Cash on Delivery in Tunisia: 7 Ways to Reduce Returns and Protect Your Profit

Cash on delivery is the engine of e-commerce in Tunisia. It lets customers order without paying upfront, which makes them far more willing to buy from a store they discovered five minutes ago on Facebook. But COD has a cost that many new sellers underestimate: returns.

Every parcel that comes back costs you delivery fees, return fees, packaging, the ad spend that generated the order and sometimes a damaged product. In COD, your real profit is decided less by how many orders you get and more by how many of them are actually delivered and paid.

Here are seven practical ways to reduce returns and protect your margin.

1. Confirm every order by phone

A quick confirmation call is the single most effective filter. It removes fake orders, duplicate orders and people who ordered by mistake, and it reminds genuine customers that a parcel is coming. Call quickly: an order confirmed within the first hour is much more likely to be delivered than one confirmed the next day, because the customer still remembers why they wanted the product.

During the call, confirm the price including delivery, the exact address and a good time to receive the parcel. Surprises at the door are one of the main reasons for refusals.

2. Be crystal clear in your ads and product page

Many returns start with a mismatch between what the customer expected and what arrived. Show the real product, its real size and its real price. If delivery costs extra, say it clearly. Overpromising in an ad may bring cheaper orders, but those orders are more likely to be refused.

3. Ship fast

The longer a customer waits, the more time they have to change their mind, buy elsewhere or forget the order. Aim to hand confirmed orders to your courier within 24 hours. Fast shipping is one of the cheapest ways to raise your delivery rate.

4. Choose your courier on data, not just price

The cheapest delivery company is not always the most profitable. Compare couriers on delivery rate, speed, how often their agents actually call the customer, and how quickly they return cash and unsold parcels. Track these numbers per courier and per city. You may find that one courier performs much better in certain regions.

5. Track the status of every parcel

Parcels marked as customer unreachable or postponed are not lost yet. A follow-up call from your team at the right moment often saves the delivery. This only works if you can see the status of every parcel in one place instead of checking each courier separately.

This is one of the problems we solved with Cody: order confirmation, courier tracking and stock in a single dashboard, so no parcel is forgotten and your team knows exactly who to call.

6. Learn from your returns

Returns are data. Look for patterns: certain products, certain cities, certain ad creatives or certain times of the month. If one ad brings many orders but a low delivery rate, it is probably attracting curious clicks rather than real buyers. Cut it, even if its cost per order looks attractive.

7. Price with returns included

Finally, build returns into your pricing from the start. If you expect, for example, a quarter of shipped parcels to come back, every delivered order must also pay for those returns. Calculate your profit per delivered order, not per order received. Many stores that look profitable on paper are losing money once returns are counted properly.

The key metric: delivery rate

If you remember only one thing, remember this: in COD e-commerce, your delivery rate is as important as your sales. Improving it by even a few points can turn a store that breaks even into a profitable one, without spending an extra dinar on ads.

New to e-commerce? Start with my step-by-step guide to starting an e-commerce business in Tunisia. Running ads already? Read my Facebook ads lessons from 50+ brands.