· 4 min read
Every shop that ships cash on delivery in Bangladesh has a shelf of returned parcels. Some came back because the courier could not find the house. Many came back because nobody ever wanted them. The order looked real, the parcel went out, the courier charged the delivery fee, and a week later the product was back in stock, minus the fee and minus a week.
Fake orders are not one thing. They are a few different things that look the same in the order list, and each one is caught a different way.
The four kinds of order that come back
The prank. Someone orders with a made-up name, a real-looking phone number and a plausible address, for fun or out of spite. The phone number is either wrong or belongs to someone who has no idea what you are talking about.
The duplicate. A real customer taps "place order" twice, or orders from two devices, or orders again after the first confirmation page timed out. Two parcels go out; one comes back.
The cold feet. A real customer, a real order, but by the time the courier arrives they have changed their mind. They do not answer the courier's call, or they refuse at the door.
The competitor. Rare, but it happens: a rival places a run of orders to bleed you on delivery fees. These come in bursts, from numbers that never answer.
The first two are cheap to catch before the parcel leaves. The third is caught only by asking the customer to say yes out loud, close to the shipping time. The fourth shows up as a pattern of the first kind.
A checklist that runs before the parcel is packed
- Match the phone number to earlier orders. A number that has refused delivery before is the strongest signal you have. Keep the list; a confirmation call that flags an abusive or wrong number is a good way to grow it.
- Look for the same number, address or amount within the last hour. Duplicates are almost always minutes apart. Hold the second one and ask.
- Check that the district is a place the courier delivers to. A real customer knows their district. A prank order often has an address that does not hang together.
- Call before you pack. This is the step that catches everything the rules miss. A real customer answers and confirms the items and the amount. A fake number does not answer. A prank caller says no. A duplicate is caught when the customer hears the same order read out twice.
- Hold what is not confirmed. Do not cancel automatically; a real customer who was on a bus is still a customer. Put unconfirmed orders in a hold list for a person to look at, with the reason attached.
Why the call is the step that scales
Rules catch the obvious cases. The call catches the rest, and it also fixes the address, which is the other half of failed deliveries. The trouble is that phoning every order is a full-time job once a shop passes a few dozen orders a day, and on a busy day it is the first thing that slips.
That is the job Sworborno does. It calls each order as it lands, from a local number, in natural Bangla, reads the order and the amount back, asks the customer to confirm, then reads the address back and records the thana and district the customer says. Confirmed orders are marked ready to ship. Everything else (no answer across every attempt, a refusal, a wrong number, a change) becomes a hold with a one-line note and the recording, for a person to decide.
Nothing ships on its own, and nothing is cancelled on its own. The shop keeps the decision; the service does the phoning.
If you want to try it on your own orders, sign up and start with the free minutes, or read how COD confirmation works.