This all started with a campaign from environmental group milieudefensie. They aimed to reduce the environmental burden associated with junk mail and introduced the NEE NEE sticker. It came in two variants:

NEE / JA

This means you don’t want to receive junk mail, but you do want to receive the local free paper.

NEE / NEE

This means you want neither junk mail nor local papers. In fact you don’t want any bulk mailings in your letterbox.

Over the years this sticker became so widely used that government endorsed it. It is pretty well honored too, but it’s not the law. They can stick junk mail into your letterbox even if you have a NEE/NEE. And when the mailing people know you address, all bets are off. Addressed mail will always be delivered, even if it is addressed to ‘the occupants of this house’.

Here is how they work. You have four numbers plus two letters: 1234AB. The numbers specify the city, and the letters specify the street. They are hierarchical: positions on the right-hand side specify a location with more precision.

A typical Nederlandse address

An example. Take Typically.nl’s postcode 1007EB. 1xxx stands for Amsterdam, so that one is easy. Postcodes in Amsterdam below 1010 typically are routed to PO Boxes. The 7 specifies the (postal) district the box is in. The letters finally determine which branch.

Amsterdam has 1000, and you would perhaps expect the next-biggest city Rotterdam to have 2000 but nope; that’s Haarlem, a smaller city near Amsterdam. Rotterdam has 3000 and actually you can’t really determine size of a city by postcode. The complete list is on Wikipedia so knock yourself out.

How to address someone in Nederland then?

1. Name (either initials + last name or first name + last name)
2. Company name (optional)
3. Address
4. Postcode + City

The postcode is usually written 1234 AB, i.e. with a space between the numbers and the letters. But 1234AB is fine also. They are quite essential to the postcode though, so don’t leave them out. And no, the letters don’t stand for the province.

Our privatized mail company has a page where you can look up postcodes to addresses or vice versa.