The Great Indian Festival began on 8 October, and this is the stretch where stock runs short and orders go wrong. If you sell on Amazon or Flipkart and an order has to be cancelled, it now costs real money. Amazon changed its cancellation fee on 17 August, and Flipkart added fixed penalties on 23 August. Here is the arithmetic, so you can price the risk before the weekend rush.
Amazon: a fee that scales with order value
Amazon's own Seller Central notice sets out the new cancellation fee for Easy Ship and Self Ship sellers, effective 17 August 2026:
Orders under ₹10,000: 10% of order value
₹10,001 to ₹50,000: 8%
₹50,001 to ₹1 lakh: 5%
Above ₹1 lakh: 2%
Plus 18% GST on the fee
It applies when you cancel an order for any reason other than a buyer's request. It also applies when Amazon auto-cancels because you did not ship and confirm within 24 hours of the estimated ship date. No action is needed on your side; the fee is applied automatically. Before this, as Novadata reports, the charge was based on the category's referral fee.
What it costs in rupees
Add GST to the fee and the numbers look like this (the arithmetic is mine; MediaNama's figures for the first and third match):
A ₹500 order: ₹50 fee + ₹9 GST = ₹59, or nearly 12% of the order.
A ₹9,000 order: ₹900 + ₹162 = ₹1,062.
A ₹30,000 order: 8% is ₹2,400, plus ₹432 GST = ₹2,832.
Look at the slab edge. A cancelled ₹9,999 order costs about ₹1,180 with GST. A cancelled ₹10,001 order costs about ₹944. Crossing ₹10,000 makes a cancellation cheaper, which is an odd incentive and worth knowing when you set prices for bundles.
Amazon also raised closing fees from 7 September: ₹1 more on products up to ₹500, and ₹3 more above ₹500, across Fulfilment Centre, Easy Ship and Seller Flex. Amazon has said seller-initiated cancellations make up less than 1% of orders, as The Logical Indian reported.
Flipkart: fixed penalties per shipment
From 23 August 2026, Flipkart charges per shipment, tied to the dispatch-by date, the deadline for handing the order to its logistics partner. According to MediaNama and Storyboard18:
₹30 for missing the dispatch-by date
₹60 for cancelling an order after receiving it
₹90 for missing the date and then cancelling
It looks small, but it adds up. Twenty late dispatches in a festive week cost ₹600. Twenty that were late and then cancelled cost ₹1,800. MediaNama notes the penalties can apply to stockouts and platform glitches, not only seller mistakes, and that sellers got the change through portal notices without negotiation.
Ship late or cancel? The numbers favour shipping
Flipkart's three tiers imply an order of costs. Shipping late costs ₹30. Cancelling an order you have already received costs ₹60. Missing the date and then cancelling costs ₹90. So if you can still ship, ship, even late. If you know you cannot, cancel early rather than waiting for the date to pass. The tiers above come from news reports, not from Flipkart's own seller notice, so confirm the exact definitions in your Seller Hub.
Amazon has no ladder like that. The cancellation fee is a percentage of the order value, and an auto-cancel after the 24-hour window costs the same as cancelling yourself. The useful lever there is not cancelling at all: confirm shipment inside the window. Note too that Amazon's cancellation fee notice names Easy Ship and Self Ship only, while the closing fee rise also covers Fulfilment Centre and Seller Flex.
Where the hidden cost sits
Cheap items. ₹59 on a ₹500 order may be bigger than your margin on it.
Silent auto-cancels. On Amazon, doing nothing for 24 hours triggers the same fee as cancelling yourself.
Stock that is out of sync. Selling the last unit on two marketplaces and your own site at once is the classic cause.
GST on the fee. The 18% is on top, so budget for it.
A festive-week checklist
Keep a small buffer: list fewer units than you hold, especially on fast sellers.
Check dispatch-by dates every morning, and flag any order older than 20 hours without a shipment confirmation.
If stock runs out, pause the listing instead of letting orders fail.
Confirm shipments the moment the courier collects, not at the end of the day.
Count the 24 hours from the estimated ship date shown on the order, not from when the order was placed.
Log every cancellation in a sheet: order ID, reason, fee. You will see the pattern in a week.
Book courier pickups and packing materials before the weekend, not during it.
Price the risk
A quick estimate: take your cancellation rate times the average fee. Say you ship 500 orders averaging ₹800, and 2% get cancelled. That is 10 orders at ₹94.40 each (₹80 plus ₹14.40 GST), or about ₹944. Your rate could be far higher or lower than Amazon's under-1% marketplace figure, so use your own numbers.
Reports also say Amazon waived referral fees on products below ₹1,000 for the festival, which softens some of the new costs for low-priced items. Check your own fee statement to see what you were charged.
The takeaway: the fix is operational. A buffer, a morning check and a fast shipment confirmation are cheaper than any fee on this list.
