Retries and deferrals
What happens between "routed" and "delivered" — automatic retries on failure, deliveries held outside a buyer's hours, and how to cancel one.
Every delivery starts as pending and ends as delivered, failed or canceled. Failures are retried automatically; deliveries that land outside a buyer's operating hours are held and sent when the buyer reopens. You don't have to do anything for either.
Open a lead and look at its delivery history to see where each one stands.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | Queued, or being handed to the buyer's endpoint and awaiting confirmation. |
| Delivered | Accepted by the buyer. This is what triggers billing. |
| Deferred | Held until the buyer's next open window. |
| Failed | Every attempt errored. |
| Canceled | You stopped it before it was sent. |
Statuses at the lead level are different and are covered in Lead statuses explained.
Retries on failure
A failed attempt is retried automatically, with increasing delays — up to three attempts in total. The count includes the first try: a delivery that worked straight away is at one attempt, and the delivery history shows an attempts badge only when it took more than one. The error itself is shown on the delivery; open What was sent under it to see what each method received and answered (webhook errors).
Only after the last attempt does the delivery turn failed. You then get a delivery-failure alert (Notifications), and a Retry button appears on the delivery — useful once you've fixed the cause on the buyer's side, while attempts are left.
Once the three attempts are spent, the delivery is over: it says Permanently failed after 3 attempts, the Retry button is gone (it would only be refused), and a prepaid buyer has been refunded. What it offers instead is Send to a buyer, which takes you to the manual assignment on the same page with that buyer pre-selected — a new delivery, not a retry of the old one. The line above the button tells you what it will cost before you send.
If deliveries to the same buyer keep failing one after another, LeadMove pauses that buyer for 30 minutes and alerts you. Deliveries attempted during the pause fail immediately with Buyer paused by circuit breaker. It clears by itself — the point is to stop hammering a broken endpoint and to get your attention.
Deferred deliveries
A buyer set to Hold & deliver when you reopen in its operating hours doesn't get leads outside its window. The lead is still sold: the delivery goes deferred with a target time, LeadMove re-checks every 30 minutes, and sends it at the next open window. Nothing is lost and nothing needs a nudge.
Once it lands, the delivery shows Was deferred (outside operating hours) — sent when the buyer's window opened, so you can tell a slow delivery from a late one.
Buyers set to Skip me are never deferred: distribution simply doesn't consider them while they're closed, and the lead goes to another buyer.
Two other things hold a delivery, both shown on it:
| The delivery says | What's happening | When it goes out |
|---|---|---|
| Held — buyer temporarily closed | The buyer is closed until a date and that closure chose to hold leads. | At the reopening time itself — and straight away if you (or the buyer) reopen early. |
| Held — buyer paused | The buyer's status was set to Paused after the delivery was created. | Once you set it back to active. |
A delivery already on its way to a closed buyer is held rather than sent, even for a Skip me buyer: a closure can last a week, and there is no re-routing a delivery that already exists. A buyer set to Disabled or Archived is the opposite case — the delivery fails properly and a prepaid buyer is refunded, instead of waiting forever.
Canceling a delivery
Cancel is available on a pending or deferred delivery — a lead you no longer want to send, or a deferred one you'd rather assign elsewhere. Canceling:
- marks the delivery canceled and guarantees it is never sent, including by the deferred sweep;
- gives the buyer's daily/weekly/monthly slot back;
- refunds the charge to a prepaid buyer's balance.
A delivery that's already delivered or failed can't be canceled — a delivered lead a buyer contests goes through disputes instead.
Common questions
A delivery has been deferred for hours. Is something stuck? No. It's waiting for the buyer's operating hours. The delivery shows the time it's scheduled for; if that time looks wrong, check the buyer's timezone and window.
Should I retry a failed delivery straight away? Only after fixing something. The automatic retries already covered the transient case — a fresh retry against an unchanged, broken endpoint just fails again and burns one of your manual attempts.
Is a failed delivery billed? No. Billing follows delivered leads, and a prepaid buyer is refunded automatically the moment a delivery uses its last attempt. A canceled delivery also returns the buyer's slot and any prepaid charge.
The lead says failed but I want another buyer to have it. Assign it manually from the lead page — Send to a buyer on a permanently failed delivery takes you straight there. That creates a new delivery to the buyer you pick, leaving the failed one in the history.
Will that new delivery be billed? Yes, at the buyer's price (their pricing rules first, then their flat price), and the assignment form says so before you send. The one exception: a buyer at their cap with a compensation credit left gets the lead for free, and the form says that too.