What a refusal consists of
A buyer ordered with payment on delivery and changed their mind at the branch. The shop does not lose the goods — they come back — but it loses everything it spent getting the parcel there and back:
- delivery to the buyer, if the shop paid for it;
- delivery back, if the return is not included in the rate;
- packaging, if the box was bought;
- the goods' time in transit: for a week or two they cannot be sold to someone else.
The first three are counted in hryvnias, the fourth in lost turnover. Below we count the first three, because they can be checked against the rate card.
Who pays for the return
This is the most common misunderstanding. Under Nova Poshta's terms, for documents and parcels up to 30 kg the return is already included in the delivery price — but only if delivery was paid before dispatch. Otherwise the sender pays for delivery.
The practical conclusion: if the shop pays for delivery when sending, a refusal costs it one delivery, not two. If the buyer was meant to pay on receipt and refused, the delivery bill goes to the shop.
Two more details from the same terms: if you arrange the return of a cash-on-delivery shipment, the cash-on-delivery service is cancelled automatically, and it cannot be added to the return shipment.
The cash-on-delivery fee
Cash on delivery has a cost even when the buyer collects the parcel.
For businesses, Nova Poshta offers a cash-on-delivery agreement with payouts to a business account. The fee is 0.5% if the money goes to a NovaPay account and 1.3% to an account at another bank.
The ordinary cash-on-delivery payout to a card does not suit a business: under the service terms it is not paid to corporate or business cards, and other cards are limited to UAH 29,999 per payout and UAH 349,999 a month.
A refusal vs a lost order
An illustrative example. A shop sends 200 cash-on-delivery orders a month, average order UAH 800, margin 40%, so UAH 320 per order. Parcels up to 2 kg, delivery within Ukraine UAH 90. The shop pays for delivery itself, so the return is free. A box costs UAH 15.
One refusal costs the shop 90 + 15 = UAH 105. One order that never happens because the buyer did not want to pay upfront costs UAH 320 of margin.
Refusal: delivery UAH 90 (parcel up to 2 kg within Ukraine) + box UAH 15; the return is free because delivery was prepaid. Lost order: 40% margin on a UAH 800 order. Nova Poshta rates checked on 7 October 2026.
Hence the rule: prepayment pays off only if, for every order it loses, it removes at least three refusals (320 / 105 ≈ 3).
Suppose that at a 10% refusal rate the shop makes prepayment mandatory. Refusals drop from 20 to 5 — a saving of 15 × 105 = UAH 1,575. But if prepayment stops even 5 of the 200 orders, the shop loses 5 × 320 = UAH 1,600. In this example, losing 2.5% of orders wipes out the whole saving.
Run your own figures the same way: the price of a refusal is the delivery you pay plus packaging; the price of a lost order is its margin. The ratio of the two is your threshold.
What to do about refusals besides prepayment
- Pay for delivery yourself and build it into the price. Then a return costs nothing beyond that delivery, and the buyer finds it easier to collect the parcel without paying extra.
- Partial prepayment — a small amount that covers delivery. It filters out casual orders but scares off fewer buyers than full prepayment.
- Order confirmation by phone or message before dispatch. Some refusals are orders the buyer simply forgot about.
- Count refusals separately by advertising channel. If one channel brings twice as many refusals, the problem is not cash on delivery but that channel. How to count customer cost by channel is covered in the article on cost per customer.
Our position
Do not demand full prepayment just because of refusals until you have counted both losses. For goods with a normal margin, a refusal is almost always cheaper than a lost order, and refusals are better fought with confirmation and partial prepayment.
The position does not hold for goods with a very low margin or heavy weight. If the margin on an order is less than delivery there and back, every refusal eats the profit of several successful sales, and prepayment becomes necessary.
Rates and the return and cash-on-delivery terms were checked on 7 October 2026 on Nova Poshta's website. The calculation is an illustrative example; plug in your own order value, margin and parcel weight.