Overview

Amazon has a specific process for handling buyer-initiated order cancelations on seller-fulfilled orders. Understanding how this system works is essential because the way you process these cancelations directly impacts your cancelation rate metric — a key performance indicator that affects your account health.

Key Points / What Sellers Need to Know

• Buyer-initiated cancelations don't hurt your metrics — When a buyer follows the official cancelation process and you select the correct reason code, the cancelation is excluded from your cancelation rate metric.
• The correct reason code is critical — You must select the buyer-requested cancelation reason when canceling. Choosing any other reason will count against your metrics even if the buyer asked you to cancel.
• Unofficial cancelation requests do count against you — If a buyer asks you to cancel via Buyer-Seller Messaging instead of the official process, and you cancel the order, it will negatively impact your cancelation rate.
• A banner identifies buyer cancelation requests — Orders with pending buyer cancelation requests display a prominent banner on the Manage Orders page so you can easily spot them.
• Order reports include a cancelation flag — An optional column called is-buyer-requested-cancelation is available in your order reports, showing TRUE or FALSE for each order.

How the Official Cancelation Process Works

When a buyer wants to cancel a seller-fulfilled order, they must go through Amazon's official cancelation flow in their account by navigating to their orders, selecting the relevant order, and choosing to request a cancelation. If the buyer submits the request more than 30 minutes after placing the order, you will receive an email notification. The cancelation request also appears directly on your Manage Orders page with a banner indicating the buyer has requested the order be canceled. To process the cancelation, navigate to the order, click to cancel it, and select the buyer-requested cancelation reason from the dropdown. Both you and the buyer will receive confirmation emails once the cancelation is complete.