We want to be honest with you and here's our reason on why we made the difficult decision to stop offering cash on delivery (COD) as a payment option.
Last year, when we enabled COD, we saw a sharp increase of 30% in RTO (return to origin) orders. For instance, the cost of forward delivery, which is delivery to the customer, is around Rs. 100 per order. In case of a COD order, there is an additional cash collection fee of Rs. 40 levied against the order, bringing the net delivery cost of an order to Rs. 140 (for the orders that get delivered).
Moreover, in the case of non-delivery , the delivery partner charges Rs. 100 to take the order to the customer's doorstep, but if the customer refuses to accept the order, we have to bring it back to us (i.e RTO aka Return to Origin), incurring an additional cost of Rs. 100. This brings up the total operational cost of non-delivered orders to Rs. 200.
We tried various ways to prevent misuse, including monitoring and blocking fraudulent customers and limiting COD to only certain users.
Unfortunately, even with these measures in place, a few customers still found ways to trick the system, and as a result, we had to make the hard call to discontinue COD.
While we understand that this may inconvenience some customers, we believe it's the best decision for the long-term sustainability of our business and to continue providing the highest level of service to all of our customers. We hope you can understand and continue to shop with us using our other available payment options