Almost all my transactions are COD type. I am always suspicious about the good intention of the online sites and shy away from providing my financial information. COD is a method where you do not need to provide any data for making payments. Moreover, you're paying when the item is in your hand which assures the transaction.
I don't really like the option to pay on delivery. I always prefer to pay online upfront, so I don't need to prepare any cash in hand. There was once I buy groceries from Tesco Online, and they only have the option to pay on delivery, but it's paying via credit card. It's still fine for me, as I always prefer to pay by credit card rather than cash.
I think this can be a good system for paying. I know many shops online who are making use of the cash on delivery for many products. However almost every one of them have this limit on how much total cost of the products is going to be. You can see that cash on delivery is lot better option for those who are often not at home. For those people it'd be reasonable to go for the pre payment. That always works out.
@overcast I have never paid on COD basis apart from grocery items which I used to buy telephonically from nearby sores when short of time during my stay in Bangalore. In fact they gave free home delivery for orders worth over INR 500 so I took the advantage of getting heavier items like flour, rice and pulses bags because I had no car but a motorbike then. But I prefer buying my grocery in store and check what is best offer to save some money as well by checking discounted items.
I always opt for cash on delivery. In fact, I buy products online only when they have an option for cash on delivery. This makes my shopping tension free and I don't have to keep waiting for my products to reach my door step.
We have the option here to pay on delivery, usually, the delivery is made by postal service. I like this kind of delivery because sometimes I can check the products that I receive and I have the option to reject them and these products will be sent back (this happens only if I don't receive what I wanted or if my items are broken).
There are a lot of companies that offer cash on delivery, and to be honest i prefer this method since it guarantees the product safety.
I usually prefer cash on delivery if I have money on me. Maybe its just I am lazy and I don't want to have to pull out my card and type in the numbers. It really depends if I have cash on me or not and if I plan on purchasing something else in the future.
@NinetyEight The only reason I do not like to buy on CPD basis is that they charge extra for this method. I use COD just for few items like grocery from neighborhood stores which deliver for free if your order value meets their criteria. Most e-commerce sites charge etc in my home country for this purpose or do not have this option available.
Online stores should be careful when they use cash on delivery as one of the payment options for their customers. the reason is that in as much that is a good move by online stores to boost sales and bring confidence among the customers, there is need to provide adequate security to their delivery agents to avoid cases of them being attacked on their way to/during the delivery of those products to customers. I am saying so far we have had cases of delivery agents being killed by customers that placed an order for a particular product to be delivered to them through the online store. Getting adequate information about the buyers from.
@Barida I know what you mean as we see lots of such cases back in my country where shopkeepers become victim of loot while back on their way to home after closing their shops. However we cannot avoid but taking extra care since we have to run a business and risks including daylight robberies in stores/petrol pumps and banks etc.
My online shopping activities are always of an international nature, therefore, I would not be able to enjoy the COD option. I rarely ever use any option other than Paypal to transact my online shopping business because of security reasons.
I can do both, since most stores accept Paypal anyway, so I'm entitled to a refund if anything goes wrong. With COD I think refunding the money is much harder.
