A less than fast connection to full fibre broadband - Kevin Buckle

With an agreement imminent for Avalanche to stay on at Waverley Market for another five years I decided to see if we could have a more reliable internet connection by having full fibre installed.

Avalanche does not feature on the Royal Mail postcode and address finder at the Waverley Market address along with half of the other businesses, says Kevin Buckle

We have had issues in the past especially at Christmas when the number of people in the city centre on their phones means we lose the ability to take credit cards. Also because of the structure of the building we lose a signal towards the back of the shop.

However I had been offered full fibre by BT when it was being installed in the job centre below me so I dug out the email and got back in touch. I later found out that Costa, above the shop, have also had full fibre installed recently. Yet despite this BT have said they cannot make any guarantees that they will be able to install.

It turned out the first thing they would need to do is establish my address using the Royal Mail postcode and address finder. This immediately rang bells as I knew Avalanche did not feature at the Waverley Market address along with half of the other businesses.

This had come to light as whenever we book a parcel to be collected by Royal Mail the address finder does not bring up Avalanche as an option, and up to now we have just had to pick an address with no name and add Avalanche.

It became clear I would first have to email the Address Management Unit at Royal Mail, which I did giving the official address I had from the council’s non-domestic rates department. Almost a week later I received a reply saying my details had been noted but I would now need to ask Edinburgh Council to verify the details.

By now I was starting to lose heart but I dutifully emailed the council’s Street Name and Numbering department only to receive an automatic response saying I would get a response within the next ten days. Thankfully I got a reply almost immediately but it was bad news. They did not recognise the address I had given as being correct and they would need to examine the floor plans to investigate further and would get back to me by mid-July!

I quickly replied saying that was unacceptable and pointed out that despite having been told the council hold and dictate the statutory addresses for the building, it was a complete mess with the highlight being the inclusion of Coda Music which had left the centre in 2004. I was getting almost immediate replies and was told that colleagues in the Corporate Address Gazetteer would now look at it and I should get a much quicker reply.

The moral of this story is that every business should check they are accurately represented on the Royal Mail Postcode and Address Finder as it is referenced by many organisations and is rightfully seen as the go-to place to establish the credentials of a business.

Given how important all this clearly is and that both Royal Mail and Edinburgh Council have entire departments dedicated to providing accurate information, it has to be embarrassing that the listings for Waverley Market are such a mess and this I hear is by no means an isolated example.