How to compare courier prices in Nigeria, and what the cheapest price leaves out
The cheapest quote is not always the cheapest delivery. How carriers work out a price, why the size of the box matters as much as its weight, and five questions to ask before you choose.
The EviPostal team · 3 min read
Ask three couriers what it costs to send a parcel from Lagos to Abuja and you will get three different answers. Sometimes the gap is large. Before you pick the lowest number, it helps to know how those numbers are made, and what one quote can include that another leaves out.
How a carrier works out a price
Most prices come from four things:
- Where the parcel is going. Carriers group places into zones. A big city on a main route usually costs less than a small town far from it.
- How heavy it is.
- How big it is. This is the one people forget.
- The service. Express, standard and economy services on the same route can differ a lot in price and in speed.
Why the size of the box matters
A large box of pillows weighs little but takes up a lot of space in the van. So carriers work out a volumetric weight from the size of the box: length × width × height in centimetres, divided by a number the carrier sets, often 5,000. You are charged for whichever is higher, the real weight or the volumetric one.
A 60 × 40 × 40 cm box comes to 19.2 kg of volumetric weight at that divisor, even if what is inside weighs 3 kg. Pack the same items in a smaller box and the price can fall sharply. That is why a fair comparison needs the real size of the box, not only its weight.
Five questions before you choose
1. Is it the same parcel? Compare quotes for the same weight, the same box size and the same addresses. A quote for "about 2 kg" is not a quote.
2. How long will it take? A cheaper service that arrives three days later may cost you a customer. Look at the estimated delivery time next to the price.
3. Pickup or drop-off? Some prices assume you take the parcel to the carrier; others include collection from your door.
4. How long is the price good for? Quotes expire. A price you saw yesterday may not be the price you pay today.
5. What happens if it goes wrong? Ask how tracking works, how a failed delivery is handled and how a claim for a lost or damaged parcel is made. A cheap price with no answer to these is not cheap.
Comparing without the phone calls
Calling each courier, or logging into a separate website for each, takes time you do not have at a busy counter. In EviPostal you enter the parcel once: where it is going, its weight and its size. Every carrier you have switched on is asked at the same moment, and the answers come back in one list, cheapest first, with each delivery time beside it. The best value and the fastest are marked, and services that cannot take that kind of parcel are left out.
If you run a shipping store, your own markup sits on top of the carrier's price and your customer sees one clear total.
The short version
- Compare the same parcel, with its real size.
- Look at the delivery time next to the price.
- Check what the price includes: pickup, tracking, claims.
- Book while the quote is still valid.
Try it for a route you send often on the rate calculator.
