Courier Delay in KP: What the Emergency, Road Blocks and Internet Cuts Mean for Your COD Orders to Peshawar and Swabi

What happened in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this week

If your parcels to Peshawar, Swabi or Mardan are stuck, the courier delay in KP has a clear cause. On October 11, President Asif Ali Zardari approved the federal cabinet's recommendation to impose emergency rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under Articles 232 and 234 of the Constitution. The provincial government was suspended, the governor took charge, and the interior ministry authorised army troops to assist the civil administration. The federal government said the step was about militancy in the province; the PTI, which led the provincial government, called it unconstitutional. This post does not take a side. It explains what the measures mean for an online seller who ships to KP.

The emergency came in the middle of a PTI march that started on October 4 and stayed inside KP. Three things followed that matter for e-commerce: roads were blocked with containers, intercity buses stopped, and mobile and internet services were cut in parts of the province.

KP is not a small market to ignore. The 2023 census counted 40.85 million people in the province, about 17 percent of Pakistan's population. If you run national Meta or TikTok ads, a real share of your COD orders likely comes from there.

Which roads, buses and networks were affected

Dawn's district roundup on October 12, the first day of governor's rule, gives the clearest picture. Here is what it reported, district by district, for the places most sellers ship to.

Peshawar had already seen a separate mobile and internet cut from the night of October 7, during the march, which was restored on October 10 according to news reports. A PTA official described that cut as temporary and a security measure. PTA has not published a notice on either suspension, and no official map of the affected areas has been released.

Outside KP, bus terminals in Lahore were sealed on the weekend and private operators Faisal Movers and Daewoo stopped dispatching buses to Islamabad, KP and other routes, their representatives told ProPakistani. The motorway police spokesperson said motorways and highways remained open. Earlier, on October 1, transporters told Arab News they had sharply cut dispatches toward Islamabad and upper Punjab after freight vehicles were held for road blocks.

Status changes by the day. As of the latest reports we found, Peshawar's networks were back, Swabi's were not, and no date had been given for Swabi's restoration.

How this turns into returns on your COD orders

A road block alone delays a parcel by a day or two. The problem for a COD seller is what the delay does to the customer. Here is the chain we see in each of these events:

1. The order is placed on Friday or Saturday, before anyone knew about the emergency.
2. The parcel reaches the courier's hub but the rider cannot get into the Cantt, Saddar or Swabi.
3. The customer cannot be reached, because their phone has no signal or mobile data.
4. The courier marks the parcel as customer not responding and, after its attempts, sends it back.
5. You pay forward shipping, return shipping, and the ad spend that brought the order, and you get no cash.

Step 3 is what makes an internet cut worse than a normal delay. Your WhatsApp confirmation message is not delivered, the rider's call does not connect, and the customer may not even know the parcel arrived. Customers in Swabi with no mobile service and no PTCL internet cannot confirm anything, however willing they are.

Example: when does shipping a KP order stop making sense?

Example, with made-up round numbers so you can plug in your own. You sell a product for Rs 2,500. Product cost is Rs 1,200, ad cost per order is Rs 400, and the courier charges Rs 250 to deliver and Rs 250 to return.

In this example, a normal week with 20 percent returns makes Rs 340 per order. If road blocks and dead phones push returns on KP orders to 40 percent, the same order makes Rs 30. Past about 42 percent, every KP order you ship loses money. The ad spend is already gone, but you can still save the Rs 500 of courier charges on an order that will not be delivered, by holding it until the customer confirms.

Your own break-even depends on your margin. The formula is profit when delivered divided by (profit when delivered plus loss when returned). Work it out once for your best-selling product and keep it next to your order sheet.

What to do this week

1. Filter your pending orders by city. Separate Swabi, Peshawar, Mardan and nearby districts from the rest.
2. Hold Swabi orders that you cannot confirm. Do not book them with a courier until the customer replies or the network is back. Send one polite WhatsApp message so it is waiting for them when service returns.
3. Confirm Peshawar orders by call before dispatch. Networks there were restored on October 12, so a call should connect. Ask the customer whether their area (Cantt, Saddar, University Road) is reachable and offer to deliver to a work or family address if not.
4. Ask your courier which KP routes are open. Get the answer in writing on WhatsApp so you can show it later if you need to claim. If you ship with Daewoo, check whether its parcel service is running, because its bus service was halted on the weekend.
5. Do not mark late KP parcels as fake orders. A customer who could not answer for three days because of a network cut is not a fraudster. Keep them out of any blocklist.
6. Lower or pause ad delivery to the most affected districts if your ad tool allows location exclusions, and bring it back once roads and networks are normal.
7. Tell customers the truth. A short message such as: Your parcel is ready, but deliveries to your area are delayed because of road closures. We will send it as soon as the route opens. Customers accept a delay they understand more than silence.

Separately, the FBR's extended deadline for filing tax year 2026 income tax returns is October 15, which is tomorrow. If you have not filed, check with your accountant today.

After the disruption: check your numbers

When things settle, look at returns for KP orders placed between October 4 and the day networks were restored, separately from the rest of the month. If you mix them in, your monthly return rate will look worse than your store really is, and you may wrongly cut a good product or a good courier. RabbitROI shows return rates by courier, city and product, which makes it easy to see whether a spike came from one district in one week or from something you need to fix.

It is also worth noting which courier kept moving in KP and which one sent everything back. Events like this repeat, and the courier that handles a bad week well is the one to keep for that region.

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