Street address plus box number (Canada)

What this rule does

Rural buyers often type both, like “41 3rd Avenue” on one line and “Box 117” on the next. Canada Post treats that form as a postal box address, with the street as extra information. A courier can't deliver to a box, so it goes to the street. Which one you get depends on the carrier and the label, not on what the buyer meant.

For a small parcel that is often fine. For a large or heavy one, it isn't: a box can't hold it, and a buyer who expected a pickup in town can end up with a delivery to their door, or the other way around. This rule stops or flags the order so the buyer picks one address, or so you can call them before you ship.

The rule only looks at Canadian addresses. It fires when the street lines have a box number and also a civic house number of their own. It is the mirror image of the rural route rule, which fires only when there is no civic number, so the two never fire on the same address.

What it catches

• 41 3rd Avenue on line 1 and Box 117 on line 2
• 160 Shoreline Lane Box 585, all on one line
• Box 4, 123 Main St, with the box first
• Box 117, Box #117 and Box117, in any of the usual spellings

Nothing outside Canada is checked. The evidence we built this rule on is Canadian, and we'd rather widen it on purpose than turn away real buyers elsewhere.

A street name with the word Box in it is safe, because the rule needs a number right after the word: 412 Box Hill Rd, Henry Box Brown Lane and Boxwood Rd all go through.

Some forms belong to other rules. A box with no street address (Box 412 RR 2) is the rural route rule. An explicit PO Box (41 3rd Avenue, PO Box 117) is the PO Box rule. A civic address with a rural route and no box (123 Main St, RR 2) is Canada Post's standard form and passes.

If you set this rule to Block, the buyer sees your message at the address field and can remove one of the two addresses right there. Say which one you want in the message, for example “We ship by courier. Please enter your street address, not your box number.”

What your buyer sees

Set to Block at checkout

Your buyer sees the message right at the address field, inside Shopify's own checkout, before payment. They fix the address and pay. The check runs inside checkout itself, so it adds no waiting time and nothing changes in your theme. Our default message:

You can replace it with your own wording in the rule's settings.

Set to Warn after purchase

The sale completes normally. On the order confirmation page we ask the buyer to double-check the address, and when we have a verified fix they can apply it with one tap. Orders with unresolved address problems are tagged address-unverified in your admin so you can catch them before fulfillment. This mode works with every payment method, including Apple Pay and Google Pay express checkouts.

If a check can't run for any reason, the order goes through untouched. We never hold up a sale on our own uptime.

Set it up

Open Address Verifier in your Shopify admin, go to Settings, and pick Street address plus box number (Canada). Choose Off, Warn after purchase, or Block at checkout, write your own checkout message if you want one, and save. Changes are live on your next checkout. No deploy, no theme edit.

New installs start with this rule Off. Blocking is a shipping policy decision, so you make it, not us.