Effective May 23, 2022, we are changing the way sellers manage buyer-initiated order cancelations for seller-fulfilled orders.
Cancelation process:
To request an official order cancelation, a buyer must go to Your Account, click Your Orders, and select Request cancelation.
To cancel an order requested by a buyer, follow the steps mentioned below:
The images below show example of Step 2 and 3. On your Manage orders page, select the order you want to cancel and click Cancel order.
Example of Step 4. From the dropdown menu select the reason for cancelation as Buyer canceled.
A buyer requesting a cancelation solely via the Buyer-Seller messaging service without following the official cancelation process is considered an unofficial channel for buyers to cancel orders. Accordingly, if you cancel an order in response to a request from a buyer via the Buyer-Seller messaging service, this unofficial cancelation will impact your cancelation rate metric.
To avoid canceling an order in a manner that impacts your metrics, you can respond to the buyer's message, and request the buyer to submit a cancelation using the official process above.
Use the following instructions in your response: “You can find the order in your Amazon account. Go to Your Account, then click Your Orders, and select Request cancelation."
For sellers who use order reports to process orders, an optional additional field called is-buyer-requested-cancelation is available on your order reports. The is-buyer-requested-cancelation column will have a TRUE value if there is a buyer cancelation request for the order and FALSE otherwise.
You can view the image below.
You can view all orders which have buyer-initiated cancelation requests in your order reports by switching on the toggle option for the field called Buyer Requested Cancel available by accessing Add or remove order report columns.
You can view the image below.
Orders API
To highlight buyer-requested cancelations to sellers, Amazon will be updating the Orders API section.
Marketplace Web Service (MWS) API
When a buyer initiates an order-cancelation request:
Selling partner (SP)-API
Similar to the orders API, for SP-API, when a buyer initiates an order cancelation request:
1. The ordersV0GettOrderItemsList operation will include an isBuyerRequestedCancel flag and buyerCancelReason string for each OrderItem in the response when the order has a buyer-initiated cancelation.
2. The isBuyerRequestedCancel flag will be set to True if the order has a buyer-initiated cancelation request.
3. The buyerCancelReason will display the reason for cancelation specified by the buyer.
We received feedback from sellers saying they would like to be notified of buyer-initiated order cancelations in a way that they wouldn’t miss these requests, thereby reducing returns and refunds.
There are no changes to the cancelation rate policy or how the cancelation rate metric is calculated. For more information, go to Cancelation rate.
Yes. You will be notified of the official buyer-initiated cancelation request via:
No. If you don’t use order reports, you will be notified of buyer-initiated cancelations through email, the Manage orders page on Seller Central, and via APIs. The advantage of downloading order reports is that you are able to see all buyer-initiated cancelations in a single report. You will need to switch the toggle option to enable the field called Buyer Requested Cancel.
If a buyer requests an order cancelation via the Buyer-Seller messaging service only, it is considered an unofficial request. If you cancel the order, your cancelation rate metric will be impacted.
Buyer-Seller messaging is considered an unofficial channel for buyers to request an order cancelation. To avoid canceling an order in a way that affects your metrics, respond to the buyer's message and request them to submit a cancelation request using the official process.
Use the following instructions in your response: “You can find the order in your Amazon account. Go to Your Account, click Your Orders, and select Request Cancelation.
Yes, you can continue to communicate with the buyers using Buyer-Seller messages in the same way you currently do today.
Messages about cancelation are considered a critical message, and will be delivered to a buyer even if they have opted out of non-critical messages.
At this time, if the buyer initiates the order cancelation and you choose to go ahead and ship the order, it will not negatively impact your cancelation rate metric.
No, this update will not change the kind of cancelations that can negatively affect your cancelation rate metric.
Cancelation initiated by | Cancelation scenario | Negatively affect cancelation rate? |
Buyer | 1. I am canceling as the buyer submitted an official cancelation request | No |
2. I am canceling as the buyer asked me to cancel solely through Buyer-Seller messaging service (unofficial cancelation processes) | Yes | |
Seller | 1. I am canceling as my item went out of stock | Yes |
2. I am canceling as the address was undeliverable | Yes | |
3. I am canceling as the buyer was unresponsive | Yes | |
Amazon | 1. The order was auto canceled by Amazon as the seller did not confirm shipment within 7 days of ship-by-date | Yes |
2. The order was auto canceled by Amazon as we detected the buyer to be fraudulent | No | |
3. Payment verification failed so the order was canceled by Amazon | No |