Like many folk, we live in a small hameau.
Our address is in the form
<<Name of the hameau/voie>>
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The roads have the same name as the hameau. Our facteuse has no problem with this, at the post office they know who lives ib each of the four houses. This is common to many rural communities.
Delivery companies are becoming more reluctant to attempt deliveries. I have had recent deliveries where the company refused to come out, stating that the adress is “incomplete”.
I have asked at the post office and at the Mairie, both have said that there is no more to the address, neither are aware of any numbering system.
I am seeing an increasing number of companies expecting a house number when registering online. How are ithers dealing with this? Is there an official means if requesting a house number to stop the computers saying “non”?
In the place for a number, voie etc usually there’s the option for LD (lieu-dit).
I get scam advertising telephone calls sometimes saying c’est bien mme anglade rue charles de gaulle so I say yes, obv there is no rue Ch de G in Monbaz. No idea where they then send their stuff…
Our Maire seems to be in the process of providing house numbers to those properties in the commune which are not currently numbered - perhaps this is something which could be raised in your commune?
It depends on what the roads are like, eg the road that goes past my house has no name or number and putting numbers on houses would be pointless.
My house gives its name to a LD, so there are about 4 houses on the LD, and the same goes for my neighbours down the hill. In the village the addresses are either LD whatever or Le Bourg.
Same here, except that Aux Tetes is divided in two by a track which is only really passable by a 4 x 4 or a tractor and you have to go up onto the main road and then down again to the other half.
Sometimes when ordering online they demand a number and I put 2, but that depends on which way you come in.
Ha! When our village was ‘renumbered’ by the Mairie, they chose a random spot at a road junction and numbered the houses according to how many paces they were from the chosen spot. There are maybe 25 houses in our village… We are in the high hundreds!
In the next commune the roads actually have names (very original, route de wherever they are going) but it means you have these appalling addresses eg 1137 route de Sarlat which mean 0 because the road is just a bog-standard country road which happens to bisect the commune. And the name is never indicated either so a fat lot of use. Pfffffff
For years my address was a Lieu Dit for 3 houses, then we were given a house number and road name, unfortunately the road is very long and runs through several villages, I’ve had more trouble whenever deliveries are due now than when I just had the LD address
Our local villages and towns are currently naming all their roads and numbering all their houses - number of metres from the road end usually, so we are number 2380! We weren’t keen initially. We liked having just our LD, even though it is shared with our neighbours and could cause problems for delivery companies. However, our mayor pointed out having a unique house number is invaluable in the case of an emergency - you really don’t want a fireman or ambulance driver having to hunt around half a dozen properties in the dark before finding you!
A lot of time and effort has gone into choosing street names and we have posh new metal road signs and house numbers, all provided by the mairie.
Under the old system of just LD or “Bourg” addresses I was so impressed with the way the postman knew where everyone was.
The way we used to cope with the need for a number by some delivery companies was to put in a “0” and if a street name was required we just put in our LD name twice - once in the street box and once in the house name box. Seemed to work ok.
People working for the FCO in London have the same problem as the address is King Charles Street. SW1A 2AH London. They usually just put a number 1 before King Charles Street.
When a house number is required I always type a zero. That has worked for me up to now. Delivery is usually OK these days except that our address is the same as our neighbour’s address, and GPS takes you there rather than chez nous. The livreur usually rings to ask which house, and then we go out and wave!
My (English) wife’s sister lives in the U.K. and lives in a road that is not numbered, all of the houses have names but she’s never mentioned problems with deliveries and she shops online a lot. Perhaps she needs to be modernised as well.
The last French house I rented was given a number and a brand new street name while I was there. There were only five houses in the hamlet but ours was #7. One slight issue was that the new street name was Rue de xxx yet all the utilities companies and the prefecture had Rue des xxx on their database, but it never caused any problem.
It will still be on the maps…