Amazon – Managing Suspended Orders

Sometimes on your Manage Your Orders page you can happen to find a received order in pending status. But why does the order appear as pending? And how does one go about managing suspended orders on Amazon? Is it possible to send the goods while the status of the order has still to be regularized? Let’s take a look at the answers to these interesting questions.

Why is a customer’s order suspended?

The first thing we’d like to mention is that an order may be suspended owing to a series of different reasons. However, the most common one usually has something to do with a transactional problem. For example, Amazon may not have been able to obtain authorization to debit the credit card from the customer.

Furthermore, there is also the case of orders handled with Amazon Logistics and free shipping. Oftentimes the customer does not yet receive the order because not all the items purchased are ready for dispatch.

How to handle a suspended order

Amazon cautions to never ship an order marked as Pending, not even when the buyer contacts the seller directly. Instead, it suggests inviting the customer to contact Amazon Customer Service for more information and troubleshooting.

The marketplace also ascertains that it is Amazon that takes on the risk of non-payment by the customer of each order listed in the unshipped, to be confirmed or cancelled status reports on the Manage Your Orders page.

How to Identify Pending Orders

Identifying pending orders is very simple. Simply use your credentials to access the Manage Your Orders page in Seller Central. Then click on the Pending tab.

You can find the suspended orders that are to be handled by Amazon on the View Amazon Logistics Orders tab. Pending orders will not be displayed in the orders report, nor in the report of unshipped orders. However, your inventory will not be updated to reflect the order.

Having said that, the quantity available for sale is subtracted from the seller’s quantity in Manage Your Inventory. For example, let us assume that the available quantity was one when the order was placed. While the order is being processed the offer will be removed from the product page on Amazon’s site. The value in Manage Your Inventory will then appear as zero.

Finally, if orders are in Pending status because Amazon is in the process of verifying the payment method used by the buyer, they cannot be shipped, as they do not yet include the shipping address nor the buyer’s contact information. Once again, Amazon urges its sellers not to ship the goods even if the customer contacts them directly.

As soon as Amazon has checked the payment method, the buttons Confirm Shipping and Cancel Order will be re-enabled in Manage Your Orders. The order will be normally displayed in the orders report or in the unshipped orders report. The seller will then be able to proceed and either dispatch the order or, if deemed necessary, to cancel it.