Five checks that show whether a courier is short-paying you

Most short payment is not theft. It is drift: a weight recorded differently from the one you declared, a zone applied that you did not expect, a charge taken on a parcel that never reached a customer, or a rate change that quietly reached old parcels. All four are detectable from your own records in under an hour, and all four are arguable only if you can show the arithmetic.

Here is the check, in the order that finds the most money for the least effort.

Check one: count delivered parcels against charged parcels

Export your delivered orders for a month and count them. Then count the charge lines on your statement for the same month. The two numbers should be identical.

If there are more charge lines than delivered parcels, something that did not reach a customer has been charged. That is the most valuable discrepancy to find because it is unambiguous: a parcel that was not delivered is not charged, and the published tariff states it as a term. The only exceptions are a parcel opened at the door and refused because the item was not as specified, and a cancellation the seller caused after handover, and both require evidence attached to the order.

Check two: reproduce five charges by hand

Pick five parcels across different weights and zones. For each one, take the weight and dimensions actually recorded against the parcel, not the ones you declared, and work the charge out yourself.

1. 01Work the dimensional weight: length by width by height in centimetres, divided by 5000
2. 02If the scale weight is 5 kg or less, take the larger of the scale weight and that figure. Above 5 kg, take the scale weight
3. 03Round up to the next half kilo. Always up, never to the nearest
4. 04Count the half-kilo units. Lahore City is PKR 180 for the first and PKR 40 for each one after
5. 05Add PKR 50 once if the address is in the extended area

The pricing calculator does all five steps and shows the breakdown, so use it as the check rather than as the source. If your figure and the statement figure differ, you have found either a weight discrepancy or a zone discrepancy, and the next two checks tell you which.

Check three: compare declared weight against recorded weight

Open an order and look at both figures. A courier that re-weighs at the warehouse should show you the measurement it took, not just the charge that resulted.

A re-weigh at QCS writes a new charge snapshot and preserves the booking snapshot byte for byte, so both are visible on the order and you can see exactly what changed and why. A courier that cannot show you the measurement behind a charge is asking you to take the charge on trust, and a systematic upward drift in recorded weights is the most common form of quiet short payment in the trade.

Check four: check the zone that was applied

The extended-area surcharge is a flat PKR 50 per parcel and it is decided by which zone the delivery address falls into, never by the weight. Eleven named points mark where Lahore City ends: beyond Central Park on Ferozepur Road, beyond Bahria Orchard on Raiwind Road, beyond Mohlanwal on Multan Road, beyond Bahria Town and beyond Jallo Park on Canal Road, beyond Rachna Town and beyond Manawan on G.T. Road, beyond Begum Kot, beyond Green Land Swimming Pool on Sagian Road, beyond Lahore School of Economics on Barki Road, and beyond Dera Chahal on Bedian Road.

If a parcel inside those points carries the surcharge, the zone was resolved wrongly. The coverage map carries the same eleven points, and the zone that priced a parcel is recorded in its charge snapshot rather than inferred later.

Check five: check whether a rate change reached old parcels

This is the one that is hardest to spot and most expensive when it happens. Take two parcels of identical weight and zone, one booked before a tariff change and one after, and compare the charges.

They should differ. The older parcel should carry the older rate. Rate cards at QCS are versioned and dated, the version is frozen into each parcel at booking, and a re-rate resolves the card that was in force on the booking date rather than today. A new card cannot reach backwards. A courier whose old parcels reprice when the tariff moves is charging you for work you did at a price you did not agree.

What to do with a discrepancy

• Raise it as a dispute on the specific order rather than as a general complaint. A named parcel is resolvable
• Quote the recorded weight, the recorded zone and the figure you calculated
• Ask which rate card version priced it. A courier that cannot name one is not versioning its rates

Run checks one and two monthly and the rest quarterly. Most months they find nothing, which is the point: a check that only runs when you already suspect something is not a control.

If you are comparing couriers rather than auditing one, eleven questions to ask before you choose covers what to establish before the first parcel moves.