Why Street Bazaaar Doesn't Do Cash on Delivery (as of now)
This is the question we get most often, usually phrased as an accusation, and fairly so. Cash on delivery is how India shops online. Asking someone to pay before they have seen the thing is asking for trust that hasn't been earned yet, from a shop they found through an ad.
So here is the actual reasoning, including the parts that are inconvenient for us.
What COD really is
Cash on delivery is usually described as a payment method. It isn't, really. It is a credit product that the seller extends to the buyer, for free, with no check on whether the buyer intends to pay.
Here is what happens behind the scenes when you place a COD order. The shop pays for the product. The shop pays to pack it. The shop pays the courier to carry it to your city. The courier attempts delivery, sometimes more than once. If you accept it and pay, the money then sits with the courier for a couple of weeks before it reaches the shop.
If you don't accept it, and a meaningful share of COD orders are not accepted, the parcel travels all the way back. The shop pays for that leg too. The product comes home scuffed, sometimes opened, occasionally unsellable. Nobody has paid for anything, and the shop is out the cost of two journeys and a damaged item.
None of that is the customer's fault. Most COD refusals are not malicious. Somebody ordered at 1am, changed their mind by Thursday, wasn't home, or forgot entirely. It is a completely human thing to do, and the system is designed in a way that makes it costless for you and expensive for us.
Why a small store can't absorb it
A large marketplace can absorb this. It has the volume to average it out, the negotiating power to push some of the cost onto couriers, and enough margin elsewhere to treat failed deliveries as a line in a spreadsheet.
We are not that. We are a small operation. On a store our size, a handful of refused COD parcels in a month is not a rounding error, it is the month.
And the cost doesn't stay contained. It leaks into everything you would actually care about. It shows up as higher prices, because the failed deliveries have to be paid for by the orders that succeed. It shows up as thinner packaging, because packaging is the easiest cost to cut. It shows up as a shop that stops answering messages, because the margin that pays for someone to answer messages has gone.
We would rather not build a store where the customers who do pay are quietly subsidising the ones who don't.
What we are giving up by saying no
I want to be honest that this is not a costless decision dressed up as a principle. Refusing COD costs us real sales.
Some people will not buy online without it, full stop, and that is a completely reasonable position. Some people will fill the cart, reach checkout, see no COD option and leave. We know this happens because it happens to every prepaid-only store in India. We are choosing to lose those orders.
What we get in exchange is a business that works at our size. Money arrives before the parcel leaves, so we can buy the next batch of stock instead of waiting three weeks for a courier to remit. Every parcel that goes out is one somebody actually wanted. And we are not spending our time chasing failed deliveries, which means we are spending it on the part you can see: what we stock, how it is packed, and whether we reply when you write to us.
The part where we have to earn it
Asking for money up front puts the obligation on us, and we know it. So a few things are worth saying plainly.
If it arrives broken, that is our problem, not yours. Photograph it, send it to us, and we sort it out. We do not want you filing a complaint with your bank because it was easier than dealing with us.
If you want to know something before you order, ask. Message us. A real person reads it. If the answer is "honestly, this one isn't great for what you're describing", you will get that answer, because a return costs us far more than a lost sale does.
Read the refund policy before you pay, not after. It is written in plain language on purpose. If anything in it is unclear, that is a flaw in our writing and we would like to know.
The trade, stated plainly
You are being asked to take on a small risk that a COD store would have carried for you. In return you get a store that is not quietly pricing failed deliveries into your order, that ships the day it says it will because the cash is already in, and that has a strong financial incentive to make sure the thing in the box is right the first time.
That is the trade. It is not the easy option and it is not the one that maximises orders in month one. It is the one where the incentives point in the same direction as yours.
If that works for you, we would be glad to have you. If it doesn't, that is fair, and we would rather tell you now than at checkout.
