If you need to cancel an order on Etsy, there are a few steps that you’ll need to take, and it’s going to be slightly different depending on whether you’re on desktop or the Etsy seller app.
There are a few reasons why you would want to cancel an order, including refusing the order (read about that here,) having to close your shop temporarily because of an emergency, or having the customer ask to cancel it.
Table of Contents
- How sellers can cancel an order on Etsy.
- Will customers still be able to leave a review if I cancel the order?
- What if I have a no-cancellation policy on Etsy?
- If I cancel an order, will Etsy remove the review?
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How sellers can cancel an order on Etsy.
For a seller to fully cancel an Etsy order, they’ll need to refund the total price of the initial payment, including any cost that the customer paid for shipping, then cancel the order. Etsy has made it easy to cancel and refund at the same time by making the cancel button also issue a full refund.
If you want to refund only the purchase price but not the shipping, you won’t be able to completely cancel the order because a full refund has to be given to the customer before you cancel the order.
No full refund, no cancellation.
How to cancel an order on Etsy on desktop.
To cancel an order on Etsy, go to the orders page on the shop dashboard on desktop and navigate to the order that you want to cancel.
Click on the three dots to the right of the order and choose “cancel.” Follow the prompts to automatically refund the full amount of the order and cancel it at the same time.
If you’re only refunding part of the order, choose “refund” instead of “cancel” and enter the information about the refund amount. That won’t cancel the order, but it will refund the amount that you tell it to.
When you’re choosing a reason from the menu to cancel, choose the one that’s closest to the reason. Sometimes there isn’t a 100% match, so just choose whichever reason fits best.
Etsy doesn’t penalize you for canceling orders, as far as they say. My guess would be that if you’re canceling a lot of orders for no specific reason, they might pay attention to that.
How to cancel an Etsy order on the app.
To cancel an order on the Etsy Seller App, go to the order and select the order that you want to cancel. Tap the three dots at the top of the order page, and select “Cancel Order.” The order will be canceled and refunded at the same time.
(The old Etsy app will only let you fully refund the order, not cancel it. To fully complete the cancellation you need to go to Etsy on a desktop computer and cancel it from the orders page.)
If you cancel an order and it’s still showing up in your orders, it probably wasn’t completely canceled, so go through the process again to make sure it’s gone from your records.
Will customers still be able to leave a review if I cancel the order?
A lot of the time, sellers say that the reason they want to cancel is to end a bad transaction, but they’re worried that the customer will leave a bad review for revenge! Canceling an order should prevent this, but it depends on how fast Etsy processes the cancellation.
(Click here to read an article about how to handle bad reviews on Etsy.)
If you cancel an order, Etsy will process the cancellation and when it goes through on the customer’s end they won’t be able to leave a review.
However, it could take up to 48 hours for that to happen, even though Etsy has started processing cancellations pretty quickly.
So it’s possible that the customer will still be able to sneak a review in, but it’s not as likely as it used to be.
If you don’t cancel the order and you only refund it, the order will still be “live,” and the customer will be able to review the order after the estimated delivery date, or whenever Etsy lets them! It can be unpredictable if you refund, so make sure to cancel, don’t just refund.
What if I have a no-cancellation policy on Etsy?
If you have a no-cancellations-accepted policy in your Etsy shop, you might want to reevaluate it. Unless you do only custom orders, there’s no good way to refuse a cancellation that the customer can’t get around in another way, as long as the order hasn’t been sent yet.
You might refuse to cancel and send the order, pay for the shipping, and the customer could then ask for a refund.
That means they would be sending the item back to you, and depending on the shipping situation, you might have to refund the original cost of shipping it.
The customer could also file a claim using purchase protection, which Etsy may or may not refund. If a claim is filed, there’s always the possibility that Etsy will refund the price of the order out of your revenue.
It’s easier to just cancel the order and avoid any more complications down the road.
You can also have a no-cancellations policy and make exceptions on a case-by-case basis, but in general, it’s easier to avoid saying no cancellations at all.
If I cancel an order, will Etsy remove the review?
If you have a transaction where the customer left a bad review, and you refund and cancel it, the review won’t disappear.
Don’t cancel an order just to try to get rid of a bad review, it won’t work.
Reviews are a way for customers to rate the entire buying experience, not just the product, so sometimes reviews will seem unfair, but you can respond in a professional way if you think that a review isn’t telling the whole story.
For an article about why Etsy probably won’t remove a bad review, click here
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