Pickup codes, explained
Why a scanned code is safer than a phone number at the counter, and how the six digits are issued and verified.
A pickup code is the handshake between a parcel and the person collecting it. It is short on purpose — six digits — and it only works once.
Issued with the order
The code is created when the order is prepared for handoff and shown to the sender and the recipient. Nobody has to remember it from a call, and it never travels inside the parcel.
Checked at the counter
Staff scan or type the code, and the terminal asks the platform whether it is valid for that shipment, right now. A code that has already been used is refused, which is what stops a second collection of the same goods.
Why not a phone number?
A phone number identifies a person; it does not identify a parcel. Two shipments to the same customer, or a number read aloud in a busy shop, are exactly the openings this closes.
Where a code cannot be scanned, the fallback is a signed delivery with a photograph and the collector's details recorded against the shipment.