Despite Seller Pushback, Amazon Revises Buyer-Cancellation Process

Despite protests from sellers when Amazon announced a new way of notifying sellers of buyer cancellation requests, the company began implementing the change last week, it announced yesterday.

Amazon had informed sellers in February that it would no longer send the cancelation-request notices through the buyer-seller messaging system as of April. At the time, Amazon explained:

“We received feedback from many of you that you would like to have a better process to cancel orders without having to search for buyer cancelation requests in the Buyer-Seller messaging tool. You shared that it can be easy to miss seeing cancelation requests because they get lost among multiple buyer-seller messages, which if left unattended can result in product returns and refunds.”

In April, Amazon delayed implementation of the policy and provided additional information, including informing sellers it would continue to send notification of all buyer-initiated order cancellation requests through email (but not through messaging).

In this week’s announcement, Amazon said it had started to rollout the new experience for Buyer Requested Cancellations on May 19 which it expected to be finalized by May 29.

During the transition, buyers are able to submit cancellation requests through the Buyer Seller Messages or through the new cancellation experience through the Manage Order page, so Amazon advised sellers to monitor both the Buyer Seller Messages and the manage orders page throughout the rollout phase.

Sellers reacting to Wednesday’s announcement said it was onerous to scroll through manage order pages looking for possible cancellation requests. One seller offered a solution: “They should make a drop down filter where the other filters are for cancellation requests, that way you filter by that instead of scrolling through all orders. Seems pretty simple to me.”

Another explained, “I’d rather go through 10 messages than 150 orders to locate cancellation requests.”

“There should also be a way to default cancellations at the top of the order list to ensure cancellations are visible to sellers. This should be done immediately,” said another.

Sellers are already worried the change is leading to a hit to their performance metrics.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.