A customer orders premium ribeye steaks for their anniversary dinner. What arrives? Chicken thighs and ground beef.
These aren’t just shipping mistakes. They’re mispicks—and for eCommerce DTC brands, especially those shipping perishables, they’re profit killers.
What Exactly Are Mispicks?
A mispick happens when the wrong item gets selected and packed during order fulfillment. It’s not a shipping error or damaged package—it’s when your warehouse team physically picks the incorrect product from the shelf.
Common mispick scenarios include:
- Wrong product entirely: Customer orders salmon, receives chicken.
- Wrong size or quantity: 2 items instead of 3.
- Wrong variant: Regular instead of organic.
- Substitution errors: Picking an unapproved alternative without customer consent.
Unlike other fulfillment mistakes, mispicks happen at the source—meaning the wrong product gets the full shipping treatment, complete with proper packaging and temperature control, making them expensive to correct.
The Real Cost of Getting It Wrong
Most brands track obvious metrics: delivery times, packaging costs, customer acquisition. But mispicks? They can fly under the radar while systematically destroying margins.
Here’s what a single mispick actually costs:
Immediate refund or replacement: 100% of the original order value
Expedited reshipping: Often 2-3x normal shipping costs to fix the problem quickly
Customer service overhead: Multiple touchpoints to resolve the issue
Inventory waste: The wrong items shipped often can’t be recovered or resold
Brand damage: Lost trust that leads to reduced lifetime value
Industry data shows that a single mispick can cost 4-6x the original order value when you factor in all the downstream effects.
Why Mispicks Are Worse for Frozen and Refrigerated Products
In eCommerce, mistakes are never ideal—but in cold-chain logistics, they can be catastrophic.
When you’re shipping frozen or refrigerated products, the margin for error disappears. Here’s why:
Wasted Inventory: Unlike shelf-stable goods, mispicked perishables usually can’t be returned, reused, or resold. That’s pure margin loss.
Broken Trust: A single error in a subscription box or meal kit can break a customer’s confidence permanently, even if the rest of the experience was great.
High-Stake Moments: Customers order perishable products for birthdays, holidays, and dinner parties. These are time-sensitive, high-emotion moments.
Narrower Recovery Windows: Replacements must be fast and precise. That means higher costs, greater operational pressure, and no room to wait or pause.
The Hidden Culprits Behind Mispick Rates
Most fulfillment operations focus on speed, but mispicks happen when systems prioritize velocity over accuracy:
Similar SKUs and Storage: When “dogfood-8oz” and “dogfood-12oz” are stored next to each other, pick errors multiply.
Training Gaps: Seasonal workers don’t know the difference between products that look similar but serve different purposes.
System Failures: Outdated picking systems and manual processes mean errors get packed and shipped before anyone catches them.
What Leading Brands Are Doing Differently
The brands with the lowest mispick rates build systems that make errors nearly impossible:
Multiple Verification Points: Smart operations use scan verification before any box gets sealed.
Real-Time Inventory Accuracy: When inventory counts are wrong, mispicks follow. Systems that update in real-time ensure accurate picking.
Failure Analysis: Every mispick gets tracked back to root cause—training, process, or technology—to prevent the next one.
The Path Forward
Reducing mispick rates requires systematic changes to processes, technology, and accountability.
For perishable brands, the margin for error is razor-thin. Customers who trust you with their fresh food deliveries expect perfection—and they have every right to.
The question isn’t whether you can afford to invest in better accuracy, it’s whether you can afford not to.
Ready to improve your pick accuracy?
Contact us: partnerships@gripshipping.com
