On the occasion of two previous articles, we talked about tica addresses and four in particular that continue to be reference points for ticos.

But beyond the cultural characteristic that is both funny and curious for Costa Ricans and foreigners alike, it turns out that tica addresses cost the country.

Address puzzle for tica Mail

Every year, Correos de Costa Rica (the Costa Rican Post Office) is unable to deliver certain types of mail and parcels due to incorrect addresses. It is estimated that almost a quarter of all parcels fail to arrive due to incorrect addresses. The banking sector has reported that 9,000 account statements are not delivered every month!

Geovanni Campos, Director of Operations at Correos de Costa Rica, pointed out that the absence of a proper address system with explicit marking encouraged people to look for culturally familiar landmarks. But the work suffers setbacks due to a lack of district, county, province and zip code specification, which means that deliveries can arrive at the wrong place…

The challenge of firefighters in an emergency

Last year alone, Costa Rican firefighters had to call back some 6,665 emergency callers with inaccurate or inaccurate addresses. In all cases, this not only entails costs (in time and money), but also and above all high costs for material damage (a fire not extinguished in time) and sometimes loss of life. The lack of precision means that emergency units are delayed in finding these reference points.

In 2012, a project costing over 500 million colons (around 900,000 dollars) began to give San Jose a new nomenclature for its streets. However, this still doesn’t seem to change the ticos’ habit of giving addresses “correctly”. The weight of habit!