How to Process Cancellations Made Within the Early Cancellation Period?
In some countries your customers have the right to cancel their subscriptions within the early cancellation period (Widerufsfrist in Germany) and as a business you are mandated by law to approve the cancellation.
Given below is detailed information on how the cancellation process looks for your customer and for you when a cancellation is made within the early cancellation period from the Customer Self-Service portal:
Prerequisite: Add a custom value for the Early cancellation period setting.
Go to Settings > Subscriptions > And add a numeric value in the Early cancellation period input field.
How does the process look for your customer?
When auto-cancel subscription setting is enabled or disabled and customer selects “immediately” as an option to return the product.
When the auto-cancel subscription setting is enabled or disabled and the customer selects "immediately" as an option to return the product, subscription are automatically cancelled when a customer makes a cancellation request from the Customer Self-service Portal.
This is because the customer has the right to cancel the subscription if the cancellation has been made within the early cancellation period and even if auto-cancel subscription setting is disabled, the subscription gets automatically canceled.
Here’s how the process looks:
- Your customer logs in to their self-service portal and click on CANCEL NOW.
- They continue to fill in the details for the cancellation, such as cancellation type, that is normal cancellation or extraordinary cancellation (depending on what your cancellation settings are), then they continue to select the cancellation reason.
- Then they can decide if they would like to immediately return the product or they would like to return it after the minimum duration. In this case they select immediately.
Important Note: If the subscription request is made outside of the early cancellation period, that if the early cancellation period has passed then the option to return the product “immediately” will not be displayed and the product can only be returned after the minimum subscription period.
- When the customer proceeds with the cancellation, the subscription is cancelled and the customer sees the cancellation confirmation under the subscription.
- The customer receives the Return instructions and subscription cancellation received email from the Email Template.
How does the process look for you?
If you’ve set up the cancellation process and the associated settings then the cancellation process looks like this:
- The auto renew button is turned off (if it was originally in an active state).
- The subscription is set to pending return and you see the tag cancelled by customer to denote that the cancellation has been made by the customer.
- The subscription immediately gets cancelled.
There are no further actions required from your side, except to mark the product as returned and refund the payment when the customer returns the product back to you. If the product was not sent yet then you can still mark it as returned to prevent it from going to the return workflow.
- Once the product is back > Go to Returns > Search for the product (you can use the Order ID or customer name to search for the product) > Click on the Order > In the Return window check the box for Delete future recurring payment > And finally click on the MARK AS RETURNED button.
Refunding the payment: We recommend processing the refund only after you've received the product from the customer.
- To refund the payment > Go to the Orders Tab > Search for the Order > Click on the Order to go to the Order Detail view > Click on the three dots in the top right corner > Click on Refund Order > In the Refund Order window fill in the necessary details and choose if its a Partial refund or full refund > Once you're satisfied with your selection click on the REFUND x,xx€ button.
When auto-cancel subscription setting is enabled or disabled and the customer selects “after minimum duration” as an option to return the product.
- Your customer logs in to their self-service portal and click on CANCEL NOW.
- They continue to fill in the details for the cancellation, such as cancellation type, that is normal cancellation or extraordinary cancellation (depending on what your cancellation settings are), then they continue to select the cancellation reason.
- Then they can decide if they would like to immediately return the product or they would like to return it after the minimum duration. In this case they select After minimum duration.
Important Note: If the subscription request is made outside of the early cancellation period, that if the early cancellation period has passed then the option to return the product “immediately” will not be displayed and the product can only be returned after the minimum subscription period.
- When the customer proceeds with the cancellation, the subscription goes into the “cancellation requested” state and the customer sees the cancellation confirmation under the subscription.
- The customer receives the Subscription cancellation received email from the Email Templates
How does the process look for you?
If you’ve set up the cancellation process and the associated settings then the cancellation process looks like this:
- The auto renew button is turned off (if it was originally in an active state)
- The subscription is set to NOT set to pending return and stays in the active state. You see the tag cancelled by customer to denote that the cancellation has been made by the customer and that the cancellation will be processed on the end date.
- When the subscription end date has arrived, the customer receives the Return instruction email from the Email Templates.
- There are no further actions required from your side, except to mark the product as returned when the customer returns the product back to you.
- Once the product is back > Go to Returns > Search for the product (you can use the Order ID or customer name to search for the product) > Click on the Order > In the Return window check the box for Delete future recurring payment > And finally click on the MARK AS RETURNED button.
Refunding the payment: We recommend processing the refund only after you've received the product from the customer.
- To refund the payment > Go to the Orders Tab > Search for the Order > Click on the Order to go to the Order Detail view > Click on the three dots in the top right corner > Click on Refund Order > In the Refund Order window fill in the necessary details and choose if its a Partial refund or full refund > Once you're satisfied with your selection click on the REFUND x,xx€ button.