Whenever you cancel an order (or the buyer does) it will affect your ranking in the pages. Your analytics will be affected - your completion rate if you have not had a completed order yet, will probably be at 0% - so, yes, you do get punished for something that may have been out of your control.
There were a couple of things you could have done to deal with this buyer. First, you could have used the Resolution Center to extend the delivery time due to a lack of information to start on the order. Second, if they did not respond to that, you can reach out to customer service and explain that you have an order that does not have requirements to get started if ask them to cancel the order so it will not affect your stats or ranking here. Sounds like you did reach out to customer service, but, you may have not explained properly or they just didn't understand what it is you needed.
A cancelled order does not just disappear. It will be reflected in your "completed orders' stats for the next 60 days. The only way to overcome your stats from tanking, is to complete orders so that you can bring it back up.
You may want to look at your requirements page and make sure that you are clear on what it is you need before starting an order.
GG