Companies and blaguing

 

One of the major frustrations that I have experienced in the past 30 years working on international data is the level of ignorance of basic geography which permeates companies holding international data and those people employed to manage that data. Worse, there are too many companies claiming to be experts in validating and managing this data who take the approach that they only need to know a little more than their prospects to blague them into becoming customers. I’ve experienced this in teaching, too – as long as you’re one page ahead of the kids, it’s fine.

I see a lot of this ignorance in plain sight on company websites. There are those claiming to validate addresses for 300+ countries and territories, for example. (Even with the most generous interpretation of “country or territory”, and even including uninhabited rocks with their own ISO 3166 code, you’d be hard pressed to get far beyond the 250 mark). The unfortunate aspect is that their customers don’t have the knowledge to realise that they should probably avoid working with or trusting these companies.

I was looking at the website of Postgrid (https://www.postgrid.com/) and noticed this address for their United Kingdom office on their “contact us” page.

Where do I start? First of all, the time is long gone when you could use “England” to refer to the whole of the United Kingdom. The union flag is used – England uses a different flag. Worse, though, is that the address is in Edinburgh. That’s Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Not in England. I mean, tone deaf or what?

You don’t have to look far for other red flags. Their address validation list (https://www.postgrid.com/global-address-coverage/) includes the usual unpopulated rocks, but also faux pas such as listing “Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of” – it’s only been five years since it changed its name to North Macedonia.

Postgrid were contacted for comment. They have not responded or change the information on their “Contact Us” page at the time of writing.

I’ve also always wondered about the lists of “customers” many address validators proudly display. From my own experience I know how hard it is in a large company to get official permission to be publicised as a customer; and if Amazon, SAP and Microsoft were running all the different address validation software that are claimed in their names – about 30 each – it would be chaos. Is this just a cheap marketing trick? It leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

Oh well. There are some good companies out there dealing with international data. But do your homework – if you don’t learn yourself about the data you’re holding, you can’t expect to be able to assess the best partner to help you to make the best of it.