As someone who has done tons of geospatial work I hate this. A ZIP code was never technically a geospatial boundary. Being "inside" a boundary does not guarantee you have that ZIP code, just that the space is surrounded by a bunch of postal delivery addresses bearing the ZIP code.

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konfusinomicon 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

most people dont know that zip codes are specific to the postal service and dont have anything to do with actual municipal government boundaries. the hierarchy of geo boundaries and the ways to locate and communicate within them is way more interesting than one would believe!

	▲	Tangurena2 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Some 5-digit zip codes represent the PO Boxes at a post office building. Some zip codes represent a single building. Example 20500 is the White House. The Pentagon is so big it has several zip codes. https://convene.com/catalyst/office/buildings-new-york-city-... It used to be that the first 3 digits of a zip code sent that mail to the "main" post office building (the one that has loading docks for like 10-30 tractor trailers on one side of the building). Even if you were mailing a letter to the same zip, it went to that building to be sorted and returned to the local office before delivery. Nowadays, everything goes to central facilities where stuff is scanned and sorted. In Kentucky, almost all mail goes through Louisville.

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biker142541 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Polygons do have value in some workflows, if used with the appropriate caveats.

And in no instances have I ever run across use cases where these are worth paying any substantial money for. If USPS is going to jump into the fray here, really bad look (and probably net negative revenue for them) to offer as a paid product.

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toast0 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I know that many people do use ZIP codes for grouping locations, and polygons may be useful for tieing a lat/long to a zipcode if it doesn't have a delivery location. But it's all kind of silly unless you're sorting mail. Also, I'd hate/love to see some of the polygons where delivery boundaries get weird.

Whatever you're grouping is likely better served by some grouping based on geography, not based on delivery routes. You probably wouldn't group by telephone company central office either, unless you're telco related.

We want to group by geography, zip codes are easy and vaguely geographic, lets use that is kind of a valid decision, but it's deeply frustrating :p

	▲	xp84 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Completely agree on this. Something I have used for a few applications is the DMA (designated market area) boundaries. It's not ideal for everything, but it's very human-focused: If you live just a few miles across a state boundary from a major city, grouping you with the city makes more sense than with anything in your state. In fact, these were invented by Nielsen, and they determined them just by measuring which city's TV stations are predominantly watched in each county, and assigning each county to one DMA based on that.

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TimK65 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This. The USPS has always said that a ZIP Code was not a geographical area, but a collection of deliverable addresses. So what is this nonsense?

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mac3n an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

As someone who did a little geospatial work, I concur. We had banks complain that we didn't have ZIP codes for some ATM locations.

The ATMs never got mail.