Ecommerce is a booming industry in which every online business is on a quest to deliver their best to their customers. It usually means overcoming major challenges of ecommerce logistics to ensure seamless ecommerce order fulfilment.

‍

One of the major challenges an ecommerce business faces is high shipping costs that lead to lower profit margins. But there are other shipping issues that are generally underestimated, such as weight discrepancy.

‍

Ecommerce brands are often excessively charged by the courier company for shipping their orders. Such issues can cost additional fees for your shipment, eat up your profit margins, and delay your order deliveries.

‍

In this blog, you will learn what is what discrepancy, what is a weight dispute, and how can ecommerce brands reduce weight discrepancy and weight disputes.

‍

What is weight discrepancy?

‍

Weight discrepancy is a situation where the courier company disagrees with the order weight provided by the ecommerce seller.

‍

While fulfilling orders, ecommerce sellers tie up with one or more courier companies to ship their orders from their ecommerce warehouse to the customer location. All major courier companies use a pricing technique to calculate shipping costs, i.e. volumetric weight—the shipping cost is determined based on the size of a package. Most courier companies (like Delhivery, Bluedart, Ecomexpress) calculate shipping charges based on the dead weight of the package or its volumetric weight, whichever is greater. It means if your orders are larger or you want faster delivery, you have to pay more for shipping.

‍

Weight discrepancy can impact your shipping strategy and shipping costs negatively and generally lead to weight disputes. Furthermore, if ecommerce sellers want to raise a dispute about the weight discrepancy, they need to submit proof to the courier company.

‍

Let’s take an example, you are shipping your orders using a courier company. You need to note and provide the weight and dimensions of your orders to the courier company. The courier company weighs and takes the dimensions of the order once again while billing you for the shipment. Unfortunately, the weight and dimensions stated by the courier company are more than what you mentioned. Thus, causing a weight dispute.

‍

This weight discrepancy can lead to weight disputes. Moreover, it can increase the time for an order to get delivered as you need to handle this dispute. Moreover, it also takes up a lot of time and resources to sort out these weight disputes, especially if they arise repeatedly.

‍

How can ecommerce brands reduce weight discrepancy and disputes?

‍

Here are the top 5 ways that can help ecommerce brands to ensure zero weight discrepancy and dispute with the shipping carrier:

‍

1. Measure the volumetric weight accurately

‍

The first step to reducing weight discrepancy is by measuring the volumetric weight accurately after packaging the order.

‍

‍

Note: The divisor of 5000 can vary from carrier to carrier.

‍

Let’s take an example

• The gross weight of your product is 500 grams.
• After packing the order using optimum material, the length, breadth, and height of the shipment turn out to be 25, 25 and 25 respectively.
• The volumetric weight = 25 x 25 x 25/ 5000 = 3.125 kg

The volumetric weight of your order is much higher than it should be. Therefore, you need to ensure not to use too much packaging so that you don’t have to pay additional costs.

‍

2. Keep an image of the product as an evidence

‍

When there is a disagreement between you and the courier company, you must have the necessary evidence to back yourself up. You can keep the image of the products while measuring them so that you can produce evidence when presented with a claim. This will help you prove the product dimensions.

‍

3. Map packaging with SKUs

‍

Another strategy to reduce weight discrepancy is by mapping packaging material with your SKUs (stock keeping units).

For instance, a product weighs 500 grams and you ship it in a specified box, you can map this SKU with the box. This way,  whenever there’s an order of the same SKU or same weight, your team packs it only using a predetermined packaging.

This will ensure that your volumetric weight will not change for every SKU and you can ship easily without incurring additional costs.

‍

4. Automate measuring of irregular shapes

‍

Irregular shapes like tubes and poly bags need to be weighed in cubic measurement. However, ecommerce sellers are most likely to measure the volumetric weight of all of the orders. This is one of the significant reasons for weight discrepancy. Although doing a cubic calculation manually won’t be sufficient, you need a dimensioning system to calculate the weight accurately.

Thus, incorporating automation in this process will help reduce the weight discrepancy.

‍

5. Outsource ecommerce order fulfilment

‍

You can reduce weight discrepancy and weight disputes significantly by outsourcing ecommerce order fulfilment to a 3PL provider like Eshopbox. With a 3PL provider, you will get access to robust technology like a Cubi scan machine to help you prevent weight discrepancy and avoid any room for error. Moreover, a 3PL will also enable you to take action on them within a set time frame. Ultimately, help you to ensure fast order delivery and keep shipping costs low.

‍

Bottom line

‍

Weight discrepancy is a big challenge for ecommerce brands that often give rise to weight disputes. However, being careful can help you reduce these discrepancies and save on shipping costs. Moreover, you can prevent major hiccups in shipping. By leveraging appropriate technology and implementing strategic ways, you can optimise the shipping experience and focus on your ecommerce growth.