At what point do courier losses just become a cost of doing business?

Zej · Mar 1, 2026

Hi all,

Quick sanity check with other UK sellers.

Once you’re shipping at decent volume, lost parcels and “delivered but not received” cases seem unavoidable. Damage, missing items, claims going back and forth with couriers, all that fun stuff.

What I’m wondering is this:

Do you still chase compensation every time something goes wrong, or do you eventually accept a certain level of loss and move on because the admin just isn’t worth it?

And if you do claim consistently, who actually deals with it in your business?

Ops, finance, customer service… or does it kind of fall between teams?

Interested to hear how others handle this in reality.

JEREMY HAWKE · Mar 4, 2026

You dont have the time to chase compensation I think some companies factor losses into the price
The cost of doing business

Marantzdigital · Mar 5, 2026

Depending on who you book with, and your relationship, compensation claims, I have found can be dealt with very quick and easily, subject to being able to obtain images of damage for example

Sadly its just part of selling things online and I factor it into the price charged for postage, in a way that I create an imaginary 'pot' for pot-ential losses eg £X.00 from each postage charge goes into the 'pot' and if I need to dip into it to pay out myself eg dont have a high insurance amount, then so be-it, and if at the end of the year I dont use the 'pot' then thats great its money in my pocket - at the risk taken.

Not sure if thats what you were asking but some of the waffle there could be of use to someone!

pentel · Mar 18, 2026

Its a cost of doing business, same as shoplifting in a bricks and mortar business.

Paul Norman · Mar 19, 2026

Fairly early on.
Chasing each case would take hours, and probably cost more than you would recover.

Costs of online business are:

Lost parcels
Frivolous returns
Chargebacks

But you have no shoplifting.

You can do many things to manage these costs down, but a case by case pursuit of them is mostly not productive.

DontAsk · Mar 19, 2026

Paul Norman said:
Costs of online business are:

Perhaps some people have the wrong sort of customers

In 22+ years I have had

Paul Norman said:
Lost parcels

Less than 0.1 %. One I strongly suspect was fraud. Only one or two others. RM rather than courier. Any other "lost" parcels have ALWAYS eventually been returned.

Paul Norman said:
Frivolous returns

None.

Paul Norman said:
Chargebacks

One PayPal dispute from someone who didn't give a chance to resolve the issue.

Joey80 · Apr 1, 2026

It’s not really comparable to shoplifting - it’s worse. People who would never consider skip-scanning a banana in Tesco will happily claim items weren’t received, return incorrect goods, wardrobe your clothes, use your camping gear for a weekend and return, file chargebacks because they were high when they purchased etc.

I understand some see this as a cost of doing business, but that perspective usually comes from high-volume, low cost widget sellers where losses can be absorbed. In my case, the average transaction value is around £100, so each one matters.

We record acceptance of terms (including date, time, device, and IP), and we always have proof of delivery with photo and signature.... yet we still face daft claims.

At a certain point, it’s not just a cost - it’s something you have to actively push back against.

Agota_OD · Apr 19, 2026

As others mentioned above, always work out the cost of chasing first. Is it worth your time? The value is often in not having to chase at all.

camelback890 · May 21, 2026

Zej said:
Hi all,

Quick sanity check with other UK sellers.

Once you’re shipping at decent volume, lost parcels and “delivered but not received” cases seem unavoidable. Damage, missing items, claims going back and forth with couriers, all that fun stuff.

What I’m wondering is this:

Do you still chase compensation every time something goes wrong, or do you eventually accept a certain level of loss and move on because the admin just isn’t worth it?

And if you do claim consistently, who actually deals with it in your business?

Ops, finance, customer service… or does it kind of fall between teams?

Interested to hear how others handle this in reality.

Once you hit a certain volume, lost parcels are just a standard cost of doing business that you have to factor into your margins. Set a price threshold for claims and just write off the smaller issues.

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At what point do courier losses just become a cost of doing business?

Zej

JEREMY HAWKE

Marantzdigital

pentel

Paul Norman

DontAsk

Joey80

Agota_OD

camelback890

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