ASK ADAM: UAAs – ANK – Attempted Not Known

QUESTION
The good news is that we know the address is good. It just is not, currently, good for the person we are attempting to reach. The question is why?

APPROACH
More information is needed, and may not be available via just USPS data. Need to look for information on if they were ever at that address (and if so, where did they move to) – OR – was the address entered incorrectly – so their actual address is similar, but different.

POSSIBLE ROOT CAUSE/SOLUTIONS
They moved long enough ago that the COA is no longer in the USPS’s data, and neither the current residents nor the current carrier remembers them
Data entry errors resulted in recording incorrect address information for that person – that just happened to still be a valid mailing address.

EXAMPLES
Example: The person moved a LONG time ago and is not known to the current resident nor carrier. Process the name and address via NCOA^Link® (one with access to 48 month data). This will let you know if there is an older COA – at least within the last 48 months. To look back further, you need to use a source other than the USPS.

Example: The name is good and the address is good, they are just not good together. Typically, this is due to a typo when entering the address – that happens to still be a value address.

Example 1: The address (“110 C ST”) failed to CASS™ code – this is a park. It was passed to the USPS’s AEC I process, which returned “110 G ST”. But, mail to that address was returned as Attempted Not Known. When we performed investigations including the name, we found that the correct, correction to the input address for this person was “10 C ST”.

Example 2: “3100 MAIN ST” had 2 numbers swapped and was supposed to be “1300 MAIN ST”. There addresses are on the same street, but a long distance apart, so, likely on different carrier routes.

Example 3: In Syracuse, IN, a similar format for street names is used around several of the lakes. The streets are numbered sequentially, with the name using 1 character based on the name of the lake the addresses surround. So, first issue, like any area with numbered streets, if you typo the street number (“12” vs “21”) you end up several streets away – or, in this case, on the other side of the lake. Second issue: if you typo the 1-character code for the lake, you could end up with a valid address several miles away, around a different lake.