Amazon is slow to make changes to the buyer cancellation process and has provided more information about the changes. Amazon will now roll out the new process on May 10 instead of April 27.
Many sellers expressed concern about the impact of the changes on them in the following comments announcement:
Update on upcoming changes to buyer-initiated order cancellations
We recently announced changes to the process for handling buyer cancellation requests for seller-fulfilled orders. These changes were originally scheduled to take place on April 27, 2022, but will now take effect on May 10, 2022.
We have received your feedback on the ad and wanted to answer your frequently asked questions.
1) Will I still receive an email notification when I receive an order cancellation request?
Yes. You will continue to receive email notifications for all buyer-initiated order cancellation requests
2) What should I do if a buyer requests a cancellation in Buyer-Seller Messaging, and does not respond when I ask them to officially cancel their order by submitting a cancellation request in “Your Orders”?
If a customer requests a cancellation only in the buyer-seller messaging tool, this is considered an unofficial cancellation, and canceling it will impact your cancellation rate metrics. To cancel their order, the buyer must go to Your Account, Your Orders, and select Request Cancellation.
If the buyer doesn’t respond to your request in the buyer-seller messaging tool, you can send a critical message. Your email will be delivered to a buyer even if they have opted out of receiving non-critical messages.
3) Will I need to download order reports to see buyer-initiated cancellations?
No. You will be notified of buyer-initiated cancellation requests via email, through the Manage Orders page and APIs.
If you use Order Reports to process orders, you can enable the Buyer Requested Cancellation field to show cancellation requests in your Order Reports. The benefit of downloading order reports is that you can see all buyer-initiated cancellations in one report.
Thank you for your opinion. We will continue to monitor forum responses for further questions.
We’ve updated our help page to include the above details. For more information, see Upcoming changes to the buyer-initiated order cancellation process.
Ina Steiner
