If you've enabled self-serve cancellations and refunds for your ticket buyers, there might be some rare situations when refunds are not sent automatically. In these situations, your buyer will see a "Contact event organiser" message in self-serve.
What to do when a ticket buyer contacts you about a refund
Open the 'Orders' tab, and search for their order using their name, email or order ID.
If you want to issue a refund, click the 'Cancel / refund' button.
Enter a cancellation reason, which will be sent to the buyer.
Select the refund amount, e.g. full, partial, percentage, or none (if you're just cancelling the order).
Choose the refund method, e.g. Stripe, PayPal, voucher, or cash.
Click 'Cancel order'.
When can't ticket buyers use self-serve to cancel and refund an order?
Ticket buyers will need to contact you to cancel their orders when:
An event is in the past.
An order only contains products.
An order contains a product which is not fulfilled via a QR code.
An order payment is 'Pending'.
An order has been paid for with a voucher, operator payment or offline payment.
An order was transferred.
You've changed your Stripe, Square or PayPal account since the order was placed.
How payment methods affect self-serve refunds
In most cases, orders can be refunded via self-serve. In rare cases, orders can't be refunded automatically.
Payment method | Can self-serve refunds be issued to the original payment method? | Can self-serve refunds be issued via a voucher? |
Stripe, PayPal or Square | ✅ | ✅ |
Offline payments | ❌ | ✅ |
Operator payments | ❌ | ❌ |
The order was transferred | ❌ | ❌ |
The whole or part of the order was paid with a voucher (including refund to voucher). | ❌ | ❌ |
Rare situations when an order will be cancelled but a refund isn't issued
Very rarely, your ticket buyer might request a cancellation and refund, but get an error message that their refund wasn't processed.
This is usually because:
Your Stripe, PayPal or Square account doesn’t have enough funds to issue the refund
If you've had a payout after your buyer placed their order, and your online payment account has a balance lower than the refund amount, you'll need to log in to your payment account and top it up, or process the refund for your customer another way.
Your connected Stripe, PayPal or Square accounts have been changed since your buyer placed their order.
For example, if an order was made to one Stripe account, but you've changed to a new Stripe account midway through your event sales, the refund won't be able to be sent automatically, as the payment account with your buyer's money is no longer linked to Ticket Tailor.
Alternatively, if your account's been disconnected and reconnected during the event, any orders placed before it was disconnected won't be refundable via Ticket Tailor — you'll need to process them from your account directly.