why do we need to use city and state in our addresses if ZIP codes are already linked to the city and state?

Question

why do we need to use city and state in our addresses if ZIP codes are already linked to the city and state?

In: 100

Answer 1

You could **mostly** get away with it – with emphasis on MOSTLY

Zip codes are designed for mail delivery and making the mailman travel less, so there is no guarantee the same zip code does not include multiple towns. There are in fact [93 zip codes](https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/53918/determining-which-us-zipcodes-map-to-more-than-one-state-or-more-than-one-city) **where a zip codes even spans different states**

There is also the case where people accidentally swap digits in the zip code, **so 65465 becomes 65456**, and now you letter goes to the completely wrong place if you didn’t provide some backup information.

Then there is also the “fakes”, and if you have ever delt with online user databases, you would know that the [most popular zip code](https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/capital-region/news/2015/09/18/sorting-fact-from-fiction-in-schenectady) to use is **12345** – now that is an actual valid zipcode, but there are only a few 1000 people living there and there are million of register online users.