The customer presses Cancel subscription in My account → Subscriptions or on the subscription’s own page. One press cancels: there is no “are you sure?” page. The subscription moves to “Pending cancellation” at once — the customer keeps access until the end of the period already paid for and no further payment is taken. The page confirms it with the date access ends, and the confirmation email goes out. A second press changes nothing; it answers “Your subscription #… is already cancelled. You keep access until … and will not be charged again.”
By default the WooCommerce Subscriptions Cancel link is replaced by the Renew Forge button, so customers have one way to cancel; you can keep it in the settings. Cancellations made another way — the WooCommerce Subscriptions Cancel link, a shop manager in wp-admin, a payment gateway, the REST API — are confirmed and journaled too, once per cancellation. A reactivated subscription is journaled as “Cancellation withdrawn (reactivated)”.
The confirmation email (the end-of-contract notice, s. 261) is a normal WooCommerce email, Subscription cancellation confirmation, under WooCommerce → Settings → Emails. It is sent as soon as the customer cancels and states the date the subscription ends. Its default subject names its purpose: “Cancellation confirmed: your {site_title} subscription #{subscription_number}”. Its templates can be overridden in the theme (woocommerce/emails/rnwf-cancellation-confirmation.php and the plain-text one). The journal records whether it was sent and which version of its wording went out.
If a cancellation or its email fails, the shop is told straight away — an email to the shop, a note on the subscription and a notice in the dashboard until someone presses “Mark as handled”:
- The email could not be sent. The customer’s page says so (“We could not send the confirmation email just now. We will try again, and the shop has been told.”). It is tried again three more times — after 15 minutes, 2 hours and 8 hours, inside the 24 hours the Act allows for the notice after an online cancellation (s. 261(5)(b)(i), unless the regulations set another period). The shop hears on the first failure and again if the last attempt fails.
- WooCommerce Subscriptions refused the cancellation. The request is on record first (“Cancellation requested” is journaled before the status changes; s. 272(7) puts the burden of proving the customer asked on the customer), then “Cancellation refused” with the reason; the customer reads that the request has been recorded and the shop told. Cancel it by hand and make sure the customer gets a written confirmation — ending it in wp-admin sends the email.
If the email is switched off in WooCommerce, nothing has failed: the page asks the customer to keep it as the record of the cancellation, and a note on the subscription says why no email went. A fault in the journal never stops a cancellation: it becomes a dashboard notice and a note on the subscription instead.
With Renew Forge Pro’s Minimum term setting, pressing the button on a fixed-length subscription whose term is under way records the request and ends the subscription at the end of the term; the payments until then remain due, and the page, the email and the journal say so.