Variable Weight Online: What 500g Commits You To

You list a 500 g cut. You ship 470 g. The customer puts it on a kitchen scale and photographs the reading. That is the variable weight problem, and it runs through pricing, listing copy, refunds, ratings and the Legal Metrology Act.

First a disambiguation, because two problems share a word. Courier weight discrepancy disputes is the carrier billing you for a heavier parcel than you packed, and dimensional weight is about the box. This is the opposite direction: the customer receiving less product than the pack declares. Different counterparty, different evidence, different law. And not only a meat problem. Fruit, cheese cut from a wheel, bulk grains and jewellery sold by gram all carry it.

What a declared net quantity commits you to

Under rule 2(f) of the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011, net quantity is the quantity contained in the package, excluding the packaging or wrapper. The tray and the absorbent pad under a chicken breast are tare, not product.

Rule 22 sets the maximum permissible error by reference to the First Schedule, and rule 2(e) defines it as an error in deficiency not exceeding those limits. The First Schedule works in bands of declared quantity, some expressed as a percentage of the declaration and others as a flat number of grams or millilitres. Read the current schedule for your band, because the allowance changes shape as the pack gets bigger. Do not run a line off one remembered percentage.

Rule 22(2) is the part operators miss. It names the three causes of variation the allowance exists to absorb: unavoidable deviation in weighing in good packaging practice, ordinary exposure to climate, transport and storage in good distribution practice, and the nature of the packaging material. Deliberate underfill is not on that list.

And the test runs on a lot, not a pack. Under rule 19 as substituted in 2017, a lot is approved for sale only if the statistical average of the net quantity in the sample packages equals or exceeds the declared quantity, and no sampled pack is short by more than the maximum permissible error. The allowance is a tolerance around a target you must hit on average, not a budget you may spend on every unit.

Pre-packaged, or weighed in front of the buyer

Section 2(l) of the Legal Metrology Act, 2009 defines a pre-packaged commodity as one which, without the purchaser being present, is placed in a package of whatever nature, whether sealed or not, so that the product in it has a pre-determined quantity. A shop that weighs and wraps in front of you fails both limbs, which is why the counter sits outside these rules.

An online order is not that. The purchaser is absent when the cut is weighed and wrapped. Whether a cut-to-order item has a pre-determined quantity, when the quantity is whatever the knife produced, is the genuinely unsettled part, and I found no clarification from the Legal Metrology Division of the Department of Consumer Affairs that resolves it. Treat it as unsettled and price the risk. Assuming the rules apply costs you a declaration you were making anyway.

Rule 3 will not rescue you either. It lifts the chapter only for packages above 25 kg or 25 litre and for goods meant for industrial or institutional consumers. A consumer order is neither. And rule 6(10), inserted by the 2017 amendment rules and in force from 1 January 2018, puts the declarations on the digital and electronic network used for the transaction, with correctness on the seller where a marketplace is a passive intermediary.

Writing a weight range honestly

You cannot declare a range as the net quantity. The declaration is one number and the average has to meet it. Move the variance into the description.

Two constructions work. Declare the floor and overfill, so the average sits above the declaration and no pack falls beyond the allowance. Or declare the true average and hold the spread tight. The first costs give-away grams, the second costs dispute handling, and both are defensible. Declaring an aspirational number is what produces the kitchen scale photograph.

Write it plainly. Net weight 500 g, 2 to 3 pieces tells a buyer what to expect. Approx 500 g in the title tells them nothing and does not widen the allowance. The duty follows your advertising too: rule 31 requires an advertisement mentioning the retail sale price of a pre-packaged commodity to declare the net quantity as well, in the same font size as the price.

Pricing by weight without breaking the catalogue

Rule 6, as amended by the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Amendment Rules, 2021 notified as G.S.R. 779(E) on 2 November 2021, requires a unit sale price: per gram where the net quantity is under one kilogram, per kilogram where it is more, rounded to two decimals.

A marketplace catalogue, though, prices a listed SKU, not a weighed transaction. Charging the actual delivered weight after the fact breaks the order value, the invoice and the settlement, and it surfaces as a reconciliation exception before the customer notices. So fix the price against a declared net quantity, absorb the variance in your costing, and where the spread is wide, split it into weight band SKUs rather than one elastic listing. That is a pack architecture call, next door to pack size strategy. A deliberate weight reduction is a different decision with a different cost, set out in price increase against grammage cut.

The refund when the weight is short

Write the rule before the first ticket arrives. A proportional refund on the deficit is the honest default. A full refund on a 6 percent shortfall teaches customers to weigh every parcel, and store credit on a weight complaint reads as a dodge. The wider machinery is in refund policy design.

Two things decide whether you win the argument. The first is your scale. Section 24 of the Legal Metrology Act, 2009 requires a weight or measure to be verified before use in a transaction, with reverification on the cadence in the Legal Metrology (General) Rules, 2011. An unverified packing line scale loses you the dispute and creates a second exposure at once. The second is your record. Log packed weight against the order, the discipline that also recovers wrong, missing and damaged return claims.

Then watch the review text, not the star. A short weight complaint reads as cheating rather than as a defect, so it costs more per instance than a late delivery. Answer with the packed weight and the refund already issued. Never argue the tolerance in public.