The doorbell never rang. That’s how most fake delivery attempts start in India.
A LinkedIn author described watching his tracker flip to “receiver not available” on day one, then “office closed” on day two, while he was sitting at his desk the whole time. After a public complaint, the parcel went “out for delivery” and within hours reverted to “office closed” again. No call, no knock.
That story isn’t an outlier. It’s the lived experience behind some ugly numbers.
How big is the problem in India?
India’s courier, express and parcel market is projected to grow from USD 8.62 billion in 2025 to USD 14.34 billion by 2030, and last-mile alone is forecast from USD 3.53 billion in 2023 to USD 10.55 billion by 2032. Growth is colliding with friction:
- About 75% of customers report delivery issues including delays and failures
- 60 to 65% of e-commerce orders are still cash on delivery
- 25 to 30% of those COD orders return to origin after failed attempts
The article catalogs the same excuses across carriers: Blue Dart, DTDC and Amazon marking “consignee not available” or “address incomplete” without contact, and India Post facing similar complaints in Uttar Pradesh.
Why drivers fake it
The incentives are misaligned, not mysterious. Shiprocket’s breakdown calls it out plainly: delivery staff are paid for volume completed per day, so when a stop falls off the planned route, faking an attempt protects their count. Add unplanned route assignments that overload a rider, and the rational choice becomes marking “unable to deliver” to avoid penalization. Hubs also push space optimization, sending undelivered parcels back to sellers to make room for incoming freight.
The LinkedIn piece frames it the same way: false attempts are often tied to incentives for quick closures or operational shortcuts.
It’s not just India
Search any courier forum and you’ll find the same script with different accents.
In the UK, a DPD customer who paid for pre-1PM delivery got a mid-morning text saying “we tried to deliver, but you weren’t in” while he was at his chair all morning. In the US, a USPS tracking page showed “delivered” for a package that arrived the next day, leading the buyer to file a theft claim and receive two items. A work-from-home user summed it up: “I am here all day, 15 feet from the door. Don’t give me that horseshit”. Another described a UPS driver who “just didn’t want to deliver to my complex so he’d mark shit as attempted but no one was home despite me being there waiting”.
The pattern is global. When success is measured by scans, not handovers, the scan wins.
The cost is real
Shiprocket estimates around 15% of failed deliveries are merely fake attempts. Each one triggers a cascade: a frustrated customer call, a negative review, and for COD orders, an RTO that eats margin because the seller pays for the re-attempt. Trust erodes faster than any logistics KPI can recover.
What actually helps
The LinkedIn article and operational playbooks converge on the same fixes:
- Real-time tracking and two-way communication: GPS-enabled devices verify where the agent actually was, paired with WhatsApp or SMS updates so the customer can respond instantly
- Address verification and automated NDR management: Flagging bad pins before dispatch and automating non-delivery reports cuts the 24-hour black hole to minutes
- Incentive reform: Reward successful deliveries, not attempts, and audit patterns weekly
Shiprocket adds practical detail: use route optimization so riders aren’t overloaded, send automated IVR and SMS to customers the moment a non-delivery is logged, and review performance regularly to spot serial fakers. Their automation has brought NDR rates down to around 6% for merchants using the flow.
Rethinking the handover
All of these tools police the current system. The deeper fix is to stop requiring a human to meet a human at a door at a precise minute.
That is why locker networks, parcel shops and secure residential boxes are gaining traction. When the handover point is infrastructure instead of a person, “you weren’t home” becomes an irrelevant status. The courier scans a successful drop at a geofenced locker, the system sends an OTP, and the customer picks up after work. The proof shifts from a driver’s remark to a verifiable location and timestamp.
It does not solve traffic or bad addresses, but it removes the exact failure point the LinkedIn author hit: the last 50 meters where availability is guessed, not guaranteed.
India’s delivery volume will double this decade. If 15% of failures are fabricated, and a quarter of COD orders already boomerang, the math stops working for sellers long before it stops working for buyers.
Fake attempts persist because the system rewards the scan. You can track harder, and you should. Or you can design the last mile so the customer doesn’t have to win a waiting game against a delivery window.
