Has anyone else noticed a spike in cancellations and failed deliveries correlating with GMV Max campaigns in April & May? Starting to think TikTok Shop is running fake orders
So in April and May my shop's return rate, cancellation rate, and failed delivery rate roughly doubled compared to the months before. Not a gradual increase — a pretty sharp jump that I can't fully explain through organic changes in customer behavior.
What caught my attention: during the same period, GMV generated from the Product Card placement inside GMV Max campaigns went unusually high. Like, disproportionately high compared to what I'd normally expect from that placement.
This got me thinking — and I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but hear me out — what if TikTok Shop has some internal mechanism that places orders through Product Card (which technically counts as GMV), then cancels them before actual fulfillment? The result: your campaign looks like it's hitting ROAS targets, your ad spend is "justified," but the actual GMV that turns into revenue is way lower. They get paid for the ad, you eat the cancellation rate.
I have no hard proof, just pattern recognition from my own data. Could be coincidence. Could be a bad traffic batch. Could be my creatives started attracting a lower-intent audience.
But the timing and the placement correlation feel too specific to ignore.
Anyone else running GMV Max seeing similar patterns? Would love to know if this is isolated to my account or something others are experiencing too.
Running a cosmetics shop on TikTok Shop VN, mid-size, been on the platform about 8 months.