5 Effective Hacks to Reduce Product Weight Discrepancies

Today, every online business is gunning to deliver their best to their customers and setting up benchmarks for their competitors by overcoming challenges. There is a lot that goes behind delivering a product to the end-user which a seller needs to look after. Weight discrepancies and disputes with courier services are one such factor. 

Let us understand what Weight Discrepancy is and how it can be reduced in your e-commerce business.

What Do You Mean By Weight Discrepancies?

Once an order is placed by a customer, the product is then picked up by the shipping carrier of your choice( or automatically, in some cases). This shipping carrier then weighs your product and measures its height, weight, product packaging, etc. There might be a difference in the weight you measured and the one measured by a shipping carrier, creating an impact on the shipping cost of your product.

A shipping carrier sends in a weight discrepancy issue if the shipping costs increase due to the weight of the product, about to get shipped. It is a dispute due to the difference in the weight measured by the shipping company and the seller. This weight can lead to changes in the total amount of the parcel to be delivered. Such disputes can happen due to inexact weight measurement that can be avoided by being cautious while measuring weight. Courier companies have specific machines installed which help them in quantifying the accurate volumetric weight.

What to do to Reduce Weight Disputes?

The following steps can help you in reducing the weight disputes due to weight discrepancies:

1)Correct Measurement of Volumetric Weight

Volumetric weight is the shipment’s dimensional weight which is calculated by dividing the product of length, breadth, and height by 5000(This divisor of 5000 can vary from carrier to carrier). All the dimensions are to be measured in centimeters. 

It is significant for the seller to measure the length, breadth, and height of the product after packaging to know the exact weight.

2)Keeping an Image Record of The Product

A seller should have a proper image record of the product before shipping it, as this image can be considered essential proof while presenting any claim. You can click pictures while measuring the dimensions of the package. You may also make a video for the same. 

3)Map Packaging with SKUs

Mapping packaging material with product SKUs is also an important technique to reduce weight discrepancies. We can understand it better with the help of this example. If your product weighs 1000 gms and is shipped in a particular box, you can map the SKU with this box and this particular packaging can be done for all the orders. By doing this, the volumetric weight for every SKU will be the same. This will help you in having a hassle-free shipping experience.

4)Outsourcing with the right Shipping Partner

A seller can outsource the e-commerce fulfillment of its business operations for its smooth functioning. A logistics aggregator will help a seller in looking after all the weight discrepancies and take action on them within a set time frame. One of the options for a logistics partner can be Shyplite, a single dashboard that lets you ship across 26000+ pin codes. It gives you a platform to see the discrepancies and accordingly take action on them within seven days.

5)Automating the irregular package measuring

It is one of the significant reasons for weight disputes. Irregular shapes like tubes and poly bags need to be weighed in cubic measurement. Doing a Cubic calculation manually won't be fruitful and, therefore, a dimensioning system is required to calculate the weight with more perfection. Automation of this process will result in reducing the weight of the package.

Conclusion 

An online seller can seek help from logistics aggregators to ease off and better handle their weight discrepancy issues. A seller has to keep the above-mentioned points in mind to create a promising business environment for their business to boom.