UPDATE: Oops, they did it again.
Ren Jender reports the US Postal Service delivered this letter to the correct street number (but the wrong street) in Boston. Unfortunately, as you can see, it was supposed to go to that number on another street in London, on the other side of the Atlantic.
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Comments
wrong country
By anne
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 10:34am
this just happened to me. i got a letter meant for Charlestown, Australia last week. very strange. i returned it to the sender.
I got one in July
By swirlygrrl mobile
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 10:40am
It was a wedding invitation from New Jersey, intended for London.
The street address and city DID NOT match, but, given the handwriting, I could see why they may have mixed it up.
Seems to be a regular USPS autosorting messup.
Swirls , it good to see you
By kvn
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 10:47am
Swirls , it good to see you pop up here. There was a story of a cyclist struck on Holland street , I was fearful for you.
Thanks, Kvn!
By swirlygrrl mobile
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 10:55am
I appreciate your concern!
I hope all is okay on Holland St. I don't usually ride it (easier to avoid Davis if I'm not holing up in the Burren or Redbones). I worry as my son usually goes through there, though. Finals week means he won't leave until 3, however.
Glad ur ok , really .
By kvn
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 2:09pm
Glad ur ok , really . Redbones , that would be the Coronet in my radar scope. Don't like the Sligo or the Rosebud ?
I'll eat at Rosebud sometimes
By SwirlyGrrl
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 5:02pm
The Burren is a peat fireplace shy of somewhere in Western Ireland and my friends play traditional American sets there on some weekends.
Redbones has an awesome beer list and lots of middle-aged cyclists dropping in = good conversation for other middle-aged cyclists.
What's really frightening
By Stevil
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 11:55am
I could see it more if this were a Boston to Boston letter or even intended for Boston in the UK. This came out of Tarrytown, NY - how the hell did NY send it to Boston and then Boston sent it to a local address? London looks nothing like Boston and even the postal codes are vastly different. Must've been an angry Yankee fan that didn't know what to do with it so he sent it here.
Here is my theory
By SwirlyGrrl
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 12:43pm
I don't think there are humans involved. That is the problem. There is a bug in the automated address recognition and sorting system.
Any mail that lacks a readable US Zipcode causes to system to find an appropriate address in the data to send it to. It probably just "thinks" that the zipcode is illegible.
What then happens is that it starts sifting through until it finds something "close enough" and routes it accordingly via barcode.
Thus a piece of mail with a handwritten address for "21 Peckham Lane, London" will wind up at the first 21 Peckham or even 21 Bechtel Lane it can find as it mulls through the directories.
We have low zip code numbers ... so ...
Also, the one I got had "M4" and then a "2" after a space ... which it may have thought was "MA" and a garbled zipcode with a 2 (as in 02155) in it.
Hopefully a human delivered
By Heywood
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 9:31pm
Hopefully a human delivered it.
Wrapped up with a rubber band
By SwirlyGrrl
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 10:06pm
Presorted according to bar code. I doubt Cheryl even saw the envelope.
She wrote upon it, "return to sender'
By Scott R
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 12:26pm
This happened to me a couple of years ago. I used to live on St. John street in JP, we got a letter to somewhere in St. John's Wood, England.
We also got at least one letter meant for somewhere in Jamaica.
Also
By NeighborhoodGIF...
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 12:48pm
England isn't a country.
The English, and even the British, may disagree
By Ron Newman
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 1:14pm
The United Kingdom considers itself to consist of several "countries" -- England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
However, if you want to send
By Irmo
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 1:35pm
However, if you want to send a letter, and have the postal service deliver it, to England, then it's best to comply with international conventions and address it to GREAT BRITAIN.
Damned Brits
By Stevil
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 2:19pm
Great Britain (what's so great about it anyway?), United Kingdom and then the whole England, Wales, Scotland, N. Ireland thing. For the love of God folks - if you take over a country, take the whole damned thing and come up with a new name for it.
That will be all. Go about your day. Cheerio. (which is a breakfast cereal BTW, not a social greeting)
8- )=)
Well, they did. It was called
By Irmo
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 3:40pm
Well, they did. It was called LLoegres before those damned Germans crossed over and took it.
shouldn't it be addressed to "UNITED KINGDOM" ?
By Ron Newman
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 2:33pm
"Great Britain" definitely isn't a country or a nation-state. It's an island.
Well, it's technically the
By gotdatwmd
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 3:03pm
Well, it's technically the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but saying that each time will rot your teeth faster than English food.
ENOUGH!!
By Scratchie
Tue, 12/16/2014 - 9:17am
[IMG]http://qntm.org/files/uk/uk.gif[/IMG]
You're welcome.
but ... but ...
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 12/16/2014 - 9:19am
I came here for an argument!
[youtube]www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y[/youtube]
No you didn't.
By Scratchie
Tue, 12/16/2014 - 9:38am
No you didn't.
GB is not the UK
By Sharon
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 7:56pm
Great Britain is the island (does not include Ulster), it's more geographical, is my understanding. When posting to London (England), "London, UK" is used. I can't help but include England in parentheses.
My best friend lives in
By anon
Tue, 12/16/2014 - 7:02am
My best friend lives in Notthern Ireland. Whenever I send something, depending who's behind the counter that day they prefer I use United Kingdom or Northern Ireland. I prefer Northern Ireland, because why not be as specific as possible and list the actual country? The United Kingdom isn't a country, it's a sovereign state. But I don't want to ponder the politics of it when I'm sending a birthday card. I'll do whatever the PO thinks is best, but it would be nice if they were more consistent.
Even if that were true, the
By anon
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 1:24pm
Even if that were true, the letter was still delivered to the wrong country.
Of course England is a
By mare
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 3:21pm
Of course England is a country.
Congratulations!
By bohemka
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 6:50pm
You've just passed the USPS entry exam.
Autosorting vs. delivery
By mr. mister
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 1:03pm
I live near Green st. in JP. My mailcarrier does the best she can do, I am sure, but we constantly receive mail intended for addresses (clearly written} not five minutes walk away from our tiny little street, and on her normal route. What's more, the names on our boxes are not congruent with the names for whom said letters are intentioned. Its clear to me that autosort has worked to get all mail for a particular route into the right bin, however the deliverer regularly manages to fumble others mail into our box... Guessing that reading is not fundamental to our mailcarrier.
Same
By H
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 1:48pm
I live near you, so we probably have the same mail carrier. I've noticed that the kind of mistakes you mention are usually made on days when there must be a substitute mail carrier - one who doesn't have the master key to our locked mailboxes and just leaves all the mail on the shelf inside the building entry. I guess if you're a substitute, there's less likelihood of having a customer complaint attach itself to you, and/or there's a reason why you're a substitute and not a full-time mail carrier...
Not spending a little time at
By kvn
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 1:51pm
Not spending a little time at Kilgarriff's , is she ?
I thought only JP had the worst postal service
By anon
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 2:15pm
I received an evelope clearly addressed to a different street. Placed it into a postal box hoping that human eyes would put the envelope into the right bin or that the postal carrier would pay attention. It was redelivered to my address. So I wrote something to the effect, "Delivered to wrong address. Please deliver to correct address." My human notes on the envelope notwithstanding the item was again delivered to my house. Put the envelope back into the mail system with yet more notes, exclamation marks and a witches curse or two and finally the envelope did not come back to me. Whether it was actually delivered is another question.
You need to cross out the bar
By anon
Tue, 12/16/2014 - 1:38pm
You need to cross out the bar code.
I received one today as well
By ChrisInEastie
Mon, 12/15/2014 - 7:20pm
Laughed when I read this earlier, and came home to a letter intended for Abingdon, UK from Sunderland, MA.
They got the house number and part of the street name right, but the Atlantic Ocean, Boston Harbor is not.
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