The residents of zip code 30360 have always had two choices when identifying the name of their city on their mail, Atlanta & Doraville. Effective December 1st a large portion of those residents will officially living within the boundaries of the City of Dunwoody and would like to start using their new city name as soon as it is possible to do so.I made several calls up the chain of command of the United States Postal Service and got some positive responses as far as cleaning up the city situation, but it will take a little time to make the change official. In the mean time, I was told on one of the initial calls I made (not within the management structure) that as long as the zip code was correct; any letter with the city identified as Dunwoody would be properly delivered to the address and zip code identified.
That being said, I would still like to correct the USPS databases to ensure that where possible the zip codes of Dunwoody clearly identifies the City of Dunwoody. The change will take a little time for a number of reasons, first the zip code spans two counties, two cities, as well as unincorporated areas. Because of the creation of Dunwoody and the possible annexation of unincorporated areas of DeKalb by Doraville; the USPS may wait until the dust settles and the city lines are clearly drawn before going forward with the fix.
In order to make the required changes the USPS needs a letter from the City officially requesting the change of city to the USPS databases, a detailed map of the city down to the street level in a pdf format and an excel spreadsheet of the city addresses broken down by house number and street. Doraville will be voting on annexation on November 4th and depending on the results, the city's request for a change of the city name will quickly follow it.
The other zip codes of 30338 and 30346 have Atlanta, GA listed as the Actual City name and Dunwoody as the Acceptable City name. Maybe we can get those reversed?
Good luck with that. My mother's little area of unincorprated Fulton County was annexed into Roswell 2+ years ago. According to the USPS, she her address is still handled out of the Alpharetta post office and that's where she must pick up any packages, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt has been nearly 20 years since I worked for the Postal Service. During my time there, we paid little to no attention to the city designation on letters & parcels, provided there was a good zip code from which to derive destination. My current return address labels say Atlanta, but they will say Dunwoody when I purchase replacements. So long as the zip code is correct, it doesn't really matter for delivery purposes.
ReplyDeleteFor other business purposes, I have noticed for many years that some online, telephone, and local vendors have long labeled my zip code, 30338, as Dunwoody. Others have designated it Atlanta. What this tells me is that their databases vary, but that the zip code is the primary means of designation rather than place name.
Because the zip code is the primary sorting mechanism for mail, and Postal premises are referred to by same, changing the official designation name associated with a zip code will not result in any change to the way the Postal Service sorts, holds, or delivers mail.