Order Change Requests for WooCommerce

Description

Order Change Requests for WooCommerce gives customers a structured self-service way to ask for changes after checkout while keeping the merchant in control.

Customers can submit a request from their order page, see its status, and withdraw a pending request. Store managers review requests from a dedicated WooCommerce inbox and can approve/mark completed or decline them.

This free release is intentionally request-based: approving a request does not automatically edit, cancel, refund, restock, reprice, recalculate, or otherwise mutate the WooCommerce order.

Customer features

• Request a shipping-address change.
• Request item quantity changes or item removal.
• Request order cancellation.
• Submit another change as free text.
• See existing requests and their status on the order page.
• Withdraw a pending request.
• Receive email confirmation when a request is submitted and when the store decides it.
• Use the flow for guest orders through a secure email-verification link.

Merchant features

• Review requests in WooCommerce > Change requests.
• Filter requests by Pending, Completed, Declined, or Withdrawn status.
• Open the related WooCommerce order from the request.
• Review normalized request details and audit history.
• Approve and mark a request completed, or decline it.
• Add an internal review note that is not sent to the customer.
• Receive email notifications for new and withdrawn requests.
• See the number of pending requests in the WooCommerce admin menu.

Safety and compatibility

• Declares compatibility with WooCommerce High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS).
• Uses WooCommerce order APIs rather than directly mutating order storage.
• Uses optimistic locking to prevent stale concurrent request updates.
• Uses mutation IDs to make workflow retries idempotent.
• Uses short database transactions for request/event writes and guest token/session consumption.
• Stores guest verification and session tokens only as one-way hashes.
• Does not include analytics, telemetry, SaaS calls, payment automation, or refund automation.

By default, a new request is allowed for eligible orders within 30 minutes after order creation. The current eligible statuses are Pending payment, On hold, and Processing. Processing orders are flagged for merchant attention because fulfillment may already have started.

Privacy

The plugin stores order-change request records in custom database tables. Depending on the request type, stored data can include a new shipping name/address, requested item quantities, cancellation reasons, free-text messages, order/user identifiers, timestamps, request status, and audit history.

For guest orders, email addresses used for authorization are stored as one-way hashes in the plugin’s verification/session data. Raw verification and session tokens are not persisted.

Request-related email is sent through the site’s configured WordPress mail system. The plugin does not itself send request data to an external SaaS service and includes no telemetry or analytics.

A suggested privacy-policy section is added to WordPress’s Privacy Policy Guide for site administrators.