Payouts on hold - thousands of dollars being held by shopify

[seasidejules]

Shopify has been holding over $7,000 dollars of payments for weeks. I can't get a human on the phone and my ticket has gone unanswered for over a week. Does anyone else have an issue with payouts with shopify?

[Rich_J]

I am having the same problem.  It started on a payout in-transit on the 22nd.  At this time they are holding over 10K. The hold says they have sent me an email telling my why my account is on hold.  But there have been no emails sent.  I have chatted with customer support, they say they have elevated my issue, but that due to the holiday it may take them longer than normal to sort it out. This is the second time they have put my account on hold and I have only been with Shopify for a month, even though my account has been open over two years.  It doesn't seem to be a very professional operation.  What kind of company does not provide a phone number to call when a  big issue, like nonpayment happens. Hopefully they start paying soon of they will be doing damage to my business.

[seasidejules]

I thought META had terrible service, but Shopify may actually be worse. It's unbelievable that you can not talk to a human with such big issues as holding our money. I have had a very successful store with them for over 2 years and never had a problem but now that I do have a major problem, it is terribly disappointing. 

[MoniqueRondeau]

Our shop is currently going through this as well, while we continue to make sales, the payouts remain on hold with no reason provided. No email has been sent, and support says it has been escalated to priority review. My payouts have been on hold since Dec 27 4pm (PST) - my shop is over 2 years old and has never had an issue, ever. Unfortunately we are not so large that our business will suffer from any amount of payout hold, but the fact that we pay Shopify monthly, and they take a % of our sales, I would expect a quick resolve and not a wait for any type of communication. Even META will have you talking to a real person right away. 

[Rich_J]

Hi Seasidejules,

Have you had any luck on getting your payouts going again.  We are still on hold and now up to about 13K they are holding of our money.  I did get a mysterious email from Shopify saying our bank had not allow the receipt of the payout and to contact our bank, which I did.  They said all was good and did not see any rejection of incoming funds.  They had received all previous payouts that Shopify had made.  I think there is more going on here then we are being told about.  I have notice quite a few others are having the same problem.  How can you run a business and not pay the money to the customer that you owe them?  Seems like a lawsuit might be my only option to getting paid.  And that I can only chat with customer support is ridiculous.  Who runs a large business like that?

[seasidejules]

No luck shopify hasn't even responded to my ticket in three weeks. It's unconscionable that such a big company built on the back of small businesses has such terrible customer service- truly a disgrace.

[MoniqueRondeau]

We finally got an email on January 2nd from the trust & securities team saying it would take 2-3 days to go through. Have you tried any further steps? I know lawyers are expensive but if you get a letter done up you can send it to Shopify legal. 

I’m actually shocked there hasn’t been a class action regarding this, the threads on Reddit regarding this are incredible. 

[DONVJKK]

Hello, did you get any updates? I have same issue 

[MoniqueRondeau]

Hi, 

The funds are still being held but we did receive a trust & service agent assigned to our case. I had to remove a lot of marketing on my site that did not comply with Shopifys terms & conditions. They are currently waiting their banking partners to review the changes to approve release of the funds. 

To have gotten to this point, it has been since Dec 27th (my last payout), I have sent over 10 messages to customer support and spoken to at least 4 different people via their in app chats. You can see on each ticket if there is progress on the issue, once my ticket read “escalated”, I received an email and a personal rep to communicate with on this. Will keep you posted though, a lot of learnings here. Highly recommend adding a secondary payment processor in your store while you go through this, so you can at least continue getting payout. They are now holding close to 10k from me. 

[seqnhand]

Hey. How long did it take for you to get paid? I have been dealing with this issue for almost 3 weeks.

[goodtimes808]

I am having the same issue.  They are holding over $210k of mine since July.  Did yours get lifted yet?