TikTok Shop’s Seller University published a Policy Pulse update in August 2026 confirming that, starting June 2, 2026, TikTok Shop Customer Service may initiate partial refund requests on behalf of a buyer for eligible aftersales issues in the US — a change from the earlier process, which required the buyer to open a return first.
What changed
Previously, a partial refund on a US TikTok Shop order generally followed a buyer-initiated return: the buyer opened a case, and the seller responded from there. Under the June 2026 change, TikTok Shop’s own Customer Service team can open that partial-refund case directly for a qualifying aftersales issue, without the buyer having to file anything first. The intent, per TikTok Shop’s own guidance, is a faster resolution path for problems that do not require the item to physically come back to the seller.
Why it matters for sellers
A seller who only monitors incoming buyer-filed returns can now be surprised by a partial refund that TikTok itself opened on a buyer’s behalf. The case still runs through the seller’s normal Aftersales workflow in Seller Center, so nothing about how a seller responds has changed — what changed is who is allowed to start the case in the first place.