Amazon Hub lockers and their "names"

Communities United Kingdom
1

Amazon give names to their lockers instead of reference numbers, all lower case.

Issue 1
Some mappers give this name in the name field
eg, here, name=raiden

It’s more common* to find the “name” tagged against the “ref” key - eg, here.

The second system seems much better to me, because functionally it’s a reference, not a true name.

Do others agree? Can I go and change these “name” tags to “ref” tags?

Issue 2
Quite often* the name field is “Amazon Hub Locker” (see the second example above). That’s fair enough in one sense because, as I recall, that’s the text displayed on the thing. But it seems that’s not really a name either.

I suggest it should not be tagged in that field, since it adds nothing to the other tags. Any thoughts on that?

(The same applies to some EV charging networks, it seems - eg, PodPoint has chargers named “Poppy” and the like.)

*from an unscientific skim over some overpass results

1 Like
2

I think I saw mention that the locker names/refs aren’t unique, and can be duplicated in other regions, so maybe local_ref would be better?

3

I ran an Overpass Turbo query (limited to Scotland) almost exactly 50 percent (46 out of 93) have the nameword in the ref tag. Very few have the nameword in the name tag (only 6). A few have e.g. “Amazon Hub Locker - Malaya” in the name tag.

4

There’s two presets in JOSM: Amazon Locker, and Amazon Hub Locker. What’s the difference, if any?

5

I ran the query again for the UK (sorry!). Around 37 percent have the locker’s name in the ref. There’s a substantial amount with nothing at all in name or ref. There’s about 10 percent have the locker’s name on its own in the “name” but a lot more with it appended on to Amazon [Hub] Locker. I can see no evidence of other than unique names for the lockers. One has the odd name “Derek and Pauline’s” which can’t be correct!

6

That one is outside a shop called “Derek and Pauline’s” so someone has put that in as the locker name.

1 Like
7

Related discussion:

2 Likes
8

Personally I think name is better because “Amazon give names to their lockers”; they are “proper names” used to identify a locker (at least within an large area). They are not really refs, since they are not unique identifiers. There are far worse abuses of the name tag (as below)!

Yes, I agree this a bad use of name (it is a description not a proper name).

3 Likes