Southeast Asia is pretty diverse. What you said about last mile fulfillment isn't at all true in Thailand. Postal mail is reliable all over the country and there are multiple other fast and reliable delivery services.
When I told this to my friends, they said it's normal. Sometimes they buy books and got taxed twice the price of the books.
Singapore is obviously an outlier, but Malaysia faces the same kinds of issues outside of major cities that every other country in the region does. Solving[1] last-mile delivery for ex-urban SEA is one of the biggest challenges in logistics right now.
1. Which, in many cases, just means "making it semi-reliable and predictable"
That's the biggest stressors in the PH.
I also will never order w/o COD again. Too many times got scammed/never delivered to me.
Wouldn't call it theft per se, but incompetence, yes, but fool me too many times, my fault for being trusting.
Now as a seller, you are pretty much immune from chargebacks and having to delivery a quality product, it's super interesting, low trust dynamic.