Why Your Address Might Differ: Canada Post’s website and certified Software Explained

Are you confused about who is right about an address? Are you looking at Canada Post’s website and seeing a difference compared to what Prism Data Service’s address software shows, and presuming the software must be wrong? Well, you are only partly right.

There are a few key differences in the way the software and Canada Post identify the address data to show you.

Different Databases

First, and probably most importantly, Canada Post uses a different database on their website than the one they send to certified vendors each month. The reason they have given for this difference is that while the data they use contains some more specific address data, they are not confident enough in its accuracy yet to allow software to use it to automatically change customers’ address records.

Language Identification

The other reason is the way in which we identify language. On the Canada Post website, if a user is looking at the website in French, bilingual address elements such as the street types St and Rue, Av and Ave, and Boul and Blvd will be returned in their French form. SERP-certified address correction software, on the other hand, returns the street type that was entered when valid; otherwise, it will return the street type in Canada Post’s database.

Feel free to contact your support representative if you find data issues, and we will be happy to forward them on to Canada Post!