Addresses in Malé are names, not numbers, and about one in five cannot be found from the address alone. The number is not paperwork.
The most common argument we have with a new customer is about telephone numbers, and it is always the same argument: they have given us a full address and cannot see why we want anything else. Here is what the address actually tells a rider.
Buildings in Malé have names. Those names are painted on a plate that may be missing, faded, or on the side of the building rather than the street. Buildings are renamed when they are sold, and the old name stays in everybody's memory for a decade. Two buildings a few lanes apart sometimes have very similar names. And a large number of people genuinely do not know their own building's name, because nothing in daily life requires them to.
Then the flat. There is no standard. Some people say the floor, some the flat number, some the family name, some nothing at all. A parcel addressed to the third floor of a building with two flats per floor requires the rider to knock on both.
So the honest figure from our own records is that a parcel with a good written address and no number is found on the first attempt about four times out of five. A parcel with a number that answers is essentially always delivered, because the rider rings from the street and the customer either comes down or says which door.
The cost of the missing fifth is not just a second attempt. It is a rider spending eleven minutes on one parcel instead of three, which slows every other delivery on that run, and it is a shop telling a customer their order is on the way when it is actually coming back to us.
Which is why we refuse parcels without one. One of our largest accounts had three weeks of being furious with us about this, and their first attempt rate went from eighty nine per cent to over ninety eight. They now put the number on before we ask.
Two other things worth adding to a parcel, both free. The floor, because four flights with a heavy box is a different delivery from a ground floor door, and a rider who knows can take the right bag. And a note if the item is fragile, because a rider who knows will carry it on their back rather than in the box on the rack.
And one thing to stop writing: near the mosque. Every lane in this city is near a mosque.
