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---
title: Customer wants to cancel or close their account
panel: WHMCS
symptoms:
  - asking to cancel
  - asking for a refund
  - asking where their data is
  - wants to cancel their hosting
  - how do i close my account
  - please cancel my service
  - wants to leave
  - moving to another host
  - request for a refund
  - what happens to my files
---

# Customer wants to cancel or close their account

## 1. Establish what they actually want

**Why:** cancel the account, cancel one service, and close a ticket are
three different things and only one of them is irreversible. Most "I
want to cancel" messages are the second, and treating them as the first
is how you lose a customer who was going to stay.

**In WHMCS:** the client's own account area shows what they can cancel
themselves. The admin area shows the service, its status and its next
renewal date.

**In the terminal:** the API call `getclientsproducts` returns the
services on the account with their status and renewal dates.

**Care:** this only reads.

- https://developers.whmcs.com/api-reference/getclientsproducts/

## 2. Check the service state and the notice period

**Why:** the service state decides whether the customer gets a refund, a
credit or nothing, and the notice period decides whether cancelling now
costs you money. Cancelling inside the notice period is what produces
the refund request two weeks later.

**In WHMCS:** the service record shows the status, the next renewal date
and the notice period.

**In the terminal:** the API call `updateclientproduct` takes the status
and the cancellation dates, and its documentation lists the values each
status uses.

**Care:** this only reads.

- https://developers.whmcs.com/api-reference/updateclientproduct/

## 3. Raise the cancellation as a request, not as an action

**Why:** a cancellation request is a separate record from a service
being switched off. Raising it leaves the customer's own request on the
file with its own status and date, rather than an action you took that
they did not ask for. It is also the thing that settles the refund
question later, because it is dated.

**In WHMCS:** the client's account area, Cancellation Request.

**In the terminal:** the API call `addcancelrequest` records the
request.

**Care:** this creates a record the customer is named on. Do not raise
one to make a number go down.

- https://developers.whmcs.com/api-reference/addcancelrequest/

## 4. Tell the customer plainly what happens to their data

**Why:** cancelling a service does not delete files immediately, but it
does stop the account being served, and the customer needs to know when
the data goes and what they have to do to keep it. Leaving this to the
terms is how a cancellation turns into a complaint about data loss.

**In WHMCS:** the service record shows the cancellation date and the
account shows the data retention period.

**In the terminal:** the API call `getclientsproducts` includes the
cancellation and expiry dates for each service.

**Care:** say the date out loud in the reply and put it in the ticket,
so there is a record of what they were told.

## 5. Check whether something went wrong first

**Why:** a cancellation that arrives straight after a bad support
experience is worth one more look at the ticket history. If there is
something to fix, fix it before they go. The same person may come back,
and the account history is the first thing you will be asked about when
they do.

**In WHMCS:** the client's tickets, oldest first.

**In the terminal:** the API call `gettickets` returns the ticket list
for the client.

**Care:** this only reads.

- https://developers.whmcs.com/api-reference/gettickets/