The five states an order passes through, named as the screens name them
An order passes through five states: unpaid, paid and awaiting the warehouse, in warehouse, packed, and shipped. Four of the five can still be reversed, and the fifth cannot, which is why the state matters more than the intention.
The reversible four are not equally free. Each state that has already produced work leaves one more charge behind, and our own exit-cost figures list them in the order they appear: the 6 per cent service fee, the domestic freight, the £2.50 QC charge and the packing fee (Recorded from order screens).
1. Open the order and read its state. 2. Write the state at the top of a note. 3. List the charges already posted on that order. 4. Decide before the state changes again.
Read the state before reading the total. The same basket is recoverable in four of the five states and unrecoverable in the fifth, so the state on the order screen answers the cancellation question more directly than any amount does, and it can change inside a single working day.
Before payment: nothing charged, nothing lost, everything editable
In the unpaid state nothing has been charged and nothing is lost. Change the variant, change the address, remove a line or drop the order entirely, and the order screen returns to an empty basket with no cost attached.
Paid and awaiting the warehouse is the state that surprises people. Money has left, the seller has been instructed, and the domestic leg has begun, so a cancellation here returns the item value while the service fee and any domestic freight already paid stay behind.
On a £70.72 recorded order that meant £2.42 of service fee plus £4.10 of domestic freight, or £6.52 gone before the parcel had reached a shelf (Recorded, one order, placed 2026-06-08).
Change the basket rather than cancelling it where you can. In the awaiting state a line can be removed or swapped without touching the order itself, and a swap keeps the domestic freight you have already paid working for you instead of writing it off at £4.10 on the recorded order.
The unpaid state hides one trap: a basket that has been saved and looks finished. Nothing has been charged and nothing is lost, but a saved basket can move to paid the moment a payment confirmation lands, so the state to check is the one on the order list rather than the one on the page you left open.
The awaiting-warehouse branch has two exits and they cost different amounts. Swapping a line keeps the domestic freight of £4.10 working and changes only the goods, while cancelling the order returns the item value and writes that £4.10 off along with the £2.42 service fee, which is £6.52 gone on the recorded order before the parcel ever reached a shelf.
Paid and waiting: the domestic leg has already been paid for
On the shelf, an order is at its most flexible. Size, colour and quantity can still be changed, lines can be removed, and a parcel can be held for a merge with a later order, all while the free storage window runs.
What a change costs here is the work already done rather than the decision itself. QC photography at £2.50 per item has usually been completed by this point, so removing a line does not return that charge.
1. Read which lines carry a QC charge. 2. Decide which lines you are keeping. 3. Request the change in one message rather than three. 4. Confirm the new state on the order screen before the next step.
Ask for everything in one message. Size, colour, quantity and a hold request sent together are handled as one change, while the same four requests sent separately are handled four times, and each handling pass costs a day against a 30-day storage window.
A change made here is free in storage terms and not free in work terms. QC photography at £2.50 per item has usually been completed by this point, so a swap does not recover that charge and a removal does not return it either.
On the shelf: sizes and colours stay editable until packing starts
Packed is the point to plan around. Cancellation is still possible, which makes it the last reversible state, and it is also the state where the packing fee has been spent and will not come back.
Run the subtraction rather than guessing. Recoverable equals what you paid minus the charges already posted, so on the recorded £70.72 order with packing added the unrecoverable group reached £10.12 and the recoverable figure was £60.60 (Recorded, one order).
A packed parcel can also still be merged where a second parcel is close behind, and that is often better than cancelling. Merging keeps the goods and removes one opening rung from the shipping ladder, a saving of £1.40 between the first two tiers at the 2026-09-25 review (Recorded).
Note the difference between the state and the label. A parcel can read as packed while a repack is still possible, and it can read as ready while the line has not been booked, which is why the state that matters for the cancellation decision is the one on the order screen rather than the one in an email.
Decide with the subtracted figure in front of you. On the recorded order the unrecoverable group reached £10.12 once packing was done, which is 14.3 per cent of the total, and a cancellation that returns £60.60 of £70.72 is a different decision from one that returns everything.
A repack is still available while a parcel is packed, which surprises people who assume the state is final. Asking for a repack can remove an inner box and change the chargeable weight, and on the recorded order that difference was half a kilogram, worth £1.70 on the ladder we keep at the 2026-09-25 review.
The packed state still allows a repack request, and that is the last chance to change what the parcel weighs. Removing an inner shoebox from the recorded order would have moved it from 3.5 kg to 2.5 kg chargeable and £16.70 to £13.30 on the ladder we keep, which is £3.40 saved without cancelling anything at all.
Packed but not gone: the last reversible step and its cost
Once a parcel is marked as shipped, cancellation is no longer available and the whole amount paid sits in the parcel. Our exit-cost logic returns zero recoverable and lists the paid figure as lost at this point (Recorded from the order screens).
What replaces cancellation is a claim. Damage, a missing line or a wrong variant each follow a claim route rather than a cancellation route, and each one needs evidence collected on the day the parcel arrives rather than a week later.
1. Photograph the outer box before opening it. 2. Photograph the item beside its label. 3. Note the delivery date. 4. Send the claim with those three items attached.
Collect the evidence before you need it. Three photographs taken at the door, the delivery date, and the claim reference if one exists, cover almost every outcome, and all three are available in the first ten minutes and awkward to reconstruct afterwards.
Track the claim rather than the tracking page. Once a parcel is shipped the tracking page stops being useful for anything except the delivery date, and the claim reference is the number that moves the process forward from that point.
Once it has shipped, the route changes from cancelling to claiming
Being past the point of no return does not mean having no route. It means the route changes from cancelling to claiming, and from the order screen to the evidence you collected at the door.
Three claim outcomes from our own parcels show the spread: a cracked sole settled at £18.60, a torn seam recovered nothing, and a wet box on a merged parcel wrote off £34.20 because the parcel carried a single claim (Recorded, 3 claims, parcels received 2026-06-19 to 2026-09-08).
Move quickly on the second and third of those. A claim window is the one deadline in this whole sequence that does not care about a storage clock, and the wording of the windows we have seen quoted varies between 48 hours and 7 days (Community-reported, not independently verified).
Keep the state history as well as the photographs. A screenshot showing the parcel was packed and then shipped dates the damage to a leg, and dating it is what decides which party the claim is put to.
Where a parcel is past the point of no return and undamaged, the remaining lever is the next order rather than this one. Fee lines already spent stay spent, and the only figure still under your control is what the next basket weighs and how many parcels it needs.
Once a parcel is shipped, the only lever that remains is the claim. Cover attached to the parcel pays for what was inside it, one claim serves one parcel, and the evidence that decides the outcome is collected at the door rather than reconstructed from a message thread a week later.
The data point behind this note
On a recorded £70.72 order the unrecoverable charges reached £10.12 once the parcel was packed, leaving £60.60 recoverable, and nothing recoverable at all once it shipped (Recorded, one order).
Rates last checked 2026-10-02. Where a figure is community-reported we say so; where we could not verify it, we write Not verified instead of estimating.