Talk:Tag:office=courier

How exactly is this different from the amenity=post_office tag when I can do most (or all) of the "additional" things that the article says supposedly makes it different at my local post office as well as at the "courier"? --Adamant1 (talk) 16:59, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Bicycle couriers

Should this tag also apply to the offices of bike couriers, often known simply as "couriers"? These are just "home bases" for the couriers, who go out to pick up the package rather than accepting the package at the office. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 21:53, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Based on the current definition, I tend to think that any courier service office (including bike messengers, messengers on foot) fits the bill, since they offer the same service, albeit a limited scope. Don't we still have to contact them somehow, even if they're "home-based?"

In our country, we have many of those bike-based messengers, and we can call (or use an app) for a courier to pickup our parcels, and many of them actually offer intra- and inter-city delivery services by bike. Motorized couriers will offer to deliver further, including other parts of the country.

Somehow, this reminds me of a behavior I observed when mappers actually want to map craft=caterer, but actually end up tagging them as amenity=fast_food.

Anyway, some people try to capture this kind of free-form information in the description tag, but is there an existing (sub)key that can handle that to define the scope of their operating area?

--GOwin (talk) 00:01, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

@GOwin: The bike messenger services I'm thinking of aren't home-based; they operate out of an office with dispatchers, kind of like a taxi company. I'm apparently not the only one who thinks that's what this tag could potentially mean. In the U.S., the courier industry is much smaller than it used to be, but they figure large in popular culture, with major movies about them etc. I think it would be quite strange to have to tag an office=courier with access=private to indicate that customers don't go there – and anyways that would most likely be misinterpreted to mean that the service isn't offered to the general public. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 00:06, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

@Minh Nguyen:, well know that you brought that up, I've seen old discussions whether the properis shop/amenity/office , etc. The folksonimic convention appears to be what we have right now, office=courier.

I know that there are offices where customers are not expected, and some where customers can just walk in and do business with them. Since access=* refer to legal restriction, I feel it's quite similar to walk-in=* usage.

Was digging through taginfo, and found scope=*, or network=* as keys that appear to define operating areas.

◆ Taglist ... 

LOADING TAG LIST...

What do you think?

--GOwin (talk) 00:27, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

@GOwin: You're right that walk-ins characterize one kind of courier office and not the other, but at the same time, if I was next door to a courier office and knocked on their door with a package, I'm sure they'd take it for me. They're fundamentally two different kinds of offices that happen to both deliver things. From my perspective, the kind of courier office described in the proposal has a lot more in common with national post offices than with bike courier dispatch offices.

Operating areas are an interesting topic, but they're kind of unrelated to the question about bike messengers, right? These particular network=* and scope=* tags are almost always used on route relations, apparently as an alternative to the predominant hierarchical format (see also this discussion).

 – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 04:00, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

@Minh Nguyen: I don't know. The other time I've used to tag an establishment where the dispatch operations is based, I used the more generic office=company for a taxi company's call center. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GOwin (talk • contribs) 22:21, 24 June 2023‎ (UTC)

Related tags

It's a good idea to stop overloading amenity=post_office for things that are never considered post offices in real life, but should we do the same with all the other post office–related tags? Shipping companies like DHL, FedEx, and UPS all put parcel drop boxes right next to the postal service's amenity=post_box. [1] Amazon warehouses are being tagged amenity=post_depot. [2] Do we need an amenity=parcel_box and industrial=fulfillment_centre too, or are the existing tags good enough despite their cognitive dissonance? – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 02:52, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Do corporate warehouses really fall under amenities, when they don't interact directly with customers? I had to re-check what the OSM definition of "amenity" is. The industrial=fulfillment_centre sounds more apt. GOwin (talk) 05:40, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

@GOwin: Yes, I think that was using the classic definition of "amenity": "noun. See junk drawer." I made a slight mistake in mixing American and British English above: it would be industrial=fulfilment_centre. This would be a very easy tag to misspell. Since no one has ever tagged either spelling, but amenity=post_depot is so commonly used for this kind of feature, a good next step would be to revisit that choice in a new discussion on the forum. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 07:23, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

@Minh Nguyen: So, what do you think is the differentiation between current industrial=warehouse, and this industrial=fulfilment_centre? —Preceding unsigned comment added by GOwin (talk • contribs) 00:42, 8 July 2023‎ (UTC)

@GOwin: industrial=fulfilment_centre is much more specific. A warehouse doesn't necessarily have anything to do with shipping or logistics; it could just be a facility for internal storage needs. The World Food Programme operates lots of warehouses, but none of them readies items for online ordering and delivery. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 23:08, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

"It's a good idea to stop overloading amenity=post_office for things that are never considered post offices in real life" though this tag makes poor job of it by not mentioning clearly what is the difference here @Minh Nguyen: Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:51, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Tag support in iD, etc. using OSM ID tagging schema

There's a pending pull request for this, and comments, or improvements are welcome. A previous PR got closed because I inadvertently deleted my working branch it was on. 🙄 --GOwin (talk) 00:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

@Minh Nguyen:, The preset maintainers suggested getting this tag proposed with a formal process. Moving forward with a proposal process, I'd rather see shop=courier for those store-fronts that interact with customers, and office=courier for the corporate offices, maybe get the discussions going for industrial=fulfilment_centre, too? What do you think?

I wonder if @Muzirian: is still keen on reviving or improving the proposal? GOwin (talk) 10:09, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

@GOwin: That sounds like a very reasonable distinction to me. I'm looking forward to the revived and revised proposal. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 03:46, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

distinction from post office

"post office is usually a customer service facility forming part of a national postal system, while courier services are mainly privately operated."

we track this in operator:type=*

and if private operator runs a post office it should be marked as post office, not as office=courier

this distinction does not make sense, definitely not as a primary and the first mentioned one

Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:50, 16 June 2025 (UTC)