7 Shipping Label Printing Mistakes That Get Meesho, Flipkart and Amazon Orders Rejected
A rejected pickup or a return-to-origin (RTO) rarely comes down to one big error — it's usually one of a handful of small, repeatable printing mistakes. Here are the ones we see most often, and the quick fix for each.
1. Printing at the wrong scale
Using "Fit to page" instead of "Actual size" in the print dialog is the single most common cause of undersized barcodes and shifted label content. Always print label PDFs at actual size, and double-check your printer's paper size setting matches your roll or sheet.
2. Leaving the invoice attached to the label
Some marketplace PDFs combine the invoice with the label on one page. Printed as-is on a thermal roll, this either wastes label stock on invoice text or, on some templates, pushes the barcode itself off the printable area. Crop the label out before printing — see our Meesho and Flipkart guides.
3. Low print darkness on a thermal printer
A thermal printer set too light produces a barcode that looks fine on screen in the PDF preview but is too faint for a courier's scanner to read reliably. If scans are being manually re-keyed at pickup, increase the darkness/heat setting a few notches.
4. Reusing an old label after editing the order
If an order's address or size changes after the label was first generated and printed, the marketplace's system may generate a new label with a different tracking number — shipping with the old, now-invalid label causes a mismatch at the courier's end. Always regenerate and reprint the label after any order edit, rather than reusing what was printed earlier.
5. Wrong paper size in the printer driver
If the printer driver's configured paper size doesn't match the physical roll or sheet loaded, prints can come out cropped, blank, or offset. This is a common cause of the "blank label" problem — see our full thermal printer troubleshooting guide.
6. Smudged or low-resolution barcodes from a low-quality printer or ribbon
Even at the correct size and darkness, a worn thermal print head or a near-empty ribbon (on ribbon-based thermal transfer printers) can produce barcodes with gaps or streaks that fail to scan. If scan failures are inconsistent across labels rather than affecting every print, this is worth checking before assuming it's a software or file problem.
7. Mixing up labels when printing in bulk
Printing many individual order PDFs one at a time makes it easy to lose track, skip one, or print the same label twice by mistake — which causes a mismatched label-to-package pairing at packing. Combining your batch into a single merged file with a clear page order removes this risk; see our guide on merging order label PDFs before printing.
The common thread: almost all of these come down to the label's page size, scale or content not matching what the printer or scanner expects — not a fundamentally broken file. Getting the crop, size and print settings right once, consistently, eliminates most rejection causes in this list.
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