Why is my issued refund still showing as 'Pending'?

[CPE]

I have issued a refund back to my customer's original method of payment.  On my list of transactions it states the refund is pending, although this was issued on May 19th.

I have a negative balance on my account due to the fact I have not yet received any other sales on the website.  I thought that the refund went back to the customer immediately regardless of my shopify balance and then the balance was sorted when future orders arrived.  

I want to ensure my customer gets his money back.  Is there any way I can 'top-up' the balance from the bank account my payouts are received?

[Helen]

Hi, @CPE! 

I’m Helen from Shopify Support. Thanks for reaching out about this. 

Refunds issued through Shopify Payments are immediately returned to your customer. If it was issued on May 19th, your customer definitely should have received it back already. However, if they have not, please recommend to them to contact their bank. Each bank has their own processing times, so they’ll be able to provide answers about when it will be deposited. 

The pending notification that you are seeing on your payout account means that the funds have been returned to your customer, but the transaction where Shopify will reclaim the funds back from you, is pending. The refunded amount will be reclaimed from your next payout. For more information about this, take a look at the Help Doc for Refunding and cancelling orders. 

Let me know if you need any clarification on any of this, or if you have additional questions. I’m more than happy to discuss it further with you.

[AlixTB]

Hi Helen

For the last 4 days all my refunds are showing as pending and I can see that the automated refund email is not being sent to the customers. This is despite shopify payments being in a positive balance. This only appears to be an issue for shopify payments (PayPal are being issued automatically and customer emails triggered as usual.

I've tried raising this with the shopify team via chat but they're telling me that refunds stay as pending until the weekly payout date. This wasn't the case for the past 2 years but I'm being told it has always been!

Please can you help?

Thanks

Alix

[Drazdauskas]

Hey Alix,

Is this still happening to you?

I have come across this myself today on my store - and I cannot ever remember a refund staying marked as "pending" with no refund email being sent...

Thanks

[AlixTB]

Hi There

Yep still happening I'm afraid. I've tried raising with Shopify via support but getting no help - keep being told this is 'normal' and 'not to worry'. Have tried explaining that it's having significant impacts on reconciliation with 3rd party applications as well as causing delays to the customer refund emails but still no joy.

I think it's a bigger issue but so difficult to speak to someone at shopify who can understand the issue or offer any help!

Let me know if you have more luck!

Alix

[AlcorDesiT]

We are experiencing the same issue. A positive balance in our account and the refunds are going into pending status. With no more information about it. 

[Drazdauskas]

I spoke Shopify and they advised it was due to the payment being made by "PayPal echeque" which supposedly takes longer to refund.

I then spoke to PayPal who advised that the reason for the legnngthy refund process and it showing as pending was due to the fact that when the refund was actioned - there was a 0 balance in the PayPal account.

This means PayPal has to make a request to get the funds via the linked bank account- which is where the delay occurs.

They advised that if there was a positive balance then this would have been processed instantly.

I've now set up automatic payments to leave a small amount in PayPal to cover any possible refunds as its not a great customer experience suffering delays.

[Amie_amie]

I'm only having issues with returns "pending" where the payment was via credit card on Shopify. My Paypal returns are going through as usual (not pending) so this is not the case for our store.

[AlixTB]

For my store it's specifically all shopify payment refunds (not any paypal) that are going into pending. All PayPal are instant so it's a separate issue I believe.

[Amie_amie]

Any news from Shopify? I just noticed this myself. Usually refunds are immediate; I've never seen "pending" before. Did a few returns today, one on Paypal went through as normal and sent the customer an email, the two credit card returns via Shopify are "pending" and the amount is not taken out of our daily sales yet. This is unusual.

[ChrisB2]

Hi Helen.

This is not true. Since Jan this year, a change was made by shopify and refunds are no longer instant. PayPal refunds are still instant but shopify payment refunds are no longer instant. 

For example we refunded a customer on April 5 and 6 days later funds still not recieved. Since Jan this year, we have so many customers emailing asking where their refund and this only occurs when the customer used shopify payments. 

This change by shopify is resulting in a high level of complaints, charge backs. Please advise. 

[SCTrading]

It's May 15, 2023 and we are still having this issue. It would go a long way if our customers received email notifications of pending refund. As of now, we are taking screen shots to send them. This is an inexcusable issue. 

[anneagle]

This past month, I've been came across the same issue twice. I am getting chargebacks because the payments aren't coming through. This is ridiculous!

[Gary_the_Man]

I am having this same issue. It is utterly terrible. Have a bunch of returns i gave to customers yesterday. They are all pending, and I dont know if the customers got their money back, they didnt get a refund email, also my balances for accounting purposes are all messed up now because of this too.

THis is a major issue shopify, WTF is going on fix this back to normal, it worked perfectly welll before!!

[Patrick_Cooper1]

Same for me, refunds show as pending . I have a positive balance too. Anyone have any updates on this?

[AlixTB]

No update from me I'm afraid. My ticket is open but the last thing they told me was 'not to worry' despite me explaining it was causing me lots of problems!

[Patrick_Cooper1]

Ok it looks like refunds might just be slightly delayed. For example a staff member of mine issued a refund yesterday, was marked as pending straight away. However today the refund has gone through. Seems like there was a 24 hour delay on this.

[Patrick_Cooper1]

UPDATE from shopify "Okay, so there have been a few changes to how refunds are displayed on the order timeline - as a default, there will be a 24-48 hour processing time for refunds processed through Shopify Payments. This order should change to refunded, or successful between now and tomorrow at 6pm"

[Katemart]

I have the same issue on my store , customer not happy with delay . Refund was done yesterday about 1pm uk time . When can I expect it to complete ?

[bradmcdj]

yeah here in the US today 2 customer refunds are all pending and the customer keeps emailing us demanding the refund and confirmation.  So this seems to be s Shopify systems issues and all they can say it wait it out? 

[Katemart]

Hey !

Our refund did eventually process took approx 24 hrs
This has never happened before has always been instant … not sure why this is happening but it did eventually process . Yes we had a pretty annnoyed customer as well which is understandable. Hope your refunds go through soon !

[Gary_the_Man]

I wonder if this change is an indication shopify is having cash flow problems? It is highly suspect that it is happening all of a sudden. I can't see why that should be the case, but you never know! And I hope I am just being a 'crazy conspiracy theorist' here!

[RMoto]

We are experiencing the same issue. A return is in the pending state with no email confirmation sent. Customers keep emailing to ask the status of the return. Shopfiy, please fix asap.

[MichelPlante]

I have the same issue happening since begining of this year. Never saw that 'pending, before. Last time it happened, it went thru after an hour or so. Now i have it for more than a day.. 😞

[timberlinetack]

Long time user here. Same issue since late 2022. At least one of my customers said they did NOT receive their refund - it took a few days. So it's not true in all cases that the customer gets the refund right away. I have more than sufficient balances in both my Shopify and Paypal accounts. There also seems to be no way to filter orders down to pending refunds, so we can't even run a report to manually check up on them.  I used to only have issues if the invoice was old - not sure how old, but in those cases the refund would fail right then and I would know to contact the customer to refund them another way. Now I feel like I'm going to have to keep a written list and keep checking back on these invoices until the refund clears. That is too time consuming and prone to error and upset customers if they indeed don't get their refund. 

[San90]

Hi, just wanted to ask if it still shows the refunds as "pending" on the individual order page where a refund has been submitted (once you know a customer received the refund)? 

I'm currently experiencing a similar issue with no refund notification emails being sent to customers and worried about them actually getting the refund.
I have placed one order myself and made a refund just to check if/how quickly it will be processed.

Thanks 
Sandra

[Katemart]

Hi Sandra
My refund to my customer went through after A 36 hour wait

This had never happened before and the customer was getting a bit funny about it . I haven’t had to do another refund since so I don’t know but it did happen eventually but no idea why shopify have changed this

[bradmcdj]

ours eventually went through, but took a day, I got to check tto see if its happened again. 

[dooug]

Another frustrated Shopify store administrator here! 

I processed a refund yesterday and it still shows as pending. We have sufficient funds and the payout is scheduled for the end of the month.  This is problematic because the customer is waiting on me, and I cannot generate a receipt that shows the refunded amount and updated total until the refund clears. 

This issue is similar/related: https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-discussions/pending-refund/td-p/952038