Methodology

How DeliverAI gathers and verifies courier data

We track 18 South African couriers across price, trust, and market signals. This page documents every source, refresh cadence, sample size, and limitation behind our published data.

CC-BY 4.0 licenceUpdated weeklyPOPIA-aligned

Data layers

Live courier rates

Direct API integrations where available (live quoting from courier partners we integrate with) and structured rate-card extraction for couriers without public APIs. All published prices are VAT-inclusive at 15% South African VAT.

Refresh
Real-time per quote · rate cards updated monthly
Sample
18 couriers · 4 service tiers · 7 weight bands · 4 lane types

Customer trust

Pulled live from the HelloPeter consumer API. We use HelloPeter's own weighted trust index (1–5 scale) which accounts for review recency, response rate, and rating distribution. We do not modify or re-weight these scores. We also report the raw review count and industry rank (HelloPeter's position vs all SA businesses in that category) for transparency.

Refresh
Weekly · Monday 09:00 SAST
Sample
18 couriers tracked · 8 currently scored · 3,500+ underlying reviews

Media attention

Google News RSS query per courier, 7-day rolling window. Mention count = unique news stories indexed by Google News mentioning that courier name in the past 7 days. We do not classify sentiment — this is a volume signal only, useful for outreach timing and competitive narrative tracking.

Refresh
Weekly · Monday 09:00 SAST
Sample
18 couriers · 7-day rolling window

Macro context

Stats SA bulletin endpoints for CPI (transport, freight), retail trade, and e-commerce quarterly data. These provide sector-wide signals affecting parcel volume that contextualise individual courier performance.

Refresh
As Stats SA publishes (monthly–quarterly)
Sample
Official Stats SA P0141, P6242.1, P0277

Funnel & engagement

Google Analytics 4 for publisher-side traffic, Microsoft Clarity for heatmaps + session replay (POPIA-safe with input masking on all PII fields), PostHog for product event analytics. Aggregate metrics only — never republished at user level.

Refresh
Continuous
Sample
Publisher-side only; no merchant data is republished

Operating principles

  • Transparency over precision

    Where there is uncertainty we say so explicitly. Sample sizes, refresh dates, and source endpoints are disclosed on every dataset.

  • No re-weighting

    We do not modify or re-weight third-party trust scores. HelloPeter's number is HelloPeter's number; we publish it unchanged. We never average across sources without disclosing the weighting.

  • Open data, open methods

    All published datasets are released under CC-BY 4.0. Methodology is public. Refresh cadence is documented. The pipeline that builds /insights/weekly is the same pipeline we sell to Pro Data subscribers — only the cadence and the depth of historical access differ.

  • No paid placement

    Courier ranking in our quote engine is by price + transit time + customer trust. Rankings cannot be bought. Partner badges and co-marketing arrangements are disclosed separately.

  • POPIA-aligned

    No PII is stored in our analytics layer. Booking data is encrypted at rest. Customer phone numbers and addresses are never exposed to third parties beyond the chosen courier for fulfilment.

Known limitations

  • HelloPeter coverage is uneven — some major SA couriers (Aramex, Fastway, Bob Go, Uber Connect, DHL, FedEx SA, DSV) are not indexed or have very low review counts. We disclose this explicitly rather than imputing scores.
  • Google News mention counts measure indexed news volume only — they do not capture social media, owned-media, or industry-trade press not indexed by Google.
  • Rate cards are snapshots; couriers can and do change pricing between our weekly pulls. For real-time pricing always use the live quote engine.
  • Sample sizes for newer couriers are smaller. Trust scores below 100 reviews are statistically thinner.

Citation & licence

All datasets and reports are released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY 4.0). Free to share, adapt, and republish with attribution.

Suggested citation: DeliverAI, South African Courier Intelligence — [Month Year], https://deliverai.co.za/insights/weekly, accessed [YYYY-MM-DD].

Raw dataset: /api/data/sa-courier-pricing-2026.json

Contact for corrections: hello@deliverai.co.za

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