Why am I getting refund requests for orders from years ago?
Old marketplace listings or cached direct links can resurface years later, prompting buyers to file help requests on ancient transactions. Sellers facing this issue cannot easily verify fulfillment or manage disputes, forcing them to manually track down outdated order details while worrying about account security.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Digging through old records and archived emails to verify past transactions
- 2Ignoring the message, marking it as spam, or telling the buyer that the return period has passed
- 3refusing to issue a refund and stopping engagement
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I closed my Etsy shop years ago, but today I received a Help Request from a customer whose order was placed in 2013.”source ↗
“I got a message around 2 weeks ago from a woman saying she hadn't received her order. I checked her order and it was from October 2020!”source ↗
“I have a tricky situation with a customer in the U.S. now and I'm not sure how to respond.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 15Why does Etsy automatically refund buyers without seller approval?
- 3How to get a refund when an online seller won't ship or reply
- 2Merchant says refund went to a closed card but bank has no record
- 3How to get a refund from a third-party booking site for a canceled hotel
- 2Why did my credit card chargeback get declined for a broken product?
- 3Why does return shipping cost more than the item?