Postal service secrets: Why use a zip code?

Need to send a letter? Basically, all you need is a device with an internet connection. Anything else? It’s hard to believe that just a few decades ago people were using regular postal services to send a letter. Sounds weird? They might wait for the answer for weeks. Perhaps you will never understand the incredible feeling of happiness when it finally arrived. A mistake or any issue with the address might cost you too much – sometimes it took too long to deliver such letters. If you come across articles describing how a letter was received 87 years after the moment it was sent, probably, you know what it means. For more interesting details you can ask your grannies, as today’s article is going to tell you about something else.

The invention of the zip code system in the 1950s made life more comfortable. It became faster to deliver letters and fewer were lost. The Internet was invented a bit later and made our life much easier. For example, we can track anything we send via the postal service. So why are these codes still necessary?

Is your address important?

Of course, you don’t need to wait several weeks to get a letter from someone, but why do we still need these five numbers? There might be a lot of situations when you need to know the exact code of a specific location. Or, vice versa, you may know the area and nothing more. We still use mailing services to shop online, so be a loyal customer and verify your location. Moreover, people still get many paper letters, such as bills, business correspondence, invitations, catalogues, and so on. As you’ve probably noticed, sometimes registering online on a certain site or a platform requires you to enter the correct postal code, and you cannot skip it – the system won’t let you proceed further.

How often do you need to find a specific postal code, check if it’s correct, or find the exact location based on postal code only? More than 100 countries all over the world use this system, so it’s a good idea to find a good and credible zip code finder to check all the necessary info about it. It will give information about a certain location. However, it also serves as a sorting tool for a machine that automatically sorts out letters and parcels. In this case, to make sure your letter is delivered to the right person, you still need to write the full address of the destination. Even the machine can fail, and an error in distinguishing the right zip code numbers may lead to the loss of your correspondence. In this case, postal services look for the address to send it to.

So, please, writing a letter, make sure to check the correct zip code of your destination. Double check the address info and receiver’s name. World zip codes don’t replace any parts of an address, so it’s your responsibility to write the full info when sending your correspondence.

The editorial unit