etzee

The seller cancelled my order

Your money comes back to the card you paid with. What it costs you, and what it costs them.

The Metzee team15 Oct 20262 min read

You are refunded to your original payment method. The whole amount, including delivery. Nothing is kept and there is nothing for you to claim.

A cancellation by the store is recorded as theirs, with a reason.

Why it happens

The stock was not there. The commonest one by far, and usually a store that sold the same item twice or forgot something had gone.

It broke before posting.

The delivery turned out not to work — an address the courier will not reach, or a weight that made the parcel uneconomic.

A mistake in the listing the seller did not want to send you anyway.

What it costs you

Time, and the item. Which is genuinely annoying, especially if you won it in a show and turned down something else.

Nothing in money. No fee, no strike, nothing against your account. A cancellation by the store is not your doing and is not recorded against you.

If the money has not reappeared, a card refund takes a few days to show. How refunds work

What it costs them

More than people assume, which is why it is rare from a good store.

It counts against their standards. Cancellation rate is one of the six measured things, and it is the one with the tightest thresholds — a store that cancels regularly is visibly worse than one that does not.

No fee is earned, because a fully refunded order is not a sale at all. So there is no version where a store profits from cancelling you.

What to do

Nothing is required. The refund is automatic.

Read the reason. It is on the order, and it usually tells you whether to bother asking about the item again.

Ask if you still want it. "Will you have another?" is a reasonable message and stores often do.

Leave a review if it was handled badly — the cancellation is a fact, how they told you is the thing worth recording. Can I leave a review?

If it keeps happening with one store

Report it. A pattern of cancelling after winning bids is a different thing from bad luck, and it can be a seller who did not like the price the auction reached. That is not allowed and Metzee wants to know. How to raise an issue

For sellers reading this

Keep stock accurate and cancel early rather than late. A cancellation on day one is forgivable; one on day six, after the buyer has waited, is the one that produces the review you cannot undo. How to cancel an order

More: how refunds work, what each order status means, how to raise an issue.

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