Handling payment for post-purchase order modifications

Amazon Pay and Login with Amazon enables you to make certain modifications to the specifics of a purchase after the buyer has successfully gone through the checkout process. This section includes the modification scenarios that Amazon Pay and Login with Amazon supports.

In this section

Charging more than the original order amount

In some situations, you might need to make an adjustment and increase the total amount that you charge the buyer for an order that they placed on your website. For example, the buyer might call in to your customer service center and ask to upgrade their shipping option.

You might charge the buyer an additional amount above the original order amount to make adjustments for revision of taxes, shipping cost, and order modifications. The additional amount can be up to 15% of the original order amount up to a maximum of $75. For example, if the original order amount was $100, you can charge the buyer an additional $15. If the shipping and tax amounts shown to the buyer at the time of purchase are estimates and expected to be revised, you must indicate that to the buyer before they place the order.

Sample scenario – Payment amount increase

To illustrate this payment increase scenario, assume that your buyer has gone through the entire checkout process and confirmed an order of $200, including the cost of the items plus taxes and shipping. Before the order is shipped, the buyer calls your customer service center and asks to upgrade their shipping to a more expensive option, which increases the total cost to $230.

In this scenario, you call the Authorize operation for $230, or you call the Authorize operation for $30 if the original amount of $200 was already authorized. The $230 amount is allowed because $30 is a 15% increase over the original Order Reference object amount.

Note: To reduce the likelihood of chargebacks and A-to-z claims, Amazon recommends that you notify the buyer before you charge an amount higher than the original order amount. Amazon also recommends that you send an email to the buyer with the updated order information and that you keep a record of the email.

Changing the shipping address

You don't need to notify Amazon if your buyer contacts you and requests that a shipping address be used for their order that is different from the one provided through the Amazon Pay AddressBook widget. You can adjust the address in your own order fulfillment process without passing any information back to Amazon about the change.

Note: If you use a shipping address that was not provided by Amazon through the AddressBook widget, you aren't covered by the Amazon Pay Payment Protection Policy. For more information on how shipping address changes will affect your coverage, refer to Section B6 Payment Protection Policy of the Customer Agreement.

Canceling an order

If you need to cancel an order, you might want to cancel an Order Reference object to support your company's bookkeeping or other internal processes that track order status. Amazon Pay and Login with Amazon enables you to use a CancelOrderReference API call to change the status of the Order Reference object.

You call the CancelOrderReference API to mark an Order Reference object in the Draft, Open, or Suspended state as Canceled, as long as there are no Pending, Completed, or Closed captures against it. You do this when you have canceled the full order and don't want to charge any amount for it. Amazon uses this information to indicate to the buyer that their payment for this order has been canceled. When the Order Reference object is canceled by calling the CancelOrderReference operation:

  • You can't create any new authorizations on the Order Reference object, and any existing authorizations that are in the Open or Pending states are closed.
  • You can cancel an Order Reference object only if there are no Completed, Closed, or Pending captures against it.

For more information, see the CloseOrderReference section of the Amazon Pay API reference guide.

Partially fulfilling an order

In the event that you only partially fulfill an order, you can mark the Order Reference as closed by calling the CloseOrderReference operation after charging the appropriate amount. You can also close any outstanding authorizations that you don't intend to use by using the CloseAuthorization operation. Marking an order reference and authorization as closed will enable you to synchronize your internal order states with Amazon.

The following example shows how to call the CloseAuthorization operation:

 
https://mws.amazonservices.com/OffAmazonPayments_Sandbox/2013-01-01
?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAFBM3LG5JEEXAMPLE
&Action=CloseAuthorization
&AmazonAuthorizationId=S23-1234567-1234567-0000001
&ClosureReason=Closing%20the%20auhorization%20transaction
&SellerId=YOUR_SELLER_ID_HERE
&SignatureMethod=HmacSHA256
&SignatureVersion=2
&Timestamp=2013-12-19T19%3A01%3A11Z
&Version=2013-01-01
&Signature=WlQ708aqyHXMkoUBk69Hjxj8qdh3aDcqpY71hVgEXAMPLE
    

For more information about the CloseAuthorization operation, including the request parameters and response elements, see the CloseAuthorization section of the Amazon Pay API reference guide.

Note: Amazon recommends that you always close your order reference after you have processed the entire payment for the order. Otherwise, when buyers review their transactions on the Amazon Pay website, these order references are shown as open for 180 days.