The delivery company Hermes is pretty damn unpopular, especially on Twitter – it's usually a toss-up between them and Yodel for "most cursed courier." Nonetheless, the company does apparently put some effort into trying to improve, or so the latest press release would suggest.
Hermes has teamed up with What3Words, the location app that gives every 3 x 3 metre square in the world a unique 3-word address. Before anyone starts kicking off in the comments, yes, there are issues with W3W – like the fact that it's a proprietary for-profit system and not open-source like some free alternatives – but the service is gaining traction and if the emergency services find it useful, we won't argue.
According to Hermes, 70 per cent of addresses don't take you to the front door, and 74 per cent of us say couriers have a hard time finding where to deliver to (tip: not in the wheely bin outside).
Our experience suggests that the front door could be a hundred feet tall, painted neon pink, marked with the address in foot-high letters and flanked by people holding golf-sale-style signs pointing directly to it, and they still wouldn't find it. But maybe this will help (spoiler: it won't).
To take advantage of the collaboration, you have to download the Hermes app (already offputting), then add your W3W three-word address into the MyPlaces section.
Hermes says that "if you have updated your MyPlaces with your what3words address, that location data will trump anything else, so the driver will always use it."
We can think of several problems with this – the W3W address for the three metres containing the front door of a flat on the 27th floor of a massive apartment block will be literally zero use to a courier on the road outside, for instance – but we can't write them up because we've got to go and collect a parcel we missed while we were in.
Image: Hermes
The Link LonkAugust 20, 2020 at 07:30PM
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Hermes Teams Up with What3Words for Slightly Less Terrible Deliveries - Gizmodo UK
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