A courier rate card is a contract disguised as a spreadsheet. Every seller signs one; almost nobody can explain what a "forward zone" charge is three months later when the invoice arrives 18% higher than expected. Here's the anatomy — the lines that make the bill, and the two that make the disputes.
The freight core: base + slab + zone
Base freight is the per-shipment charge for the first weight unit — usually 500g. Slab increments price every additional unit: the notorious part is that slabs round up, so 501g bills as 1kg and 1.1kg as 1.5kg. Zones map origin-destination pairs into price bands — "within city", "within region", "metro-to-metro", "rest of India" — and the same weight can double in price across them.
Charged weight deserves its own sentence: couriers bill the greater of dead weight and volumetric weight (L×B×H ÷ a divisor, usually 4,500–5,000). A bulky-but-light parcel — a pillow, a lampshade — prices on its dimensions, not the scale.
The service lines
COD fee: flat ₹20–50 or 1.5–2% of collected value — and it's negotiable at volume, which is worth knowing because it's pure margin for the courier. RTO charges: the return leg billed back to you — sometimes full freight, sometimes half, occasionally plus a processing fee on top. Fuel surcharge: a percentage that floats with diesel — legitimate but worth checking it's applied to freight only, not to COD fees and other lines where some invoices quietly add it.
Where the disputes live
Two lines generate nearly every legitimate claim. Weight mismatches — the carrier bills 1.8kg for a 900g parcel. Win these with your own photos: the parcel on a scale next to the label, archived per AWB. RTO handling — parcels billed for returns that were never attempted, or COD remittance shortfalls dressed as fees. Win these with the tracking trail: an NDR event that never happened can't charge a re-attempt fee.
The rest of the card — ODA (out-of-delivery-area) charges, holiday surcharges, appointment delivery fees — is usually honest, but only visible if you read the invoice against the card rather than paying the total.
The rate card isn't the price of shipping. It's the menu the invoice is written from — and invoices assume you won't check.
The bottom line
You don't negotiate a rate card once; you audit it forever. Learn the five lines, archive proof for the two that refund, and check the invoice monthly against both. The merchants who get billed honestly are the ones carriers know are reading.
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