Fake COD Orders in Pakistan: A Copy-Paste Risk Score Sheet and a Rs Calculation to Decide Which Orders to Ship

Why fake COD orders in Pakistan cost more than you think, and less than you fear

Fake COD orders in Pakistan are every seller's complaint: a wrong number, a name like "abc", a rider who comes back with the parcel and a return charge on your invoice. With 11.11 four days away, more orders mean more of them, and the usual reaction is to cancel anything that looks odd.

That reaction can cost more than the fake orders do. Fake parcels are cheap compared with a real buyer you turned away. This guide gives you a risk score sheet you can copy today, a Rs calculation that shows where to draw the line for your own product, and a simple Shopify setup to hold risky orders before they reach the packing table.

One honest warning first: nobody publishes a reliable fake-order rate for Pakistan. Figures you see in app adverts are marketing numbers. So this guide does not give you one. It shows you how to measure your own.

What does the public data actually say?

The best public picture is OrderNation's June 2026 study of one Pakistani online retailer, covering about 170,000 orders placed and about 127,000 shipped parcels. It is not a national figure, and it does not separate fake orders from buyers who honestly changed their mind. Treat it as the size of the whole problem, not the size of fake orders alone.

Two things matter here. First, the study's cancellations mostly happen before dispatch, which is the cheapest place to lose an order. Second, a failed delivery takes weeks to show up, so a seller judging fake orders by this week's numbers is looking at old orders. Keep this in mind when you test any change.

Which kind of fake order are you dealing with?

"Fake order" covers several different problems, and each has a different fix. Check your last 50 failed orders and sort them into this table before you buy anything or change any rule.

Do not expect Shopify's built-in tools to catch these. Shopify says its fraud analysis works with online credit card orders it can verify, using signals such as AVS and CVV checks, so a COD order has none of that to go on. Shopify's bot protection is available only on the Plus plan, and Shopify says it is a fairness control for flash sales, not meant to fight fraud. For COD, the checks are yours to run.

Example: when should you ship a risky order?

Here is the idea most sellers miss. By the time an order arrives, the ad money is already gone. It should not affect the decision. All that matters is what you gain if the parcel is delivered and what you lose if it comes back.

Example (illustrative numbers, not real store or courier data). Price Rs 2,800, product cost Rs 1,000, forward shipping Rs 250, courier return charge Rs 200. Returned stock can be resold. A delivered parcel earns Rs 1,550 (2,800 minus 1,000 minus 250). A failed parcel costs Rs 450 (250 plus 200).

The break-even delivery chance = failed parcel cost / (delivered profit + failed parcel cost). Here that is 450 divided by 2,000, or 22.5%. If an order has even a one-in-four chance of being real, shipping it makes money on average. Put another way, wrongly cancelling one real buyer costs as much as shipping about 3.4 fake parcels (1,550 divided by 450).

Your line moves with your product. Run the same sum for each of your main items:

So a cheap or fragile product deserves strict checks, and a healthy-margin product that comes back in good condition can take more risk. A sale discount also raises your line, which is one more reason to confirm carefully on 11.11.

The risk score sheet to copy

Copy this into Google Sheets. The points are a starting suggestion, not a measured model; adjust them after a month of your own results. Add up the points for each order.

Example: what the sheet does to profit per 100 orders

Example (illustrative numbers, using the Rs 2,800 product above with ads at Rs 400 per order placed, so Rs 40,000 in total). Out of 100 orders, 70 are green and 60 of them would deliver, 20 are yellow and 10 would deliver, and 10 are red and 1 would deliver. Confirming each yellow or red order costs Rs 20 in staff time. In the last column, 7 yellow orders never reply and are cancelled, including 1 real buyer. Of the red orders, only the 1 real buyer confirms.

The strict seller has the best-looking return rate and the worst profit, Rs 8,500 below shipping everything. Confirming the doubtful orders beats both, by Rs 4,600 over ship-everything, because it stops failed parcels without throwing away most real buyers. Judge your rules by profit, not by return rate alone.

How to set this up on Shopify in 30 minutes

1. Clean your form. Make phone and address required, and check the phone is 11 digits. Our COD order form guide lists the fields to ask.
2. Install Shopify Flow, a free app on the Basic plan and above.
3. Create a workflow with the Order created trigger. Add conditions for the signals Flow can read, such as a high quantity or a high order value.
4. Use the Add order tags action to tag these orders "check-first", and the Hold fulfillment order action so they stay On hold until a person releases them.
5. Keep one shared Google Sheet of refused numbers. Update it each week from the courier's return report, and use it only inside your own team. Do not post customers' numbers or names in public groups.
6. Have one person go through the check-first list every two hours during 11.11, then release or cancel each order.

Run your Flow on a test order before the sale, so you do not find out on 11.11 that good orders are stuck on hold.

What to do with a confirmed fake order

• Cancel it in Shopify and restock the item, so it does not sit in your order count.
• Add the number to your refused list only if the owner really placed it. If the owner says "I never ordered", the number is a victim of a prank; do not punish them next time.
• If a parcel is already with the courier, ask for the shipment to be stopped or returned before the rider's next attempt.
• Do not message the person again and again, and never threaten anyone. If a rival or stranger keeps attacking your store, keep the records and speak to a lawyer.
• Write the type from the table above next to each failed order. After a month you will know which problem you really have.

To see if your rules worked, wait at least three to four weeks, since failed deliveries take time to appear. RabbitROI's Shopify app shows return (RTO) rates by courier, city and product, and net profit per ad campaign after returns, ad spend, product cost and shipping, which helps you check whether stricter rules made money or just cut orders.

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