Remove personal data (GDPR) for refunded orders

Hi @sanderrrrr,

WooCommerce hooks in with WordPress’s “Right to Erasure” tool, which you could use to erase a person’s personal data. You can find more details on how this tool works with WooCommerce here:

https://woocommerce.com/posts/getting-ready-for-gdpr-right-to-erasure-requests/

I’m not aware of a way to automate this process. However, if hiring someone is an option for you then we have some recommendations for professionals who would be able to implement automations like you described:

https://woocommerce.com/customizations/

I’d also recommend consulting with a lawyer for absolute confirmation on what needs to be automated in order to comply with GDPR. Many businesses don’t delete details related to transactions after 30 days, as these details are needed for some administrative purposes, such as tax declarations. As specific requirements vary from country to country, it’s definitely worth discussing with a lawyer before implementing your changes.

I think I was not clear before.
I got the automatic deletion already set up; and this is working.
However, for some reason refunded orders are not taken into this task.
I’d guess this is a mistake in the code, as I don’t see a specific reason why these orders would still exist.

So, why do refunded orders still remain, even when I tell WooCommerce to delete everything after 24 months. And how can I make sure these orders are ALSO removed.

Thank you for the clarification and apologies for initially misunderstanding your request!

To make sure I understand correctly, are you looking for refunded orders to appear as an option when you navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Accounts & Privacy > Personal data retention? If so, it’s likely that refunded orders are currently omitted from that list due to the chance of these details being needed for accounting purposes.

A manual workaround you could consider is updating the order’s status from refunded to cancelled after issuing a refund. That way, the details will be automatically deleted as part of the built-in checks for cancelled orders.

If you feel strongly about there being an option for refunded orders, you could add an idea to our board here:

https://ideas.woocommerce.com/forums/133476-woocommerce

Although we can’t guarantee that ideas added to the board will be implemented, it does help us to keep an eye on demand for certain features.

I’ve also created an enhancement request on the WooCommerce GitHub repository so that our developers can discuss the need for this to be built into WooCommerce. You can follow along with the public discussion here:

https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/issues/28800

Hope that’s helpful!

We’ve not heard back from you in a while, so I’m marking this thread as resolved.

Hopefully, you were able to find a solution to your problem! If you have further questions, please feel free to open a new topic.

Cheers!