American Reacts to Why UK Postcodes Are Better

As an American I don't know how UK postcodes work at all. Today I am very curious to learn more about them and why they might be better than the USA zip codes system. If you enjoyed the video feel free to leave a comment, like, or subscribe for more!

[garyrobinson]

99% of the time when you need to put your address into a form on a website, you just have to put in your postcode and the number of your home.

[stuartfitch]

In the UK if you are in a store buying something such as a washing machine that you can't fit in your car, so you ask the store to deliver it to your house, the staff will ask for your postcode and house number. From these two pieces of information they then know the exact house to deliver that washing machine to.

[Tass...]

I travel a lot in the UK for work and using a postcode for the area I am going to is my go-to way of finding out what the weathers going to be like there. All UK weather websites use a postcode to give an exact area weather report. You don't even need the full postcode just the 1st part of it. It's very convieniant.

[mariuscheek]

In the US you could easily do this - remember that there are 26 letters in the alphabet, but only 10 numbers 0 to 9.
The US commonly abbreviates states names to 2 letters - so use that!
Then in most states you will have either counties or major cities that could be dealt with by one letter+one number each (limit to 260 per state).
Then each of these could have the UK style final 3 characters (which gives 10x26x26=6760 IDs, which then break down by door number as well)

So for somewhere a bit outside Salt Lake City, you could have 'UT SL1 9XY'
Or Bend, Oregon might have codes like 'OR BD3 1SW'

Basically no US state has anywhere near the population of the UK, so just use the same system with a state prefix...

[phillipescott]

Kaylin is right that the UK codes are better than ZIP codes for mail delivery. They are also useful for SatNav, so the car will find the address quickly in any part of the UK (but remember to use the ferries where appropriate - don’t just drive across the sea). A few decades ago I was also using them for market research as they helped to identify and classify neighbourhoods.

[HankD]

And don't forget we did actually invent the postage stamp - The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was first issued in the United Kingdom on 1 May 1840. People do use the Post Code in conversation, ie when asked where in London I live, just saying SW16 tells them all they need to know.

[taffygeek]

The postcode is so specific that I once had a letter delivered to me that only had my name and postcode. The postcode got it as far as my street and my regular postie just put it with other mail that matched my name that was being delivered that day.

[davidcronan]

In larger cities, such as Birmingham and Liverpool the street signs show the district number, such as B12 or L17.

[garyrobinson]

The uk postcode was designed just for the post office to help them sort the mail to the right area. The first part is the postal district that the mail is going to and the second part is the street within that postal district.

[Lily_The_Pink]

Not exactly postcode related but I remember reading about a letter that was addressed to someone in Arijaba. The post office didnt have a clue where this was and the letter went all round the world in search of its destination. Unsurprisingly, it landed back in a sorting office in England where the mystery was finally solved. Someone realised that if you say what you see, the letter was addressed to the port of Harwich Harbour!
Not that Tyker would understand the joke as he'd pronounce it Har-witch Harbour!

[seanmc]

if you put in the post code and house number, you will get directly to the house, sometimes its a bit off not by much, im a delivery driver,

[robertfitzjohn]

I'm in my sixties, and I remember when the Post Office started encouraging everyone to include the postcode in addresses.
We visited Wisconsin Dells some years ago. My wife put the ZIP code of the hotel into the GPS and it took us to some random site outside of town. We hadn't realised the ZIP code covered such a large area!
In the UK, one postcode can cover quite a large area if it's in the countryside, where buildings are further apart. For example, the GPS may take you to the middle of a road, but the place you want is two miles away at the end of the road. (To solve this, you need to include the building's number or name along with the postcode.)
Addresses that receive a lot of mail, such as businesses, may be allocated their own unique postcode. For example, the Colleges in Oxford are close together, but each has its own postcode.

[chrismackett]

Because they are so specific to a small area, UK postcodes are used for other purposes, such as helping determine car and house insurance. When I worked for the probation service and sat on local crime reduction groups, information about offending was broken down by postcode to help the allocation of resources.

[BTAxis]

Here in the Netherlands, whenever I enter my address details when ordering stuff online and such, I usually only have to enter my post code and house number, and the form just fills out the rest on its own.

[markylon]

You can put a house number and postcode and you get the exact address, eg 400 W1A 1AB is exactly the same as 400 Oxford Street, London W1A 1AB United Kingdom - So just use the 400 W1A 1AB

[markylon]

The first postage stamps did not need to show the issuing country, so no country name was included on them. Thus the United Kingdom remains the only country in the world to omit its name on postage stamps; the monarch's image signifies the United Kingdom as the country of origin.

[nautilusshell]

If I remember correctly, the full ZIP codes in the USA are actually 9 digits long, so the extra four digits that aren't normally used must increase specificity.
In Ireland, the Eircodes are actually specific to the individual address.

[TheWebcrafter]

3:47 - UK POST(AL) CODES - I recall a school outing to a local post sorting office in my home town of Oxford, UK, and discovered that, not only does a Post(al) Code indicate a particular street, it also denotes a specific side of the street.

[fermitupoupon]

Something that seemingly few Americans seem to know about their own zipcode is that your address will have a zip+4 code. So your entire zipcode is 9 digits, using that zip+4 does in fact save time when sorting the mail, because it means the system can print the barcode directly and from the first point of entry to the sorting system it can be directly sorted to the depot that is responsible for the last-mile-delivery to your house.
In my experience with sending stuff to the US from the EU, using a zip+4 can cut days off of the transit time.

Over here in The Netherlands we have a system of 4 digits followed by 2 letters, so 1234AB could be a valid postcode. Generally speaking major cities will have a round number for their city center, like 1000 for Amsterdam or 2000 for Rotterdam, though it's not always a nice clean number like that, for example Utrecht is 3500, Arnhem is 6800.
Though this does lead to a situation where a city of about 200k inhabitants can have 5200+ different postcodes. For the most part they all start with the same two digits, except for Den Haag, which is just a mess.

The combination of 4 digits and 2 letters is for the most part specific to a single street or just part of a street. The combination of a postcode and a house number is basically a unique identifier for a specific building. You can enter that into a navigation app and find your way there. Many websites also only have you enter a postcode and house number, and then make you confirm the address they've found to match that. Has the benefit of stopping people from entering the wrong postcode.

[griffalo]

It's more accurate to say that the first 1 or 2 letters relate to the main sorting office rather than the town. My town of Dudley is DY, but nearby towns also have a DY postcode as Dudley is the closest 'main' sorting office.