When was the last time COD’s were allowed? And why?
What was the idea behind selling products COD?
Only speaking for the US,
Its still allowed, its just not very common since we all have credit and debit cards.
As far as why it was allowed, I guess back in the day most people didn’t have a charge card and many didn’t have or trust checks. So COD was very convenient. Never used it myself, but Dad ordered a lot of records by mail order and has used COD.
And some businesses will still actually do business with you COD, despite disclaimers if you ask nicely. It’s costly to send something COD and takes a while to get the money, so they don’t want to bother, particularly if it is somebody who sounds like they are running any kind of scam. On the other hand, if the customer is an old geezer, that’s just the way really, really old people do things, so an exception may be made.
I work with business credit data. COD terms are fairly common for businesses that have not established a line of credit with the selling business.
I’ve heard of C.O.D. being a scam for sellers who don’t want customers to know about their obscenely high delivery/processing charges until the needed item is at the door.
Our company buys a lot of things COD.
How did COD work? Did you just pay the delivery person after they dropped the stuff off? And would that person just pass along the money to the company you ordered from?
But surely the availability of COD does not stop the buyer from inquiring about such costs BEFORE deciding to make the purchase?
Buyer: Do you offer COD?
Seller: Yes.
Buyer: How much do you charge for delivery etc.?
Seller: $100
Buyer: Thanks, but no thanks!
Yes (but change the word “after” to “when” – the item wasn’t released to you until you made the payment).
It’s common for wholesalers to do business via COD. They don’t want the risk associated with credit cards, and after a customer is deemed trustworthy, they’ll give them a direct line of credit (saves everyone money by cutting out the middleman.)
CODs are awkward and inconvenient in the credit card age.
The buyer doesn’t know exactly when the letter carrier will show up with the package, so they might not be home, and often they don’t have the payment on hand and have to accept a notice, then go to the post office to pay for the item and pick it up. Personal checks are acceptable with proper ID. If the buyer wishes to pay cash there’s an extra fee to cover the cost of the money order used to pay the seller.
I delivered maybe one or two COD packages per year in the last five years of my letter carrier carreer. I’ve been retired for four years.
I’ve heard pretty much the opposite. COD is (was) a great convenience for the purchaser, who is wary of a supplier they never heard of, and doesn’t want to mail a check to a possible scam artist. With COD they don’t pay until the item arrives. You get the convenience of ordering by mail, but not paying until you receive it.
It’s true that you can’t open the package until after you’ve paid, but still, at least you did get a box of something.
COD, called postoppkrav, is still reasonably common in Norway - although less so now that you have the option of paying online. If you get a postoppkrav package, you get a slip in your mailbox that you take to the post office at your earliest convenience. You pay at the post office. You can also call them and, for a small fee, someone will bring it to your house in the evening.
Like any system, there are ways to scam it. The fact it’s unfamiliar to most consumers under age 50 means the scams seem obvious & scary, whereas the scams available with the common payments systems today seem ho-hum becasue we’re used to them.
For a mail order world without credit or debit cards, COD made a lot of sense. As a small wholesaler/reseller I used it extensively in the late 70s, both for incoming & outgoing merchandise.
The carriers need to charge enough for the COD service to make it worththeir while. A COD delivery involves a lot of extra time & hassle for carrier compared to just dumping the box at your doorstep & driving off. If it costs Fedex or whoever $10 to do the extra work & they charge $20 for the service … That works for 2 pallets of gizmos worth $3500 going to a warehouse. But for 2 used CDs worth $12 going to a residence, not so much.
That would be a very bad scam, since you just tell the UPS/FedEx man that you refuse the package and it’ll go back to the shipper.
At that point, the shipper has already paid for the shipping and it doesn’t get refunded.
This might work if the buyer is getting insulin or some other type of life or death medical items and they’re completely out and it can’t wait, but in most cases, the buyer could probably find other alternatives.
I used COD myself once about ten years ago to send something I sold to someone I didn’t know. I didn’t want to set up a Paypal account just for this one item (maybe Paypal didn’t even exist then, I don’t remember), and I didn’t take credit cards myself. This way I could be sure of getting the payment.
It was no big deal – just some additional forms to be filled out at the post office.
I’ve used COD within the past few years. I ran into issues the last time because UPS no longer has any change. Not even a buck. I just gave the guy tens and fives and took the loss. I think it cost me a couple dollars.
It is getting rare to find any sellers offering COD anymore.
In the case(s) I heard about (involving mail order plant nurseries) the shipping costs were not available to the buyer before delivery.
We’re not talking about especially smart shoppers here. Some people apparently are willing to pay through the nose for something if it’s right at their door and they wanted it enough.
Probably the most common form of COD transaction nowadays, though it may not often thought of as such, is food delivery. Hardly a month goes by when I don’t order a pizza, cash on delivery, to my house.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this practice is eventually obsolete, as well, as online food ordering becomes more ubiquitous.
It wasn’t that many years ago where COD sales were common with things like guns. The problem was that many sites like Paypal didn’t (and still don’t) allow gun sales to be processed through their services, so until Bidpay came along, if you were dealing in antique or C&R guns, not otherwise requiring an FFL intermediary, COD was almost the preferred choice. While I realize the person on the other end could send you a rock and have you pay the delivery guy several hundred or thousand dollars for it, I can tell you that never happened. I know as the buyer, I always felt I would have some recourse with UPS before the seller got their money, though perhaps that was not really the case. The price was always agreed upon, so you would have cash, or a cashier’s check on hand when the delivery person arrived. It seemed seemed to me that I always knew the day it would arrive to meet the UPS guy so it was no more of a problem than signing for a package from FedEx or UPS as you do with wine or other various ‘signature required’ materials.