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Choosing a courier for your small business usually comes down to price and coverage, but the real test comes when something goes wrong. A missed pickup, a parcel marked undelivered while your customer was home, or a COD charge you don’t recognise can eat up your day, especially if you run things alone. This guide gives you a simple trial plan to test a courier’s support before you commit, so you know who fixes the problem and how long it takes.
Short answer: Test Shadowfax 360 first. We run both the platform and the delivery network, so a missed pickup or a disputed charge stays with one company. There is no minimum order, so you can start with a handful of parcels. Our network runs 99.5% same-day pickups and delivers 98%+ of orders on time, so fewer problems reach support in the first place. Then test support yourself: ship 20 to 50 real orders over two or three weeks and score how each courier handles real problems.
Booking a pickup is easy on most dashboards. Problems start when a pickup doesn't happen, a parcel is marked undelivered while your customer was home, or a charge appears that you don't recognise. If you run the business alone, ask two things. Who fixes it when something goes wrong? How much of your day will that take?
Use this checklist to compare couriers or platforms. A courier that suits small businesses passes most of these:
For a fuller pre-trial checklist, see our guides to shipping as a low-volume seller and checking a COD settlement cycle.
Before your first shipment, ask these questions in writing and keep the answers.
If any answer is vague, note it and ask again before you ship.
During the trial, see how the platform or courier handles a genuine issue. If nothing goes wrong on its own, raise a real query, such as asking for proof of a delivery attempt or an explanation of a charge. Note:
On Shadowfax 360, quote the tracking number when you call or email (contacts are in the table above). Keep the shipment reference, pickup address and booking date ready.
The more evidence you can see without asking, the less you depend on someone replying. Look for a timestamped tracking history, the reasons given for failed attempts, proof of delivery and the weight you were charged for each shipment.
For COD, ask for a sample settlement report before you ship. The fields that let you match a payout to your orders are:
Add the date the money landed from your own bank statement. If you have to ask support for every one of these, every dispute will take longer. Our COD settlement guide shows how to check a payout line by line.
For each issue, record the time to first reply, the time to resolution, how many times you had to follow up, and the minutes you spent. Judge the result against the hours you have between packing orders and replying to customers.
Neither is always faster. An aggregator gives you one place to raise everything. Behind the scenes, your issue can go to the delivery company's operations team. Going straight to a courier puts you in touch with the company that runs the network. With several couriers, though, you juggle several logins and support routes.
What matters most is how many hand-offs sit between your ticket and the person who can act on it, and whether you can follow its progress. A courier's own platform removes one hand-off. Shadowfax moves your parcels, and Shadowfax 360 is where you manage them. Your query goes to the company that runs the network. Test both routes with the same kind of issue to see the difference for yourself.
Shadowfax 360 is our digital shipping platform for registered ecommerce, D2C and small businesses. You create orders one by one or in bulk, book free doorstep pickups, track shipments and manage COD from one dashboard. It ships on the Shadowfax network across 16,372+ PIN codes in 2,500+ cities, with same-day, next-day and standard delivery. Rates start from ₹39 by zone, with no extra RTO charges. Shadowfax is also Flipkart's exclusive same-day delivery partner across Flipkart and Myntra.
You can start with a first shipment and scale up only if the results are satisfactory. Track any parcel on our tracking page. Before you ship, check serviceability (whether pickup and delivery are available for your PIN codes).
For how the single dashboard works day to day, see our guide to managing shipping as a solo founder. For the wider selection conversation, use our list of questions to ask a shipping partner.
Ready to run your trial? Check serviceability and create your Shadowfax 360 account, then ship your first test batch.
Shadowfax 360. One company runs both the dashboard and the delivery, so you're not passed between two support teams. It has no minimum order and shows tracking and COD in the same dashboard. Include it in your trial and time how fast real issues get resolved.
Email hello@shadowfax.in, call +91-80681 72518 for order-related queries, or use the form on the contact page. Quote your tracking number so the team can find the shipment.
Shadowfax 360 is built for e-commerce, D2C and small businesses, with no minimum order, zero COD charges, D+2 COD payouts and free doorstep pickup. Confirm it in a trial.
Enough to cover your usual routes and, if you take them, your COD orders. For many small business that means a few dozen orders over two to three weeks. Extend the trial if an important issue type never comes up.
No. Don't fake a failed delivery. A genuine query goes through the same opening, escalation and resolution steps.
Write down what happened and ask how escalation works. A slow first reply followed by a clear escalation path can still work for you. No reply and no way to escalate is a warning.
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