What changed when one store removed cash on delivery

Cash on delivery is often treated as the payment option that rescues an order when a shopper will not pay an unfamiliar store in advance; for one Ukrainian retailer, however, the owner reported a less dramatic and more useful pattern after removing that option: no change in completed sales while returned parcels fell several times over.

Serhii Merkulov removed cash on delivery about 2 years ago, then judged the change through shipment and return analytics in the carrier’s dashboard rather than the store’s CRM. In Datum’s questionnaire, he wrote that sales did not decline after the switch and that returns dropped by several times.

The practical finding is narrow. In Merkulov’s account, requiring prepayment coincided with fewer returned shipments without reducing the number of purchases that his store ultimately completed.

The supplied account names no product category, comparison period, or absolute sales and return volumes, and the carrier dashboard cannot identify a buyer across later purchases.

The dashboard follows the parcel

“The number of sales did not change, while the number of returns fell several times,” Merkulov wrote in Datum’s questionnaire.

That statement puts two operational outcomes beside each other, each carrying a different meaning: a completed sale survived payment and receipt, while a returned shipment entered the delivery process but never became the completed transaction the store wanted.

The distinction is basic. Cash on delivery can make dispatch look like the important event, yet Merkulov’s chosen measure concerned what happened afterwards, when the recipient either completed the purchase or sent the parcel back through the carrier.

His source was specific: shipment and return analytics inside the carrier’s account, a view organised around the outcome of each parcel after the payment rule changed. That is why the reported fall in returns belongs at the centre of this case, beside the owner’s statement that completed sales held steady.

For Merkulov, the sequence was enough to make an operating choice: the store required prepayment, its completed sales count held according to his account, returned shipments fell several times over, and he kept the new rule.

The cost appears in more than one place

Cash on delivery also has a visible financial service attached to it: on the current NovaPay business offer, transferring collected funds into a NovaPay account carries a 0.5% charge, while payment with a NovaPay card receives a 50% discount on that commission.

The figure belongs to NovaPay’s published offer checked on 24 August 2026, while Merkulov’s payment change came earlier; it establishes that collecting payment at receipt carries a separate price before any returned shipment enters the seller’s calculation.

The store’s stated average order value is about 3000 hryvnias per purchase. Merkulov’s questionnaire did not specify a currency, so the hryvnia designation follows from the Ukrainian market context in which the store operates.

The ledger still matters. Merkulov based his decision on the direction of the store’s parcel counts: stable completed sales in his account, paired with a pronounced reduction in returned shipments.

A hypothesis about shoppers, separate from the result

Merkulov has an explanation for why completed sales held after cash on delivery disappeared: he observes that many shoppers who resist paying immediately come back after one, two or three months and eventually make the purchase with prepayment.

That account turns an apparently lost order into a delayed decision, but the later purchase explanation comes from his observation of customer behaviour, while the carrier analytics supplied the outcome of the earlier parcel.

Those are different records. The carrier account gave Merkulov the parcel result that supported his operating decision, while his experience with returning shoppers supplied a possible explanation for why the reported sales count did not fall.

The operating decision stands independently. If the owner’s two operating counts moved as he described, fewer returns beside stable completed sales gave him a practical reason to keep prepayment as the rule.

What this one store actually shows

Removing cash on delivery is ordinary payment policy, not a theory of Ukrainian retail. The useful feature of Merkulov’s case is the choice of outcome: he looked beyond orders sent and focused on completed sales and parcels that came back.

That choice of outcome keeps the case grounded in the store’s operation, because a dispatched parcel and a completed sale are visibly different events once the carrier records whether the recipient accepted the shipment or returned it.

In this store, according to its owner, the final sales count remained unchanged after prepayment became the rule, while returns fell sharply.

The result supports one ordinary operational decision inside one business: Merkulov kept prepayment because he reported fewer returned parcels without reporting fewer completed sales, a practical outcome that stands without turning his account into a broader theory of demand.