insurance rates
can be affected by higher crime and auto accident rates in the larger city.
-- 

   Joe Presley (mhuxj!presley, ihnp4!j.presley)

stanwyck@ihuxr.UUCP (Don Stanwyck) (03/09/84)

Two more of the very many examples.............

Woodridge, IL  60517,  is also known as Downer's Grove, 60515 & 60516.

(even though it does have its own zip!  Historically it dodn't, and a lot of
 places use the old data base.)

and where I live now -

Bolingbrook, IL 60439 is known as Lemont, IL 60439..... and B-brook is much
larger than Lemont!  (But much younger.   Also, IL Bell says we are Lemont,
even though we have a different prefix.)

-- 
 ________
 (      )					Don Stanwyck
@( o  o )@					312-979-3062
 (  ||  )					Cornet-367-3062
 ( \__/ )					ihnp4!ihuxr!stanwyck
 (______)					Bell Labs @ Naperville, IL

jt@druca.UUCP (TurnerJI) (03/10/84)

[]
	I live in a city called Westminster (just outside of Denver)
which has its own zip, however the section of Westminster I live in uses
the same zip as an adjacent suburb (Northglenn).  When someone mails
something to me and addresses it to Westminster, it goes to Denver then
to Westminster, back to Denver and then to Northglenn!  It seems the way
to avoid the problem is just tell everyone I live in Denver and then
give my zip.

	Jeff Turner ihnp4!druca!jt

ix21@sdccs6.UUCP (03/10/84)

Raid   
This is a reposting because I was told the bug ate my last article.
I have added another paragraph to this posting.



     In Beverly Hills there are a number of residents who constantly
complain that even though they live within the city limits of Beverly
Hills and pay Beverly Hills taxes and live in Beverly Hill style
mansions they are degraded with a Los Angeles zip code address.   While
some people who live in the "slums" of Los Angeles City have a Beverly
Hills postal address.

     The Los Angeles Times told of another victim of the disagreement
between the post office boundaries of Beverly Hills and the actual
boundaries of Beverly Hills.  This poor fellow lived within the city
limits of Beverly Hills but when he went to the Beverly Hills public
library he was denied a card because his drivers license with his
postal address showed the city he lived in as Los Angeles.  He then
went to the Los Angeles public libary to apply for a card.  The
librarian looked up his address on a chart and sent him to Beverly
Hills.  What eventually happened was he went to a Los Angeles County
(not city) public library and got a county library card.  Drove to
Burbank which has reciprocal priviledges and got a Burbank card and
then went to the Beverly Hills library since because of a second set
of reciprocal priviledges a Burbank card is good at the Beverly
Hills library.

New material here:

     I was told by another reader that the boundaries for the zip
code zone that I live in, (La Jolla), which is in the incorporated
in the City of San Diego, has been changed 3 times.  Apparently
there were a lot of condominium developers who had the influence to
move the La Jolla boundaries so there complex would be in La Jolla.
According to the assessor having La Jolla as a postal address adds
a minimum of 10% to the property value all other things being equal.
In additions 7 streets had their name changed so they would be some
variation of La Jolla Dr.; this also raised property values
overnight.


-- 
David Whiteman sdcsvax!sdccs6!whiteman
UCSD Medical School, La Jolla CA
{insert boring .signature file here}

ksh@cbosgd.UUCP (Karen Summers-Horton) (03/11/84)

We have fought with the post office MANY times over our problem - to
no avail.  We live within the city limits of Columbus, Ohio - but
our zip code is for a suburb, Reynoldsburg, Ohio.  When we moved here,
we sent out all the change of address forms (after checking with the
post office) for Columbus, Ohio.  We were assured that as long as
the zip code was correct, it wouldn't matter.  So the post office
began RETURNING our mail, because there was no street with our
name in Columbus, and the idiots didn't have enough sense to LOOK
at the mail.  So even though we live in Columbus, Ohio we MUST put
Reynoldsburg, Ohio in our address, or our mail will not be delivered.

	Karen Summers-Horton

julian@deepthot.UUCP (Julian Davies) (03/11/84)

I had an interesting experience some months ago. I received a letter
at my home which was addressed (the words) to my work (u. of Western
Ontario).   Looking at the letter closely, I saw the postal code was
for my home.  Automated systems had delivered the letter to the bin/
whatever for my home street, and the post delivery person then READ
the address to decide which house it should have gone to.  She recog-
nised my name, fortunately.  It proves the postal codes actually get
used, anyway.  And I have a good mail person.   Julian Davies

rcd@opus.UUCP (03/13/84)

<>
Here in Boulder, we had a different variant of the problem.  Even though
Boulder is ~100,000 population and has 7 ZIP codes assigned to it, our mail
got a Denver postmark.  (I don't know if it still does; I haven't sent
myself a letter via USnail lately.)  Talk about a loss of local identity!
The "logic" (government-style, that is) was that Denver had this fancy
high-speed mail handling equipment.  Somehow that made it worthwhile to
load all of our mail (including Boulder-to-Boulder mail) onto trucks, send
it 40 miles to Denver for marking and sorting, and bring most of it 40
miles back to Boulder for distribution.
-- 
{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd

ntt@dciem.UUCP (Mark Brader) (03/14/84)

You think you have problems.  Here, we have the Municipality of Metropolitan
Toronto, sort of a federation of smaller municipalities.  When it was formed
(1954) there were 13 constituent municipalities:
	East York       Mimico*         Toronto
	Etobicoke       New Toronto*    Weston*
	Forest Hill*    North York      York
	Leaside*        Scarborough
	Long Branch*    Swansea*
In 1966 there was a reorganization and the 7 smallest members (marked *) were
absorbed into the larger ones, whose names did not change, and that is the way
it is now.  So what are our postal addresses?  These:
	Don Mills       Rexdale         Weston
	Downsview       Scarborough     Willowdale
	Islington       Toronto
You will observe that 5 names refer to places that have not existed since 1954,
and 1 other to a place that ceased existing in 1966.  2 out of 8 exist.

Naturally, the boundaries of the postal address Toronto do not coincide with
those of the real Toronto-- but at least the postal area includes the entire
city.  (And the post office does recognize some/all of the actual muncipality
names, especially since most of them decided to become cities recently.)

Mark Brader

allyn@sdcsvax.UUCP (03/15/84)

My mother lives on the boundary of Montrose, California, a subsidiary of 
Glendale.  Across the street is La Crescenta, also a section of Glendale.
The Phone Co. lists her address as La Crescenta, but mail MUST be 
addressed to Montrose.  Mail addressed to La Crescenta must be sent to 
the Montrose post office, as the postman is *not allowed* to walk across
the street to deliver her mail.  This once took over two weeks.

-- 
 From the virtual mind of Allyn Fratkin
                          UCSD Pascal Project
                          U.C. San Diego

rpw3@fortune.UUCP (03/16/84)

#R:mhuxj:-122900:fortune:39400002:000:1062
fortune!rpw3    Mar 16 03:17:00 1984

Boulder/Denver is not unique. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, if you
mail from anywhere on the Peninsula to some place half a mile away, it all
gets trucked up to San Francisco (20-45 miles) for sorting. Even if you mail
a first class letter at the 24-hour window at the SFO Airport mail facility,
and even if it's going out of state, it gets trucked back up to San Francisco
(~25 miles) for "sorting", only to come right back to the SAME mail room to
go on a plane.

Certified Mail (and above, including Express Mail) gets sorted there at the
airport, and goes out directly on the next plane with no trucking. So for
most major destination cities, Certified Mail was nearly as fast as Express
Mail, if mailed at the airport (at the window, NOT in one of the "drop boxes";
THEY went to the City, no matter what!).

(Don't ask why it became important for me to know this information :-<  )

Rob Warnock

UUCP:	{sri-unix,amd70,hpda,harpo,ihnp4,allegra}!fortune!rpw3
DDD:	(415)595-8444
USPS:	Fortune Systems Corp, 101 Twin Dolphin Drive, Redwood City, CA 94065

ix21@sdccs6.UUCP (03/17/84)

ugh they live within the city limits of Beverly
Hills and pay Beverly Hills taxes and live in Beverly Hill style
mansions they are degraded with a Los Angeles zip code address.   While
some people who live in the "slums" of Los Angeles City have a Beverly
Hills postal address.

The Los Angeles Times told of another victim of the disagreement
between the post office boundaries of Beverly Hills and the actual
boundaries of Beverly Hills.  This poor fellow lived within the city
limits of Beverly Hills but when he went to the Beverly Hills public
library he was denied a card because his drivers license with his
postal address showed the city he lived in as Los Angeles.  He then
went to the Los Angeles public libary to apply for a card.  The
librarian looked up his address on a chart and sent him to Beverly
Hills.  What eventually happened was he went to a Los Angeles County
(not city) public library and got a county library card.  Drove to
Burbank which has reciprocal priviledges and got a Burbank card and
then went to the Beverly Hills library since because of a second set
of reciprocal priviledges a Burbank card is good at the Beverly
Hills library.
-- 
David Whiteman sdcsvax!sdccs6!whiteman
UCSD Medical School, La Jolla CA
{insert boring .signature file here}