COD Fundamentals
What is COD fraud and how do I protect my store from it?
Direct answer
COD fraud covers fake orders placed with no intention to pay, prank orders to someone else's address, and serial refusers who repeatedly order and reject deliveries. Since no payment happens at checkout, COD gives you no financial signal to filter by, so protection comes from confirming orders and tracking repeat offenders.
What COD fraud looks like
- Fake orders: placed with throwaway numbers or invented names, never meant to be received.
- Prank orders: sent to a real person who never ordered anything.
- Serial refusers: customers with a history of ordering and rejecting at the door, sometimes across many stores.
- Address games: deliberately vague addresses used to string couriers along.
Practical defenses that do not hurt real customers
- Confirm every order before shipping. A fake order will not reply to a WhatsApp confirmation. No reply, no shipment: the fraud costs you nothing.
- Keep an internal flag list. Tag customers whose orders came back refused, and require explicit confirmation (or prepayment) on their next order.
- Watch for patterns. Multiple orders to the same address under different names, or unreachable phone numbers, deserve a manual look.
- Ask for a deposit on high-value orders. Even a small prepaid amount filters out non-serious buyers.
Confirmation is the cheapest filter because it costs you nothing per order and works automatically. It quietly absorbs most fraud before you spend a pound on shipping.
Last updated 2026-07-09