Who Pays Delivery Charges in Dropshipping? (Pakistan)
By Umair Sandhu
Co-founder, Markaz ·
In dropshipping, the customer pays the delivery charge. It is either shown as a separate line at checkout or already built into the price on the listing — but either way, the money comes out of the buyer's pocket on a completed order.
What catches new resellers is the order that does not complete. When a cash-on-delivery parcel is refused at the door, the product comes back, but the courier has still moved it twice. Somebody pays for those two legs, and it is not the customer. Depending on the platform you sell through, it is either you or the platform.
So the real answer has two halves: the customer pays delivery on a successful order, and the seller carries the delivery cost on a failed one. Price for both halves and delivery charges stop being a surprise.
Who actually pays what
Three parties touch a dropshipped order in Pakistan. Each one has a clear role in the delivery charge, and confusing them is where most of the panic comes from.
The customer
The buyer pays the delivery charge on every order that completes, whether or not they can see it as a line item. If your listing says "free delivery," it is not free — you have moved the charge into the product price. That is a presentation choice, not a cost saving.
You, the reseller
You pay the courier — or the platform pays the courier and deducts it from what it hands you. Your actual job is to make sure the price the customer agrees to covers that charge with your margin still intact. You also carry the cost of orders that come back, which is the part that decides whether a month is profitable.
The supplier or platform
The supplier ships the parcel. What varies is how much of the delivery operation they take on. A loose supplier hands you a product and leaves the courier, the cash collection and the returns to you. A platform built for cash on delivery runs all three and settles with you afterwards. Before you list anything, find out which kind you are dealing with — the difference is the whole answer to who pays what.
The three ways Pakistani resellers handle delivery charges
There is no single right model. There is a right model for your product and your buyer, and it comes down to how price-sensitive the customer is at the moment they decide.
- Built into the price ("free delivery"). You add the delivery charge to your selling price and advertise delivery as free. This converts best in Pakistan, because the number the buyer sees is the number the rider asks for. No argument at the door. The risk is that your headline price looks higher than a competitor who charges delivery separately.
- Charged separately at checkout. Your product price looks lower in a listing or a comparison, and delivery is added at the end. It is transparent, and it works for bulkier items where delivery genuinely varies by city. The risk is drop-off: buyers who have already decided at one price react badly to a second number appearing.
- Free above a threshold. Delivery is charged on small orders and free once the cart passes a figure you set. This is the one that actually raises your average order value, because it gives the buyer a reason to add a second item. Set the threshold above your typical order, not below it, or you are giving away delivery on orders you would have got anyway.
Whichever you pick, state it on the listing in plain words. Ambiguity about delivery charges is one of the quiet reasons a confirmation call turns into a cancellation.
The cost that actually hurts: a refused COD parcel
A completed order pays for its own delivery. A refused one does not, and that is where delivery charges turn into a real loss.
When a buyer refuses a cash-on-delivery parcel at the door, or is unreachable when the rider calls, the parcel goes back to origin. You have now paid to move an item out and paid again to move it back, and you have collected nothing. Nothing about the product was wrong. The order simply did not land.
This is why return rate, not delivery rate, is the number that decides your month. A seller with a slightly higher delivery charge and a low refusal rate makes more money than a seller with cheap delivery and parcels bouncing back. If refusals are eating you, the fixes are specific and learnable — COD return rates in Pakistan and how to reduce them covers where they come from, and how to reduce COD returns covers the confirmation call, the address check and the follow-up that stop most of them.
The short version, because it is directly a delivery-charge question:
- Confirm before you dispatch. One call or one WhatsApp message that restates the item, the door price and the delivery day. The parcel you do not send is free.
- Check the address properly. Half of failed deliveries in Pakistan are an incomplete address or a phone that nobody answers, not a change of mind.
- Never surprise anyone with the amount. The figure the rider asks for must be the figure the buyer agreed to, delivery included.
- Watch who orders. The same number refusing repeatedly is a pattern, not bad luck.
How delivery charges work when you sell on Markaz
This is where the model matters. On Markaz you are not arranging the courier yourself. You place the order when your customer buys, and Markaz handles the delivery and the cash-on-delivery collection, then pays you. The delivery charge for the order is shown to you before you confirm it, so you are pricing against a figure you can see rather than a guess.
Three things follow from that, and they are the reason the question "who pays delivery" is simpler here:
- You set your own selling price. The delivery charge is a known input, so you decide whether to show it separately or fold it into one door price. Markaz does not set what your customer pays.
- There is no minimum order. You can place a single unit for a single customer, so you are never paying to move stock you have not sold. That is the main reason delivery charges sink new sellers elsewhere — they pre-buy, then pay to shift inventory twice.
- Delivery inside Pakistan runs about 3 to 5 days, and a return window with buyer protection sits behind the order. A buyer who knows they are covered refuses fewer parcels, which is the cheapest delivery saving there is.
You can browse what is available and see the numbers for yourself on the Markaz Shop, or start from the dropshipping portal if you have not sold anything yet. For the full picture of how cash on delivery changes the economics of a reseller business here, COD dropshipping in Pakistan is the guide to read next.
Orders coming from China are a different question
Everything above is about the last mile inside Pakistan. Sourcing from China adds a second, earlier delivery charge: getting the product into the country at all.
Handled badly, this is the stage that produces the horror stories — a cheap sticker price, then freight, then a customs bill nobody costed, then weeks of waiting while the customer who ordered has moved on. The buyer never pays that charge. You do, and you pay it before you have a sale.
Ordering through Markaz China works differently: freight and customs are handled for you, the landed cost is what you see, and orders arrive door-to-door in roughly 10 to 17 days. You can also order a single unit rather than committing to a container. If you are weighing whether a China product is worth the wait for a Pakistani customer, how long delivery from China to Pakistan takes sets the expectation you should be setting with your buyer.
The rule to carry across: never advertise a delivery date you do not control. A China-sourced item sold as "3 days" is a refused parcel waiting to happen, and you pay for the return.
How to price so delivery never eats your margin
The arithmetic is not complicated. It is just done in the wrong order by most new sellers, who set a price first and discover the delivery charge afterwards.
Do it in this order instead:
- Start from the landed cost. The product cost plus the delivery charge shown on the order screen. Not the product cost alone.
- Add the margin you actually want on top of that landed figure, not on top of the product price.
- Allow for returns. If a share of your orders come back, the ones that land have to carry the delivery cost of the ones that do not. Look at your own refusal rate over the last month and price with it in view.
- Then choose the presentation — one door price, or price plus delivery. That is a marketing decision, made last, once the maths already works.
- Re-check per city. If your platform's delivery charge varies by destination, a price that works for a nearby city may not work for a far one.
Getting the margin step right is its own subject, and worth reading before you set your next price: how to price products as a reseller walks through the margin maths in full.
Mistakes that quietly cost money
- Pricing off the product cost only. The most common one. Your margin looks healthy until the delivery charge is deducted, then it is not.
- Offering free delivery to win a price comparison. If the delivery charge is not in the price, you funded it out of margin to make a sale that was never profitable.
- Treating refusals as bad luck. They are a rate, and the rate responds to a confirmation call.
- Adding delivery after the buyer has agreed. The rider asking for more than the agreed amount is the fastest way to turn a delivery into a return.
- Ignoring weight and size. Bulky items carry a bigger delivery charge, so a thin margin that works on a small product can be negative on a large one.
Frequently asked questions
Does the dropshipper pay for shipping?
The dropshipper pays the courier or the platform, and recovers it from the customer in the selling price. On a completed order the customer has effectively paid it. On an order that is refused or returned, the dropshipper carries it with no sale to cover it.
Should I offer free delivery in Pakistan?
"Free delivery" converts well here, as long as the charge is built into your price rather than taken out of your margin. The advantage is that the amount the rider asks for is the amount the buyer already agreed to, which removes the single most common reason a parcel is refused at the door.
Who pays the delivery charge if a COD order is returned?
The seller. The customer paid nothing, and the courier has moved the parcel in both directions. This is why the refusal rate matters more to your profit than the delivery charge itself, and why confirming an order before dispatch is worth the minute it takes.
Can I charge delivery separately instead of including it?
Yes, and it makes sense for heavier items or where the charge genuinely varies by city. Just show the delivery charge on the listing, before the buyer decides — not after. A number that appears late reads as a hidden charge, even when it is fair.
How do delivery charges work on Markaz?
The delivery charge for an order is shown to you before you confirm it, so you can price against a real figure. Markaz handles the delivery and the cash collection and then pays you, delivery inside Pakistan runs about 3 to 5 days, and there is no minimum order, so you never pay to move stock you have not sold.
Do I pay delivery charges before I make a sale?
Not in dropshipping, and that is the point of the model. You place the order once the customer has bought, so the delivery charge attaches to a real sale. The exception is stock you import yourself — that delivery charge is paid up front, before anyone has ordered.
