When can a buyer cancel an order?
For the first 30 minutes after the order is placed, buyers can cancel their own order using the Cancel Items button located in Your Account > Your Orders on Amazon.
After 30 minutes, the buyer can no longer cancel the order directly, they can only submit a cancelation request for the seller to review. You will receive an email when the buyer requests a cancelation.
Both cancellations and returns are a normal part of the sales operations.
A buyer wants to cancel an order. What should I do?
Depending on the stage for processing the order, the following options may help you to determine next steps:
Official cancellation process that will not count against your Cancellation Rate metrics:
The official process by which a buyer can request an order cancellation is by finding the order they want to cancel in their Amazon account > Your Account > Your Orders > Request Cancellation.
The image 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: Select the reason for cancellation as Buyer canceled from the drop-down menu.
A buyer requesting a cancellation solely via the Buyer-Seller Messaging tool without following the official cancellation process is considered as an unofficial manner for buyers to cancel orders. Accordingly, if you cancel an order in response to a request from a buyer via the Buyer-Seller Messaging tool, this unofficial cancellation will impact your Cancellation 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 cancellation using the official process above.
Use the following instructions in your response: “You can find the order in your Amazon account by clicking Your Account > Your Orders > Request Cancellation”
To review your Cancellation Rate and policy requirements, go to Cancellation Rate.
Amazon will automatically cancel orders if 5 days have passed since the expected shipping availability date and you have not yet shipped and confirmed the shipment.
What kind of cancellations negatively impact your Cancellation Rate metric?
Cancellation initiated by | Cancellation scenario | Negatively impact Cancellation Rate? |
Buyer | 1. I am canceling because the buyer submitted an official cancellation request | No |
2. I am canceling because the customer asked me to through the Buyer-Seller Messaging tool (unofficial cancellation processes) | Yes | |
Seller | 1. I am canceling because my item went out of stock | Yes |
2. I am canceling because the address was undeliverable | Yes | |
3. I am canceling because the buyer was unresponsive | Yes | |
Amazon | 1. The order was automatically canceled by Amazon because the seller did not confirm shipment within 5 days of ship-by-date | Yes |
2. The order was automatically canceled by Amazon because we detected the buyer to be fraudulent | No | |
3. Payment verification failed so the order was canceled by Amazon | No |
For sellers who use order reports to process orders, an optional additional field called is-buyer-requested-cancellation is available on your order reports. The is-buyer-requested-cancellation column will have a “TRUE” value if there is a buyer cancellation request for the order and “FALSE” otherwise. (Shown below)
You can view all orders which have buyer-initiated cancellation requests in your order reports by switching on the toggle button for the field called “Buyer Requested Cancel” (shown below) available by accessing Add or remove order report columns.
MWS API
When a buyer initiates an order-cancellation request:
Selling Partner (SP) - API
Similar to the orders API, for SP-API, when a buyer initiates an order cancellation request: