First things first - when you create a return label in Shopify, you are only charged if the customer actually prints the label, takes it to the shipping company, and the return shipper scans the label’s bar code (see the Shopify Help Center article Return labels, in the section “Pay for return labels”). HOWEVER… if the customer changes their mind and decides to keep their order, there is no function in Shopify that will let you cancel the return label (therefore, the order’s status will forever remain “Return in Progress”. Let me explain:
NO CURRENT WAY TO CANCEL A RETURN LABEL:
On the Shopify Help Page Creating returns and refunds, under the section “Cancel a return”, it says the following:
You can only cancel returns in the following situations:
The return isn’t refunded.
The return isn’t restocked.
The return is open and not Marked as returned.
The return doesn’t have a return label.
The return doesn’t have any tracking information.
The fulfillment for the return isn’t cancelled.
So once you decide to print a return label, Shopify has no current function that allows you to cancel the “return in progress” status of the order. I have verified this with Shopify’s support team. I have submitted this as a feature request - Shopify Support says that the more feature requests they get for a specific feature, the more likely it will be implemented.
SUBMIT A FEATURE REQUEST FOR THIS BY CONTACTING SHOPIFY SUPPORT:
I agree completely. This happens often enough that it’s really disruptive to our shop. I don’t understand why it is so difficult to cancel an outstanding return if there is no tracking history and the return label has not been scanned by the return carrier.
This, once again, is a very simple feature that should have been there from day one. You can void a shipping label, why not just add an option to void a return label? It wouldn’t take one of their programmers more than 10 minutes to add that.
With all of the many things Shopify is great for, it still surprises me every time I learn about one of these basic common-sense features which is missing. And no matter how many times people post in this forum complaining about a missing feature like that, they never fix it. Most of the time the reply is simply “there’s an app for that”. More and more, I get the feeling that Shopify intentionally leaves out features to create “problems” that can be solved by apps, just to drive app revenue (of which they get a percentage).
1000% agree that it’s intentional. The customizability of Shopify is one of its pros, but when they intentionally leave out key functions that any ecommerce platform should offer so that they can reap the benefits of app developer fees, they are doing their customers a disservice.
Agreed! The limited functionality doesn’t match the real-life scenarios that we come across. Our returns team is looking to respond quickly to customer return requests and makes a change in the order, the customer thinks on it a day and changes their mind (keeps the product), and now we can’t cancel the return. Shopify should implement this change!
Thank you for all of your feedback on this and for outlining why this lack of functionality with regards to cancelling return labels is an issue. I will be sure to pass your feedback onto our development team for their future consideration.