Courier Refused to Collect the Parcel. Learn Why this Happens
TL;DR
- Common reasons for refusal include improper packaging, irregular shapes, or signs of leakage that may risk damage to other packages.
- Incorrect labeling can also lead to rejection, especially if the label is from a different courier or poorly printed.
- Weight and size issues are significant; couriers may refuse oversized or overweight packages they can’t handle.
- Miscommunication or misunderstandings about the collection can result in refusals, requiring direct contact with the courier for resolution.
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Have you ever encountered the situation when you were waiting at home for the courier driver, just for him to arrive and refuse the parcel?
No matter if you are a regular or a one-time shipper, you might have already found yourself in a situation when the courier refused to collect the parcel. Most probably, he gave you a justification. But if the decision took you by surprise nevertheless, in this article you can read more about what to do in such cases and when these might happen.
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There are few common situations in which the courier refused to collect the parcel:
Not conform to the system
There are a few reasons why a parcel might be marked as not conforming to the system:
1. Your parcel is not packed on a proper way – many people don’t know how to tell the difference between package and pallet shipping. Learn more here about what each of them is.
Maybe you have mistakenly booked the service for shipping a package when, in fact, you have a pallet to be shipped. In this case, it is understandable that the courier refused to collect the parcel: simply because he might not be equipped with the right utensils, such as a forklift, and secondly, because the courier company might as well not be able to accommodate such deliveries.
2. Your package has protruding edges or irregular shape – when, due to its irregular shape, a parcel cannot be measured and easily handled without special tools, or when it has sharp edges that could damage the personnel or other parcels during the transit, the courier will most probably refuse taking it.
3. Your package has signs of leakage – if the package has any stains, the courier driver might suspect that liquids were placed inside. This holds an increased risk for other packages to be damaged as well and the driver will want to avoid that by rejecting your parcel.
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The parcel has a wrong label attached to it
This confusion can occur if one of the following happens:
- The type of service you selected requires you to print out the label and stick it to the parcel yourself. If you have many parcels and have booked shipping services from different logistics operators and they are scheduled to be collected on the same day, you need to make sure that you place the label from the right courier company on the right parcel. The driver won’t collect any package that has a different label format than the one being used in the courier company he works for.
- If the selected service requires the customer to print the label and the quality of the printed label is so low that it impedes the driver from scanning it.
- If the selected shipping service or logistics provider expects from the customer to print the label and, at the moment when the courier driver arrives, the label is not stuck on the parcel.
The parcel is overweight or oversized
Most courier drivers are not equipped with scales to be able to weigh the parcels upon collection. In most cases, they do pick-up the shipment, just for it to be returned later to your address (after it is measured in the local depot).
However, sometimes, if the driver can clearly see that the parcel is too heavy or too big, he will definitely reject the collection of the package. It is one of the most common cases when courier refused to collect the parcel. Read more about overweight packages here.
The customer has less or more collection requests than initially booked
If you booked the collection for a number of packages and at the moment of collection you have either less or more, without notifying the courier company to adjust your order, their driver might as well refuse the pick-up until the right information is entered and processed in the company’s system. Read more about shipping multiple parcels at once here.
Misunderstandings
If you think about how many people are involved in the delivery chain, you can imagine how easily errors can occur. A wrong information passed to the person in charge of collecting the parcel, a change in the personnel, new employees joining the company and not having enough knowledge about the service – it all may cause difficulties that you would not expect.
Maybe it happened that the courier driver was asking you for the label that you were not supposed to print out in the first place and even after giving him an explanation, the courier refused to collect the package.
Maybe the collection point is a gridlocked city where traffic is a big challenge for the couriers. The courier driver might have been informed that he has to pick-up a small parcel and he came to collect your parcel on a scooter. A scooter will definitely not be suitable means of transportation for a parcel of up to 20 kg.
Even though not very often, situations like this are deemed to happen. You just need to contact the parcel broker or the courier company directly to untangle the situation as soon as possible.
What should I do if the courier refused to collect the package?
Courier companies have different procedures after the courier refused to collect the package.
They will either do another collection attempt on the next working date or they will cancel the order. In the second case, you don’t need to worry. Most of the times your pick-up will be rescheduled for free – the only inconvenience is that this situation leads to delays.
So, the best advice is to make sure you are following the instructions of the courier service provider in respect to the packaging, labelling and any of the situation described above that you could actually avoid. If you have any more doubts, you can always chat with us online.
Still have questions?
Check our articles that answer the most common questions about shipping.
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About the author
Marcel Nahtigal is Head of Marketing at Eurosender, specializing in digital strategies to enhance customer connections in logistics.
