A Bad Thing About My New House
So I finally got the internet and all the furniture and stuff sorted at the new property. It's great - lovely and cosy, and I have my very own office space so I can work in peace. Almost everything is perfect, but there is just one major problem...
This is a mews property. Basically it's a set of houses that stems off an already existing road. Like a block of flats, each house in the mews development has its own number, separate to that of the numbers on the road. This mews development has the exact same name as the road it stems off of, and also shares a postcode. So between this house and the house directly opposite me the address only has ONE WORD DIFFERENT. I am living on 'X Mews' and they are living on 'X Lane', and in order to get to 'X Mews' you have to go down an alleyway right next to 'X Lane'.
So far they have received 5 letters and 1 courier delivery of mine, and we have received 1 letter of theirs. Naturally, delivery drivers are directed by their satnav to this area and see 'X Lane' and assume that it is therefore the same as the 'X Mews' property, and deliver there without noticing the alleyway leading to the mews development. Partly I am going to blame the council for this because there is absolutely no signage to indicate that to reach the mews development you must go down the alleyway.
Furthermore, because we share a postcode (because technically we are both on 'X Lane') whenever you type my house number and postcode into an address finder it gives the 'X Lane' address and not the 'X Mews' address. This means that even if I correctly give my address as 'X Mews' to a company employee/salesperson (in particular, over the phone where I can't check what they've typed) if they choose to type in the house number and postcode their system tells them that it is instead 'X Lane'. This has even resulted in us temporarily having our names attached to 'X Lane''s gas supply!
Does anyone have any advice to give on how to overcome this confusion? I have thought of adding 'NOT LANE - GO DOWN ALLEYWAY' to my address when I order online, but it is not exactly ideal - particularly for something more official. I also can't attach any signs to the buildings at the entrance to the alleyway without the building owner's permission, though I have contacted the council about this. Hopefully they can come up with something sensible, but since this house was built two years ago and evidently nothing has been done so far... I'm not holding my breath.
Maybe a neat laminated note would do the trick, put it by the doorbell/mail box, just saying "please confirm this mail is for 1 X mews not 1 X lane, as they are two different properties. You could coordinate with your counterpart on X lane to do the same. Surely the council wouldn't notice/object.
We had a similar problem at our old flat. It was a big old house, converted into an upstairs and downstairs flat. We'd often get stuff delivered to downstairs that was meant for us upstairs because delivery drivers didn't notice the bloody great outdoor staircase up to our back door *rolls eyes*
I have no suggestions though, as that was the least of our problems and we got out as quick as we could.
It's just as fun in my area ... It's a small area full of small apartment blocks, houses and and cottages. Overall, probably ... 300m2? Every building was built on a different date and almost every has a different address.
Mine and the one next to it is XYZ Place, the one on the opposite is XYZ Road (number 20, same as mine, just to make my life hard - when I was flat viewing I thought it was this block), the one next to it is XYZ Street, a few houses have XYZ Court, etc., etc. . What is more brilliant ... XYZ Place rarely appears in the databases and it's block from 2001.
I'd suggest someone taking a better care of those databases...
What a ridiculously simple planning mistake!
On the plus side, it doesn't sound like your neighbouring twins are the kind to steal your mail. I once caught an old neighbour opening a student loan letter of mine. Not sure WHY they'd want to open it though. There's no money in there... it would just show them how much debt I'm in!