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I tried ROE !JO it's wrong anyone know the right one ?  
 
Edited by rubyred, 2023-07-31 14:13:01

Should be R0E 1J0

That's the one I used but has returned say it's wrong

is there a area called Teak Bay in Oakbank MB ?

Shows Teak Drive or Birch Bay in Oakbank. Says Teak Drive is R0E 1J2

Here's the link to Canada Post postal code look-up site:  
 
https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/tools/find-a-postal-code.page  
 
Majority of addresses in Oakbank have as a postal code: R5N0M8

I see that the OP has typed it as ROE 1JO, when it should be R0E 1J0.  
 
It will not be recognized if we use the letter O in place of the number 0.  
 
Maybe?

If you google either of those two postal codes both say Oakbank MB. Talk about confusing.

So, the way postal codes work in Canada is that if you have a zero as the second character, like R0E, that means it's a rural address. Any other numeric character usually indicates an urban address.  
 
In Oakbank's case, many of the outlying rural addresses continue to use an R0E postal code, while the addresses within the built-up area probably use the R5N. Brandon, to illustrate this, uses R7A, R7B and R7C for urban addresses, but also has R0K for addresses in the outlying rural areas that have Brandon as the mailing address.  
 
You have to know the address you need in order to know what postal code to use.

It's even worse than this. I don't live in the city of Brandon, I live in a rural municipality just outside Brandon.  
 
I have a civic address, but Canada Post has assigned no postal code to this area. Instead, my mailing address, like many just outside Brandon, is a site and box number, with a Brandon Urban postal code starting with R7A.  
 
Canada Post delivers to a community mailbox just down the street from me using that address.  
 
Because my postal code now makes it look like I live in East Brandon and because my area has no actual postal code for its geography, it causes all kinds of fun with anything that uses postal codes to determine where you live.  
 
Long story short, especially in Manitoba, it's really really tough to tell what postal code (and address) will get mail delivered to someone unless you ask.  
 
If you send me mail to my civic address and the postal code Google suggests, I'll never get it. The only way to know my site and box and postal code is to ask me personally. It's a ridiculous system when Canada Post could just assign a postal code and use my civic address, but for some reason this is what we've got.  
 
Edited by JosephC, 2023-08-01 09:20:11

I agree with JosephC. We also live outside of the city of Brandon. We often don’t get our mail because of this. My husband credit card was sent but we never received it. Very frustrating…..

I think you have some misconceptions about what a postal code does and how it works.  
 
It's true that in Canada every address has a postal code, but it's actually more complex than that.  
 
Addresses can have many components, and what is considered "urban" vs "rural" differs. The postal code contains vital sorting and routing info but it may not necessarily reflect your physical address. It's rather a reflection of how Canada Post sorts and delivers your mail.  
 
So, first urban vs rural. You can live in a rural area but have an urban postal code. This relates mostly to population density. While you might be rural because you live outside of the City of Brandon and in a rural municipality, if your area has lots of addresses Canada Post will convert the area to an urban postal code. This happens a lot.  
 
Next, the first 3 characters is the Forward Sortation Area. It's the wide area that that mail is directed to before being fine sorted. In the case of a small town, the whole town can have the same FSA. Urban addresses assigned to Brandon begin with R7A, R7B and R7C, roughly corresponding to the east side, the west side and the northern part.  
 
So if you live immediately to the east of Brandon in a relatively dense rural area, it makes sense that Canada Post assigns an R7A postal code to it. Remember, this is basically for them to do a rough sort to get the mail into the right general area. Your mail is getting sorted with other Brandon mail with an urban address.  
 
Next, the last 3 digits are the Local Delivery Unit. This is where the fine sorting happens. In the city, it can refer to a specific block. It can also refer to a single building or large mail receiver. In more rural areas, it often refers to a grouping of mailboxes or a rural route. I would hazard that everyone that shares a superbox has the same LDU. Maybe even everyone in that cluster.  
 
So now imagine the mail coming into a large sorting facility. Everything with LSA of R7A, R7B and R7C are grouped together as Brandon urban addresses and sent there to be fine sorted. The local unit then sorts those by LDU and sends them out, where they're delivered primarily by Canada Post employees to physical addresses or Superbox clusters.  
 
Brandon addresses with a rural postal code would fall outside of this denser urban clusters. They are sorted the same way, but delivery is slightly different. Those are almost always done by private contractors. I'm not sure how it works except that I've seen in smaller communities the mailboxes are at the actual post office or similar building instead of superbox clusters nearer to the homes. That might ultimately be the difference between urban vs rural addresses (but I'm only guessing on that point - maybe someone with a rural address can tell me how they collect/receive their mail?)  
 
So while the system sometimes has trouble with online ordering because the ordering systems themselves are biased, it's actually a pretty elegant system. It's not a case of "they don't have a postal code assigned", but actually that the postal code facilitates the sorting and delivery of mail based on location, population density, delivery method and type of personnel.

I think we're saying mostly the same thing - and I have no misconceptions about how postal codes work.  
 
My point is this:  
 
1 - The postal code is ONLY for delivering mail. It cannot be reliably used to determine WHERE a home is located, or whether that home is urban or rural, especially in Manitoba.  
 
2 - The fact that Canada Post assigns Site and Box numbers in rural Manitoba, instead of using physical civic addresses, makes no sense to me whatsoever.  
 
Both these facts make it difficult to do a great many things, like order anything online. Even getting insurance is a pain. Everyone uses the postal code to identify geography now...and that's a bit part of what I'm saying - it cannot reliably be used that way.  
 
Back to what the OP was asking - what the postal code is in a rural area? The answer is who knows until you ask the person you are sending to. There's no reliable way to know.  
 
For the record, I don't live East of Brandon. I live West of Brandon. The fact that the postal code is in East Brandon is meaningless to anyone except Canada Post. I get the system is elegant - but it's elegant for its intended purpose - MAIL. For anything else, it's simply not as elegant as people think.  
 
From my experience, since even places like MPI require a postal code, I have two options. My driver's license can say I live in Brandon (I don't), or it can say I live in a town equidistant from Brandon where I also don't live. And that's a big part of my point here. Everyone is using a system that does not reliably do what they think it does. And so...if I choose to put Brandon on my license, I can use that as identification and take advantage of services in Brandon that my RM doesn't even contribute to or pay for....it makes no sense.  
 
I'll edit this to add - because I'm sure someone would say that my driver's license having Brandon is illegal or fraud - here's the thing. The MPI broker FORCED me to use the city attached to my postal code because MPI apparently requires it be this way. But this brings me back to my whole point about why they shouldn't be used this way, or Canada Post should be required to issue them based on geography. I have a small mountain of examples of this type of problem. Including when my home insurance company assumed I had full fire protection from the Brandon Fire Department because of my postal code. I only caught that because I knew my rate was too low.  
 
So....without beating this to death - I wish one of two things would happen. Either everyone would stop assuming a postal code can reliably tell where something is located, or Canada Post would get with the times and realize that everyone - from government, to business is using it that way, and fix the system to reflect that.  
 
Edited by JosephC, 2023-08-01 17:13:26

from Wikipedia is a good explanation and basically reiterates that which Abbysmum wrote above.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_codes_in_Canada  
Whenever I have to fill in a form I always write my physical address as well as my postal address, and even sometimes my designated emergency address, which is different from the physical.

All of the Brandon rural routes use R7A, no matter which way they are from Brandon. Shilo area, Kemnay, north of town, and south-all start with R7A, then 5Y1, 5Y3, 5Y4, 5Y5. I have a Box/Site/RR as my address, and pick up my mail at a group mailbox a me from my home.  
 
If I call a contractor and tell him my address, I use the blue sign number posted in front of my yard, the road name, and Douglas is my town. If I am having something delivered by Purolator or Gardewine, I use that blue number, my road name, Douglas, and the Douglas postal code, which is R0K 0R0

I realize this thread has gotten off the op’s original question. I have to vent what a pain it is trying to give some guy in Toronto my address. I’m off Grand Valley rd. Today I tried to open a Tangerine account. So far it’s incomplete because of my “physical address”. My street has an assigned name and I have a blue number at my lane. If I use those they don’t come up in the official address registry ?Canada Post’s? So their computer won’t accept it. If I try and give my section township and range (as on my drivers licence), we’ll that sends them into a tail spin of confusion. Interestingly if I enter the blue sign number and assigned street name into google maps it can find me but says Forrest, Mb.