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Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Shipping & Courier

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At a glance

Live count of DPD claims currently open (filed but not settled or denied). Open claims = trapped cash, unfulfilled customer expectations, and an ageing backlog if not chased. Real-time view, refreshed every webhook from MyDPD’s Claims API.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your DPD data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A UK premium-DTC fashion brand (AOV £160, ~12,000 parcels / month). Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 12 Mar 26. The card reads 28. Five things to notice:
  1. The >0 unresolved >7d alert is tripped, 14 claims sit in the 7+ days bucket. This is normal for a 12k-parcel-a-month account; DPD’s SLA is 7 to 21 working days, so a backlog this size is expected. The actionable subset is the 4 in 14 to 21 days (likely waiting on customer evidence) and the 2 over 21 days (definitely stalled).
  2. The 28 corresponds to ~0.23% of monthly parcel volume. Industry benchmark for premium-DTC on DPD UK is ~0.15 to 0.30%. This brand sits at the high end of normal; not a network problem but worth tracking for trend.
  3. The £4,620 trapped is real cash. At 21-day stall rate of ~7%, expect ~£325 to be permanently denied. DPD typically settles 75 to 85% of legitimate claims; the rest are denied for evidence gaps (no POD photo dispute, no signed declaration of non-receipt).
  4. Cross-reference with Exception Rate. This brand’s exception rate was 1.58% on the 30D window. Of the 189 exceptions in that count, ~28 became claims (15% claim-conversion rate, typical for premium DTC). The remainder either resolved with the customer (refund-and-resend) or were absorbed.
  5. 2 claims over 21 days are the urgent action. Pull these from MyDPD, escalate to the DPD account manager, and force resolution. Each day past 21 lowers the settle-rate ~2 pp; a 30-day-old claim is roughly 50/50 to be denied.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Open claims is the cash-trapped real-time signal. Pair it with these to see what is driving the backlog and what it costs.

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in DPD’s own dashboard: MyDPD Business portal -> Claims -> Open Claims, with toggles for status, age, and depot. The closest like-for-like view is All Open, All Statuses, All Ages. Per-claim audit at Claims -> [claim ID] with the full evidence trail and DPD-side notes. Why our number may legitimately differ from MyDPD’s portal: Cross-connector reconciliation against commerce platform unfulfilled:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

DPD vs DPDLocal claim handling, is one easier to file? Both ride the same DPD Group claims process and the same MyDPD-portal Claims interface, so file-time experience is identical. The differences are at the SLA: DPD has a contracted 7 to 21 working-day claim SLA on premium accounts; DPDLocal SLAs vary (typically 10 to 28 days). Settle-rate is also slightly higher on DPD (~80%) vs DPDLocal (~75%) because DPD account managers escalate borderline claims. For high-value parcels, DPD is materially better at recovery; for low-value parcels (<£20) the difference is small. How is in-slot delivery measured, and does an out-of-slot generate a claim? No. Slot misses are not claims. The parcel arrived; the customer paid for a 1-hour or 30-minute window and got it outside that window. The remedy is a refund-of-the-£4.95-slot-fee, processed by the merchant’s CS team, not via DPD’s claims system. Track the volume on Predict Slot Accuracy and the resulting CS tickets on Jira. How does DPD’s predict-app integration affect claim filings? The DPD app sends customers POD photos automatically, which dramatically reduces “delivered to wrong door” disputes (the most common false-positive claim). App-using customer bases generate ~30% fewer claims of this type. The app does not affect lost-in-transit or damaged-in-transit claims, which depend on network conditions, not customer-side visibility. Why is the count rising during peak even though DPD’s network is stable? Lag from exceptions. Open claims rise ~14 days after exception rate rises. November exceptions (Black Friday volume) feed early-December claim filings; the open-claim count can spike weeks into January even though the network has recovered. Read this card with Exception Rate on a 14-day-shifted basis during and after peak. The customer says “DPD said delivered but parcel didn’t arrive”. Should I file a claim? Yes, immediately. This is the classic false-positive-delivery case. File within 14 days of the alleged delivery date (DPD’s hard cutoff), attach the customer’s signed declaration of non-receipt, and request the POD photo from MyDPD. If the photo shows a door that does not match the customer’s address, you will settle in 7 to 14 days. If the photo matches and the customer still claims non-receipt, DPD usually denies; consider a goodwill resend instead. Why are some claims still open more than 21 days? Three usual reasons. (1) Awaiting evidence, DPD asked for the customer’s declaration or proof-of-value invoice and the merchant has not uploaded it yet. (2) Disputed POD, DPD’s POD photo matches the address; the merchant disputes; the case is escalated. (3) High-value review, claims over £500 typically go to a manual reviewer at DPD HQ and add 5 to 10 days. Pull the >21-day cohort from MyDPD, work each case individually; do not let them age further. What is the returns flow and what does it have to do with claims? DPD returns ride either DPD’s “Inbound Consumer Returns” service or a manual courier return. Most returns do not generate claims (the parcel was returned cleanly). A small subset (<2% of returns) become claims if the return parcel itself was damaged or lost in transit, treated as a fresh outbound for claim purposes. Track on Returned to Sender. Why is today’s count high but the trend looks fine? Real-time spikes are usually filing batches; many merchants file claims weekly in a Friday batch. The spike on Friday afternoon is normal, watch the rolling 7-day count. Nothing acute should be flagged based on a single hour’s reading. Multi-shipper strategy, when does DPD’s claim-recovery rate justify the premium? Across a typical premium-DTC mix, DPD’s higher settle rate (~80% vs ~50% on Evri) recovers ~£0.80 per £1 of claim value compared with ~£0.50. For a 12,000-parcel-a-month brand at AOV £160 with 1.5% exception rate (180 exceptions, ~30 claims per month, ~£5,000 claim value), the difference is ~£1,500 per month in recovered cash on DPD vs Evri. That is roughly £18,000 per year, materially offsetting the £2-per-parcel premium at this volume. The maths breaks down at low AOV (<£40) where claim values are small and recovery rates matter less.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Open Claims is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across DPD and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.