First, here is a standard Flex address for towns with multiple postal outlets:

John Smith
PO Box 99900 DP 111 111
RPO Whatever
Town, NS
A1A 1A1

Here is a standard Flex address for towns with just one postal outlet:

John Smith
PO Box 99900 DP 111 111
Town, NS
A1A 1A1

The second type with no RPO is the kind I have.

Maybe Flex use isn't as common as I thought because of the number of people who know nothing about it but should is quite astounding. The first handful of times I used it everything was fine but lately things have been happening that make me nervous. I'll mention MOM names just to show how widespread this is, not because they did anything wrong.

The first issue is when I placed an order with HSP. They emailed the day it was supposed to be shipped. They said the guy working the counter at Canada Post didn't take the package because he said it would not get delivered because the address was not complete. He said it's because there is no RPO line. I explained to HSP that the CP worker was wrong and that I had ordered from them multiple times before with the same address and received my product. They sent it the next day and I got it just fine except a day later than I would have.

Next I ordered from BWIB. I got a tracking update that a label correction had been applied. This is the first time seeing this after at least a dozen MOM orders so I googled it and was worried because packages seem to go missing when this shows up. Mine arrived fine but it still makes a guy anxious. Anyway, the issue seems to be that the DP# was completely removed from my address. It showed as follows:

John Smith
PO Box 99900
Town, NS
A1A 1A1

The DP# is the part that identifies the CP customer (me) but it still managed to find it's way to me. If a correction by CP employees was not made then who knows.

Next I placed an order with Ganja West. They sent me a shipping notification email and I noticed the address was missing the DP#. I emailed them to let them know and they were able to update it before dropping the package off at CP. So that's fine but the address looked like this after the correction:

John Smith
PO Box 99900
DP 111 111
Town, NS
A1A 1A1

The DP# isn't supposed to be on a separate line but it didn't appear to cause any issues. At this point I'm wondering if there's a fault in woocommerce or whatever the ordering system is that cuts parts of the address off because the DP# was obviously added manually. I know this because everything appeared as it should when I visited my account page because I entered it correctly when ordering but it didn't transfer correctly to the shipping label.

Next I just ordered from Speedgreens. I get an email from them asking to confirm my address because it doesn't have an RPO line. I explain my address does not include and RPO line. If I hadn't gotten back to them in just a few minutes I might've faced another delay. In that same email they had my address listed as follows:

John Smith
PO Box 99900
Dp 111 111
Town, NS
A1A 1A1

Again, the DP# was clearly entered manually because on my account page my address has everything on 1 line as it should, and the DP is capitalized, not Dp as above. If they didn't catch that I assume it would've been left off completely again. So now I'm pretty confident that some of these ordering systems just can't handle Flex addresses.

Anyone else have any issues? With MOMs confused, CP employees not knowing what the fuck is going on and order systems removing parts of addresses I feel I can't be the only one.

Weird. Once a while back, I think it was HSP, emailed before shipping saying my Flex address was incomplete because it was missing the RPO. I said the same thing, it's a small town so there is no RPO portion to my Flex address. But that's the only time I can remember having any issues with a MOM or CP when using it.

That said, every order I place with a new shop I always put in the order notes "This is a small town FlexDelivery address so no RPO needed" rather than leaving it up to them to figure out, or them emailing later and delaying getting it in the post. Seems to get the job done as I can't remember any issues other than that one HSP time. I haven't used those other 3 you had issues with though, so maybe the MOMs I've used know how to label non-RPO addresses properly is all hehe.

I might have to start doing that as a default but it's still concerning that even Canada Post employees have trouble with it. I didn't even mention the CP facebook person that also told me that all Flex addresses have an RPO line. I knew they were wrong so then I contacted the CP live chat on their site. Even that person was confused and told me to wait while they got a supervisor or something. Eventually they came back and told me that I'm right and apologized for the issues and misinformation I got from the other employees.

I noticed that even the CP employees are a bit confused about Flex. The girl that handles mine was asking a bunch of questions last time, questions I knew the answers to, but that I would have expected her to know, lol. She ain't a noob either, she's been there a while.

The RPO line is not really important, the postal code is enough, since most postal codes cover a street at most (often part of one), the chances of having two flex outlets in the same postal code are about nil. Even then, when you register the flex, it's associated to your name, so if they have a name and a city, they can usually figure it out. It's much cheaper for them to do a bit of thinkering to get it to you than to fail doing so and returning it to sender.

The final part of the box is important, but as long as they have the name, they should be able to figure it out. I had one MOM forget to put that part for whatever reason and the CP girl matched it to my name and I still got it. I've had some not include the RPO thing and it still made it to me.

I did have one case of a guy who tried sending me a pack and was told they could not send to a PO box. Told him it was BS, he went the next day and it went through (with another employee) so like I said, lots of confusion...

The missing box part is the most worrying but you're right that the packages will still likely always arrive if your name is there. I just can't understand why part of that line seems to get left off so often and then has to be manually added back on their end. That's probably what happened with yours. Seems certain systems just leave it off because everything is always correct under the account profile on these MOM sites.

Fortunately, the only negative result so far has been a late delivery and some extra anxiety.