Cash on delivery

Cash on delivery and returned parcels: how to reduce refusals at the door

In Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and much of Central and Eastern Europe, many shoppers prefer to pay the courier rather than pay online. Cash on delivery wins those orders. It is also why some parcels come back at your expense, and that part can be managed.

The RevOrder team Published 1 November 2026 7 min read

In short

A refused parcel costs more than the lost sale: courier fees, stock tied up in transit and handling, with no revenue against any of it.
The cheapest moment to stop a refusal is before the parcel leaves: a confirmed order, an address the courier can find, and cash on delivery only where it makes sense.
A cash-on-delivery fee works as a filter, as long as the customer sees it before the last step of the checkout.
The rules belong in the checkout and in automations, not in the head of whoever processes orders that day.

What a refused parcel actually costs

A refused parcel is more than a lost sale. You pay the courier to take it out and, depending on your contract, to bring it back. The goods are out of sellable stock for the round trip, and someone has to check them and put them back on the shelf.

Put your own numbers to it: shipping both ways, handling and packaging, against the margin on a typical delivered order. On low-priced products, one refusal can cancel out the profit of several orders that arrived.

Before changing anything, sort the returned parcels by product, customer, region and delivery type. If they cluster, rules can deal with them without switching cash on delivery off for everyone.

Why customers refuse cash-on-delivery parcels

They ordered on impulse and changed their mind. Cash on delivery lets them say no at the door at no cost to themselves.
The courier could not reach them: a wrong phone number, an address without a block, entrance or flat number, nobody at home.
The parcel arrived later than promised, and they had already bought elsewhere.
They ordered the same product from two stores and kept whichever arrived first.
The courier asked for more than they expected, because a fee or the shipping cost was unclear at checkout.

Confirmation deals with the first and fourth reasons. An office or a valid address chosen at checkout deals with the second, an honest delivery estimate with the third, and a fee shown as its own line with the fifth.

Rule 1: confirm the order before the parcel leaves

A short SMS such as "Your order 1234 for €65.60 is paid on delivery. Reply 1 to confirm or 2 if you no longer want it", or a quick call, finds the customers who changed their mind before you pay a courier. A customer who wants the parcel can answer in seconds, and a one-digit reply works in any language.

In RevOrder, cash-on-delivery order confirmation is an automation you switch on. In the version that asks for a reply, the answer is written on the order as a tag and a note, and a yes can also mark the order as confirmed. A no, or no answer within 24 hours, is tagged for your review: the reply itself cancels nothing. For those orders you can add a call from the RevOrder call centre. Text messages are charged per message and calls per handled order; see pricing.

Confirmation stops a parcel only if dispatch waits for it. With a direct courier such as Econt or Speedy you create the waybills yourself, so leave out the orders tagged as declined or unanswered when you create the day's batch. With NextLevel fulfilment, orders go to the warehouse by default as soon as they are created; a refusal on the confirmation call voids the NextLevel order if the warehouse has not processed it yet, while an SMS no on its own does not.

RevOrder's ready-made message texts are written for Bulgarian customers. In other markets, rewrite them in your customers' language, ask for a 1 or 2 reply, and check with us that replies work in your country.

Rule 2: an address the courier can find

Free text is where addresses go wrong. "Near the school, opposite the pharmacy" is directions for a friend, not an address for a courier, and in many cities in the region a home address also needs a block, an entrance, a floor and a flat number.

The fix is less free text: a city from a list, then an office or a locker from the courier's real list, whether the courier is Econt, Speedy, FAN Courier or BoxNow. In the RevOrder checkout, the Econt and Speedy office and locker lists sync automatically every day, so closed offices drop out of the list.

Office and locker delivery also works well with cash on delivery: the parcel waits for the customer, who collects and pays on their own time, and there is no failed attempt at the door. The risk that remains is a parcel nobody collects. Rule 5 covers that; whether RevOrder can send the customer automatic reminders depends on how you ship.

Rule 3: cash on delivery, but not for everyone

Cash on delivery does not have to be on or off for everyone. Offer it according to risk, for example:

Only for office and locker delivery, where no courier waits at a closed door.
Not above the order value at which a refusal would hurt too much.
Not for products that are made to order, bulky or sold on a thin margin.
Not for a customer who has already refused a parcel: ask them to pay up front.

Rules like these have to apply automatically, not when someone remembers them. In the RevOrder checkout you choose which payment methods each delivery option allows, so cash on delivery can be limited to office and locker delivery or to the countries where you want to offer it. The cash on delivery page has the details.

Rules about order value or the customer's history fit the confirmation step: you can add a condition to RevOrder's confirmation automation, such as an order value or the customer's purchase count, so large and first orders get the question.

Rule 4: a cash-on-delivery fee as a filter

A small fee for cash on delivery, shown as its own line, makes the customer think before choosing it. A "just in case" order may drop out at checkout instead of at the door, while a customer who wants the product is unlikely to mind a small amount, especially if paying online costs nothing extra.

Show the fee before the last step. A fee that first appears in the order confirmation, or at the door, creates an abandoned cart or a refusal instead of preventing one.

In a RevOrder checkout, each delivery option can carry its own price for cash on delivery, and on WooCommerce the difference shows as a separate fee line in the order total.

Rule 5: keep the delivery promise, and the customer informed

If the checkout promises "2 days" and the parcel leaves on day three, the customer may have bought elsewhere by the time it arrives. Base the estimate on when the waybills are created, when the courier collects and how long each region takes.

After dispatch, short messages keep the order on the customer's mind until it is paid for. In RevOrder these are automations you can switch on, driven by the courier's tracking statuses on the shipments RevOrder tracks:

An SMS with the tracking link when the courier picks up the parcel, reminding the customer that it is paid on delivery.
A notice when a home-delivery parcel reaches the local depot: keep the phone on and the amount ready.
Reminders while a parcel waits at an office or locker, and an alert to you if it stays there for days (today for parcels shipped through NextLevel fulfilment).
A call from the call centre about an uncollected parcel, or about a returned one to ask why and whether to send it again.

How to tell whether the rules work

Change one rule at a time. RevOrder brings the courier's statuses back onto each order, and the dashboard shows the delivered rate, the return rate and the parcels waiting at an office. Compare shares rather than counts, and watch orders too: a rule that prevents refusals but loses more orders than it saves is the wrong rule.

Questions about cash on delivery and returned parcels

Should I stop offering cash on delivery?

Usually not. Where many customers expect to pay at the door, dropping cash on delivery sends them to a competitor who offers it. Keep it, with rules: confirmation, a visible fee and limits on where it is offered.

Does a "no" reply cancel the order in RevOrder?

No. A no, or no answer within 24 hours, adds a tag and a note to the order; the reply cancels nothing and sends nothing to a courier. You decide what happens next, or add a call from the call centre for those orders.

Does an unconfirmed order still go to the courier?

That depends on how you ship. With a direct courier you create the waybills, so an order goes out only if you include it. With NextLevel, orders go to the warehouse by default as soon as they are created, and a refusal on the confirmation call voids the NextLevel order if the warehouse has not processed it yet.

Can I offer cash on delivery only for office and locker delivery?

Yes. In the RevOrder checkout you set the allowed payment methods for each delivery option. That removes failed attempts at the door; what remains is a parcel left uncollected at the office. For parcels shipped through NextLevel fulfilment, automatic reminders and a call from the call centre can help with that.

Useful links

Econt — offices, lockers and cash-on-delivery terms in Bulgaria
Speedy — offices and lockers
FAN Courier — courier network in Romania
BoxNow — parcel lockers
NextLevel — fulfilment and courier network

Put rules on cash on delivery

Confirmation by SMS or phone, a fee on its own line, and cash on delivery only where it makes sense, set once in the checkout and in automations.

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