Anyway to remove a domain from a store that we don't know about?

[fauzi_ar]

I'm working on a shopify integration that let merchants connect to our site (let's say example.com). This is not related to marketplace. We also don't have a store hosted on Shopify.

However, our app got rejected because apparently a store in shopify that we don't know about is connected to example.com, so the app reviewers think our app is connecting merchants to a shopify hosted website, which is forbidden in the guidelines. This is not true, because we hadn't used shopify for our website.

If we don't know culprit (the store that's allegedly connected to our domain), but we can go to our domain dashboard (let's say in GoDaddy), can we remove that store connection to our domain and fix this problem?

This is a raw copy paste of the feedback that we got:

1. Apps that turn Shopify stores into marketplaces or connect merchants to Shopify-hosted marketplaces are prohibitedfrom the Shopify App Store. In your app's case, we checked the domain of the platform where the merchant is being redirected to manage products and orders and can see that the domain/store is appearing on our internal systems confirming that the website is hosted by Shopify. 

[Andrew]

Hi @fauzi_ar, 

This sounds a little strange, so I just want to make sure I've fully understood the issue:

1. You're creating an integration or app to allow Shopify merchants to connect to your site which is *not a Shopify store*.

2. A store in Shopify that you do not know is somehow connected to the domain you own already? What does that mean? Could you explain that a little more for me, please?

If you own a domain then there cannot be another store connected to that domain, so please excuse my confusion here. Please provide me with as much information and context as possible so that I can better understand the situation.

[fauzi_ar]

hi @Andrew,

Thanks for replying.

> 2. A store in Shopify that you do not know is somehow connected to the domain you own already? What does that mean? Could you explain that a little more for me, please?

That is the feedback that we got from our submissions. We tried to explain to them that our site is not hosted on shopify, but our submission always get rejected with a similar message:

"we checked the domain of the platform where the merchant is being redirected to manage products and orders and can see that the domain/store is appearing on our internal systems confirming that the website is hosted by Shopify."

So, because our app is connecting merchants to our domain, and our domain is allegedly being used by a shopify store in its domain settings (even if the store is inactive and our domain is not pointing so shopify), the shopify team or its automated process thinks our app is connecting merchant to a shopify store.

Please note that our site has been active for almost a decade and has gone through lots of developments. So it is possible that long time ago some devs were experimenting with Shopify. But today I check our DNS settings and there is no "shopify_verification" TXT record in there (based on this shopify guide to verify domain ownership), so even though it might have been connected in the past (which we cannot confirm), it definitely is not connected anymore.

This is also one an excerpt from one of our chats with shopify CS (our domain has been replaced with www.example.com)

5:14 Me: and I'd like to confirm, so are you saying that the failure of the automated process MIGHT be caused by a Shopify store using [www.example.com] as their domain?
5:15 Me: even if that store is not connected to our main shopify account
5:17 Support Advisor: Yes it could most possibly be a store that is not connected to your main Partner account which would then need an account recovery.
5:17 Me: I see
5:17 Me: and *** (or anyone from the the app auditor team) would be able to locate that ?
5:18 Me: and I can just write them an email, and their email address is app-submissions@shopify.zendesk.com, is that correct?
5:21 Support Advisor: I am not too certain if they can but I believe they might be able to determine which store it might be. I do believe an account recovery might be the best option here, in order to do this you may have to check all the emails associated with shops you might have opened in the past.

We've been going back and forth for a couple of months and it's been delaying a release for quite some time.

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks