Mine's an 'eircode', but there's no eircode field on Amazon deliveries, and we're told to use it as a zip code. Naming aside, companies that don't let me use "D02 R9D3" [sic] as a 'zip code', and mandate zip codes and/or lack a freeform field to put it in, can't deliver to me.
I'm of the mind that you can't just casually cast naming or precision aside when talking about data collection.
If I'm askimg for a ZIP code I probably already know I can't deliver to you. If I thought I could deliver to you I'd collect the data necessary to do so, though not by asking you to pretend that the meaningful differences are not meaningful.
Others operate differently, Amazon makes a bunch more revenue than me, YMMV.
Canadians have long dealt with this: credit card companies have a fun hack where your postal code has 3 numbers and 3 letters; drop the letters and add 2 zeros. So v4r 2x3 becomes 42300. Since this is used as one component in identity verification, the lossy correspondence is apparently considered good enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_code#Alphanumeric_posta...