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Frequently asked questions
How COD Flex scores your native Cash-on-Delivery orders for refusal risk, learns from refused parcels, keeps its COD totals in sync, and prints courier labels.
Getting started
What does COD Flex do?
COD Flex scores your Cash-on-Delivery orders for refusal risk so you don't pay to ship parcels that come back. Buyers pay with Shopify's own native COD method at checkout — COD Flex never places orders and never touches checkout. When a COD order comes in, COD Flex rates how likely it is to be refused (from the buyer's past refusals, the delivery region and the order value) and tags the risky ones so you call-confirm or hold them before shipping. Refused parcels teach the score, so repeat refusers are caught next time. It also prints local-courier AWB labels and tracks delivery, and refreshes the COD total it displays when you edit an order.
How do I set it up?
Turn on the native "Cash on Delivery" payment method in your Shopify settings (Settings → Payments → Manual payment methods), then open COD Flex → Settings to set your high-risk regions, connect your couriers, and — on Shopify Plus — turn on auto-hide COD for serial refusers. Your COD orders then appear under COD orders, each with a refusal-risk score. There are no scripts to paste and nothing to add to your theme.
Which markets does it support?
COD Flex works for any market. The refusal scoring, the COD-total refresh and the AWB labels work anywhere; the local-courier integrations (Sameday, DPD, FAN, Packeta, Cargus) and hide-COD by postcode/county are tuned for Romania and Central/Eastern Europe.
COD orders & editing
I edited the order in Shopify — does COD Flex keep up?
Yes, and there's nothing to run. Whenever you change a COD order's items in Shopify, Shopify notifies COD Flex (the orders/updated webhook) and it refreshes its own copy of the COD total, so the amount shown on the COD orders page always matches the current order. That displayed total is all it refreshes — it does not re-issue the AWB with the courier, and there is no invoicing.
Does COD Flex ever create or change my orders?
No. Orders are placed by Shopify's own native checkout when the buyer chooses Cash on Delivery. COD Flex only reads those orders to score them, adds a risk tag, and reads them again to keep its displayed COD total in sync. It never creates orders, never cancels or recreates them, and never changes your order numbers.
Refusal prevention (Romania)
How does “hide COD” work?
In Settings you list the postcodes and counties where COD should not be offered, and turn the rule on. COD Flex installs a Shopify Payment Customization Function that hides the Cash-on-Delivery method at checkout for those delivery addresses — and for any customer you tag codflex-refuser in Shopify — so they pay by card instead. It is Romania-only and takes effect immediately after you save.
Does the app decide who is a refuser automatically?
No. COD Flex hides COD based on the postcodes/counties you configure and the customers you tag yourself. It does not read your customer list to auto-score refusers.
Refusal learning
How does COD Flex learn who refuses?
When a COD parcel comes back refused or returned, COD Flex reads that from your courier's tracking and records a refusal against a hashed reference to the buyer's phone/email — never the raw contact. After a couple of refusals the buyer is flagged, so their next COD order is scored high (and, on Shopify Plus, COD is hidden from them at checkout). It never reads your customer list to auto-score people who haven't refused.
Plans & billing
What do the paid plans add?
Every plan includes refusal-risk scoring on every native COD order, the risk tags, the COD-total refresh, refusal learning and multi-courier AWB labels. Plans differ by how many COD orders you can process per month (Free up to 50, Pro up to 1,000, Scale up to 10,000).
Can I upgrade, downgrade or cancel?
Yes — from the Plans & usage screen in the app, at any time. Billing is handled by Shopify and appears on your normal Shopify bill.
Will I be charged while testing on a development store?
No. Shopify never bills development stores; the regular price applies once a real store subscribes.
Data & privacy
Does COD Flex process customer personal data?
Yes — it has to. To score a COD order and generate the courier AWB it processes the buyer's name, phone, email and delivery address, so it operates at Protected Customer Data Level 1. See our Protected customer data page for exactly what it accesses and stores.
Does it store card details?
Never. Cash-on-Delivery is paid in cash at the door — no card is taken — so there is no card or bank data to store.
Does COD Flex use AI?
No. It is deterministic — the COD-total refresh, hide-COD rules, address matching and tracking are rules, not predictions. Nothing from your store is sent to an AI model.
What happens when I uninstall?
Your access token is revoked immediately, and your shop's stored data is deleted when Shopify sends the shop-redaction request. We also honour the customers/data_request and customers/redact webhooks.
Still have a question?
Email gheorghe.beschea@overheat.agency — we aim to reply within one business day.