**Buyer Auto-Cancellation Window** feature

Selling on Amazon Amazon Announcements
, ,
1

Coming soon to a NSFE thread … My orders are disappearing and I don’t know why

You can now set a window to auto-approve buyer cancellation requests

We’re excited to launch the Buyer Auto-Cancellation Window feature. This new feature allows you to set a time frame in which buyers can cancel seller-fulfilled orders without the need for you to manually process the cancellation request.

For example, if you set a two-hour Buyer Auto-Cancellation Window and the buyer cancels their order within two hours, the order will be canceled automatically.

If the buyer requests to cancel their order after the window ends, they’ll have to submit a cancellation request for your manual approval. Once you confirm the shipment of an order, buyers won’t be able to cancel the order.

Buyer-requested cancellations don’t impact your cancellation rate metric.

For more information about cancellations, go to Cancellations FAQ.

To set the Buyer Auto-Cancellation Window, go to General shipping settings.

1 Like
2

There is not a chance in the world that I would ever use this (or a lot of the Amazon ‘helpful’ features.)

At the end of the day if I get a late order I will print it, pack it, label it, AND get it to the PO with the rest of the orders for the day.

When I get back I put in the tracking numbers. With Amazon ‘helping me’ they can cancel an order (and I would not have it in my queue) and I can’t put in the tracking number for the already shipped order (now NON order!)

Amazon – making things useless for Amazon sellers in more and more creative ways…

3

And thus …

You know we will see these type of threads on this.

4

This is a real concern for all of us who do not use Amazon buy-shipping.

1 Like
5

:thinking: Hmm…I don’t think that I mind this option. Buyers already have a 30-minute cancellation grace period; I don’t mind offering an additional 30 minutes, for a total window of 60 minutes/1 hour. I do use Amazon Buy Shipping, though.

Adding 90 minutes, for a two-hour window, would not work for me.

And however we ship, not every Seller can offer a wider window.

1 Like
6

Mayhaps especially those of us who depend upon Third Party Provider software to properly coordinate various eCommerce Marketplaces, as some (including several well-respected members of the SAS/BSFE) have pointed out already in the NSFE News Headline-accompanying discussion here:

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/fcedddd6-c424-46be-83d6-d443385aedbd

I gave the News Headline itself a ‘thumbs-up’ - but I’m also now forced to add something else to my plate, in regards to verifying our current S.O.P. will pass this newest muster, at a particularly-inopportune time of the year.

Gee whiz, y’all - doncha just love Q$ Q4 rollouts of policy changes?

7

Having said above that I would never use this, apparently sellers have no choice since THIS popped up when I checked my ‘capacity’ settings today.

image
image1402×171 11.5 KB

My only hope is that the ‘30 minutes’ default is the standard 30 minute window that buyers have to cancel an order before it goes live.

NOTE – no response to the question that both @TNValleyProducts and I asked about on their introductory thread despite me tagging about a dozen MODS!

1 Like
8

I understand why you have no interest in using this feature.
My workflow is different and I actually kinda like it. I am considering upping the cancellation time from the default 30 minutes they always had to 2 hours.

1 Like
9

So how long into your order processing will you have to adjust to catch all the cancellations made at the 2 hour mark? Do you never have a work in process before two hours is up?

My issue is that if I pack everything up and take the bag(s) to the PO and then do errands or go out to eat I don’t trust Amazon to not cancel something outside their set window.

I get back and find that some ‘nice’ buyer/customer service rep went ahead and cancelled an order well outside the window – like they do with authorizing returns, A-Z claims, and so on after the window has ‘closed’.

1 Like
10

I have a daily pickup from USPS and UPS. I buy shipping when the items are boxed. Therefore, I won’t run into a case like yours where you ship the items before updating Amazon. If the buyer wants to cancel the order after the label is purchased but before the daily pickup, I can process it as a refund, but this is very rare.

1 Like
11

What I would LOVE is to set a window during which buyer-auto-cancellations will always be processed. Like…10pm - 8am.

That way I don’t wake up to someone’s frantic 1am and 4am requests. But yeah during the day/business hours, I often start working on it while it’s pending, and will ship quite quickly if it’s a simple enough order.

Still, Amazon loves to share data. If they said “by extending your window to 2 hours you will automate 95% of cancellation requests, instead of 50% that are requested in the first 30 minutes” then sign me up.

2 Likes
12

Well, we don’t have a definitive answer on the time question but it only took 6 days for Topher_Amazon to get back with a ‘we’ll look into it’ response!

image
image594×596 30.1 KB

13

If they want to give buyers more time to vacillate, why don’t they just increase the hold time before releasing the orders? I predict a window between the buyer choosing to cancel and our shipping queue updating to reflect that choice. Buyer: “why did you ship this order that I cancelled?” Who eats the shipping costs on these, bad feedback, is there another metric coming?

Make it complicated so it can be automated for automation’s sake.

3 Likes
14

The window should be pretty small, like a few minutes at most. When I cancel a buyer requested order through my inventory management program, it updates Amazon and Amazon processes the order cancellation in seconds. A buyer cancelling an order directly in Amazon should be reasonably quick. There should be no reason it takes longer to process a buyer cancelling an order than it does a seller on the buyer’s behalf.

As far as giving buyers more time to waffle, they can already change their minds up to the moment the order is shipped. This just removes the delay where the order stays open until I get around to processing the cancellation request. I can see how this could be an issue for sellers who don’t use Amazon’s shipping and there is a delay between their buying shipping and updating Amazon with the information, but for myself at least, I can’t see a downside with this.

Keep in mind that the current window of 30 minutes can be extended as little as 30 more. Even at my current setting of 2 hours, this still only impacts orders that I am acting on relatively quickly. It’s not like Amazon is revamping the way all order cancellation requests are handled.

I get that this won’t work for everyone, but I’m not sure I see a problem with the option.

2 Likes
15

I set the buyer cancel window at 2 hours.
I got an order yesterday at 1:45PM
Buyer cancelled the order at 2:18PM, or 3 minutes past the 30 minutes they usually get.
I got an email from Amazon at 3:08PM:

Dear Maintak,

Greetings from Amazon.

We have cancelled your order as per customer’s request. Below are the details of the order:

Order ID: XXXXXXXXXXXX
Item(s) to ship:

Name: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
SKU: XXXXXXXXXX
ASIN/ISBN: XXXXXXXXXXX

Please note that your Cancellation Rate metric will not be impacted by this order. Please reach out to seller support Server Busy in case of any queries.

Regards,
Amazon Seller Services Team

Straightforward enough, and I didn’t have to deal with it.

1 Like
16

And, Amazon finally did come back and address the 30 minute issue. It is the original 30 so it’s not an additional period of time.

image
image510×762 51.6 KB

I have mine set at the 30 minutes since I normally do NOT have a backlog of orders. They are normally packed and labelled within an hour or two.

3 Likes
17

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.