Canada Post: Verifying Recipient’s Address; Possible Delay 

You’re expecting a delivery from Canada Post and have received a “Verifying Recipient’s Address; Possible Delay” tracking update.

What does this mean exactly? How long will the delay be and is there anything you need to do?

Let’s take a look…

Verifying Recipient’s Address; Possible Delay  – Guide

This is a relatively simple alert from Canada Post to interpret.

Essentially, the sender may have made a slight error with the address (an incorrect unit number for example), and the delivery agent (Canada Post), has to verify the correct address before delivery is made.

The addressing error is normally flagged near the end of the shipment journey as this is when details such as unit number become more important. 

Before this stage, the zip code and subsequent scans are all that are required to get a shipment into the general area where it needs to be.

• Related Content: Item Was Received by Canada Post at a Different Location than Expected

When it reaches the final facility in the delivery network, correct unit numbers and street addresses are then required for successful delivery.

This means, that if you have received the “Verifying Recipient’s Address; Possible Delay” there has been a mistake with those details.

Another possibility is label damage, however, this is less likely as Canada Post has means to find the destination via the initial order database.

What Happens After the “Verifying Recipient’s Address; Possible Delay” Update?

So what do you do if you have received this update?

In most cases, Canada Post will contact either the sender or the recipient to verify the correct details.

However, if you see no further updates and are not contacted within 24hrs of receiving the update, I recommend that (as the recipient), you contact the sender and/or Canada Post.

You’ll see some advice online to wait it out longer, but in my opinion, the quicker a ticket is raised (in the absence of any contact from Canada Post), the quicker you will receive your package.

• Canada Post Customer Service can be contacted at 1-866-607-6301.
• You can also raise a ticket via the website. 

Another reason to get the issue sorted as soon as possible is that if delivery cannot take place within a stated amount of time, (it varies but 7 days is a period I would consider), the item will be returned to the sender.

As Canada Post states. “We try hard to verify the address on the package so that we can correctly deliver it. If we can’t verify the address, we return the package to the sender. Once the return process starts, we can’t stop it.”

So being proactive in sending any required verification details to Canada Post is a sensible step.

• Related Content: International Item Mailed in Originating Country – Canada Post

Final Words

The “Verifying Recipient’s Address; Possible Delay” alert from Canada Post means that an addressing error on the mail item means the recipient’s address needs to be verified”.

Although Canada Post will make efforts to contact parties to resolve the issue, it doesn’t hurt to get in touch with customer services (and/or the sender), to start the ball rolling.

If delivery cannot take place, the mail item will eventually be returned to the sender.

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