Overview

Order cancellations are an unavoidable part of selling on Amazon, whether they come from buyers changing their minds or sellers unable to fulfill orders. Understanding how cancellations work, how they affect your account health, and how to manage your cancellation settings can help you maintain strong seller metrics and keep your account in good standing.

Key Points / What Sellers Need to Know

• Buyer-initiated cancellations - Buyers can request to cancel an order before it ships. These cancellations generally do not count against your seller metrics, but handling them promptly is important for maintaining customer satisfaction.
• Seller-initiated cancellations - When you cancel an order yourself (for example, due to stock issues), it directly impacts your cancellation rate, which is a key account health metric.
• Cancellation rate threshold - Amazon expects sellers to maintain a cancellation rate below 2.5%. Exceeding this threshold can result in account deactivation or loss of selling privileges.
• Cancellation window - Buyers typically have a short window to cancel orders before they enter the shipping process. Once an order is in the shipping pipeline, the cancellation process changes.
• Shipping settings matter - Your shipping and handling time settings directly affect the cancellation window and how quickly orders move into fulfillment.

How the Cancellation Process Works

When a buyer requests a cancellation, Amazon notifies the seller through Seller Central. If the order has not yet shipped, sellers should acknowledge and process the cancellation promptly. For seller-fulfilled orders, this means confirming the cancellation in your order management dashboard before any shipment is dispatched. If the item has already shipped, the cancellation cannot be processed as a cancellation and instead becomes a return scenario. For FBA orders, Amazon handles cancellations on the seller's behalf since they manage the fulfillment process, and these typically do not affect your cancellation rate.

Managing Your Cancellation Settings

Sellers can adjust their cancellation-related preferences through the shipping settings page in Seller Central. This includes configuring your handling time, which determines how long you have before an order must ship. A longer handling time gives you a larger window to process orders and manage inventory, but it also means buyers have a longer window to cancel. You can access these settings by navigating to the shipping settings page in your Seller Central account. Keeping your handling times realistic and aligned with your actual fulfillment capabilities is essential to reducing both cancellations and late shipments.