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Comment by potsandpans | Hacker News Reader

I don't love google. But this is borderline rage bait.

The license thing had nothing to do with Google. The DMV doesn't use Google maps to mint licenses.

The po box thing also has nothing to do with Google. That's just a policy largely related to the bank secrecy act.

> For an entire week, I was a non-person to this country’s bureaucracy

It took a week to update their address. An out of date address doesn't make you a "non person." A handful of self-service online portals rejected their address change, and they couldn't use their po box for bank or license.

Here's the story,

"We moved to an extremely rural town. It's so off the grid, we had to go to the post office in person to get the address changed. Because we don't get mail at the house, me and my partner had to acknowledge that each of us lived there at the dmv. All in all, it took a week to sort out."

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Google isn't the authority for addresses. For the US, Google probably buys the bulk USPS Postal Service Address Information System to get their data. The Post Office has people on the ground, unlike Google, which is a data aggregator.

First, look up your address in the USPS ZIP Code retrieval system.[1] If it's in there, the USPS knows where you are. If your address isn't listed, "contact the local Post Office and request their assistance in resolving the problem." They can submit updates to the database. Once that entry is right, if anyone questions your address, point them at USPS ZIP Code Lookup.

I've had to do some of this. I live at the end of a private street where the neighbors put up a street sign, in a ZIP code that crosses a city line, next to a road easement for an un-built road. USPS, Pacific Gas and Electric, and the County of San Mateo all got this right. The official data is correct.

Open Street Map, Google, and the low-end GPS systems used by delivery drivers had problems. I had to log into Open Street Map, which had my street and the next street confused. Fixed that. Gradually, this propagated to Doordash, UPS, FedEx, etc. It took about a year before Tom-Tom updated, and I used to get calls from lost Doordash drivers. Putting up large high-quality house numbers on the house and gatepost also helped.

Never had any problems with banks, voting, taxes, or anything official. Only low-end service providers.

[1] https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm

[2] https://faq.usps.com/s/article/ZIP-Code-The-Basics

I'm glad I'm not the only one who read this and thought a week to sort out this sort of thing sounded totally reasonable.

It can take longer in any german capital. Snail mail and/or faxes involved.

Near the end he makes clear that his concern was about having a robot with a more or less static script hastily replace the human who has some actual authority. I think we've all experienced this to some extent and it is definitely getting more commonplace.

> The po box thing also has nothing to do with Google. That's just a policy largely related to the bank secrecy act.

Also some companies like mine don't accept these PO box addresses because the some carriers we use can't deliver to it.

If at all possible, have a family lawyer. You just won't believe how helpful it is in some of these edge cases to have an officer of the court able to attest based on personal knowledge.

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