What unpaid and cancelled whatnot orders cost
A failed payment is a sale you counted on and never got, after the airtime was spent. How to find the buyers who do it, and what it costs a show.
Updated · 4 min read
An unpaid order is a win whose payment failed. If the buyer doesn't fix it before the show ends, whatnot cancels it. You lose the payout and the minutes spent selling. Cancelling an order yourself can also cost a fee.
$82.71
What 4 failed payments in one example show would have paid after fees. On stream they came to $95.00.
Why payments fail
Ordinary reasons: not enough funds, an expired card, mistyped details, a billing address the bank doesn't recognize, or a bank holding the charge for review. The buyer is prompted to retry or add a card. Only the Show Report records them.
What it costs
The numbers are made up: 60 wins called on stream, read from the Show Report.
- Won on stream, 60 orders
- $895.00
- Payments that failed, 4 ordersNever charged or in the weekly report
- -$95.00
- Cancelled by you, 1 orderA card you couldn't find
- -$30.00
- Paid, 55 orders
- $770.00
The failed wins were 6.7% of orders. Paid, they'd have added $82.71 to your balance after fees, at the standard 8% commission for sellers under $15,000 of sales in four weeks. The real cost depends on what came next:
- If you ran the card again, you lost the minutes and any gap between the two prices.
- If you never got back to it, you lost the payout too.
Cancelling yourself
Cancel for a reason within your control (a card you can't find, a listing mistake, second thoughts on price) and whatnot charges $3 or 3% of the order total, whichever is higher. Your first seller cancellation fee is waived. After that, cancelling the $30.00 card costs $3.00, shown before you confirm. Accepting a buyer's cancellation request through whatnot has no fee.
Seller cancellations count as defects in your Defect-Free Order Rate, which affects your standing and visibility. Repeat them and you can lose Early Payout or selling privileges. Cancelled orders also come off your four-week sales total for the commission tier.
Spotting repeat non-payers
One declined card happens. The same username failing twice is a pattern. In the example show, 3 buyers had a failed payment: one failed 2 times and has never paid, and another failed once but paid for 3 other cards.
whatROI's Buyers page reads every Show Report you import and lists buyers with two or more failed payments as block candidates, 1 in the example. Orders you cancelled sit in their own column and don't count toward the list, so your own mistakes can't flag a good customer.
Reducing them
- Give a failed payment a moment before re-running the item. Some are honest mistakes the buyer will fix.
- Block repeat non-payers from the menu on their profile. They can't purchase from you, though earlier orders still stand.
- If one bidder loads your queue with high pre-bids that fail, turn pre-bids off for the show under Edit Show on whatnot.com.
- Allow only verified buyers, a setting in the app before or during a show. It admits only buyers with a whatnot purchase history or an authorized payment method.
The report analyzer reads a Show Report in your browser and lists the orders that never paid and the buyers behind them. The file stays on your device.