Trust and Safety disabled Shopify payments completely arbitrary

[VDEV]

In my store, we sell over the counter medical items. Like gauze, bandaids, medical kits etc.

"Hamish" from the "Trust and Safety" team emailed saying that -

"is selling items that we consider to be medical devices/equipment or prescription only products which are not supported on Shopify Payments, as outlined in section B(5) of our Shopify Payments Terms of Service."

So the response that was sent was that we do not sell any medical devices as defined by the FDA (even provided a link to the FDA website that specifically mentions and defined them) and then we asked for the link to the exact section he was referring to - there was no direct link provided to any section he mentioned.

Hamish sent a follow-up email that was just a cut and paste.

We responded with the same information.

We sent another email that since we sell hemostatics that our Shopify payments were disabled.

We advised him again, that "Hemostatics are not prescription in any way, any shape, any form. Anyone can walk into any store in the entire US and buy them over the counter without any paperwork. "

Asking for a phone number to speak to his supervisor, and for his supervisor to email us instead of him.

His response was "I am sorry about this inconvenience but please know that this is not something we are going to be able to reverse. This decision has been brought forth by our banking partners who power Shopify Payments and we must respect their decision."

This is utter fallacy, and a complete departure from anything ethical.

No supervisor escalation, no ability to appeal to anyone else, just a blanket statement causing a serious disruption to our business.

How can this type of thing be allowed?

Mind you, this isn't the first day, week, month or year we have been selling these items, it's been years.  They aren't illegal, prohibited, restricted or require any type of paperwork in any way.  There is no appeals process and there's nothing apperently that can be done.

Has anyone ever navigated this type of issue with the "trust and safety team" before?  Can anyone help us get a resolution that doesn't involve us having to eventually move our very profitable business away from this platform?  This is extremely disconcerting that they can make such a determination out of the blue without any recourse and it being completely based on false context.

Any help would be extremely appreciated.

[VDEV]

We've seen not heard a response.  We've asked for a supervisor to respond to us, nothing.

Shopify's own terms of service, the contract every user agree to when they use this platform says that Shopify will provide service, feedback, and escalation of concerns.

Them failing to respond is a violation of their own terms of service. 

Anyone successfully escalated an issue with Shopify corporate?

[VDEV]

So..

After speaking to several lawyers that were all recommended by current shopify platform users, we were told that shopify does not care about individual businesses and will make vast sweeping decisions without any actual basis for their decisions.  We were also told that suing them would be useless as the company is out of Canada and won't change their decisions under any circumstances, stating that it's best to find a different platform because once shopify decides your particular store is doing something they don't like they will eventually set you up to fail, which also means they will make sure your reach is limited.

We were also told by several lawyers that the "rule" they cited (but never showed us where it's written) isn't something that we violated and that the business we are in, given the contracts we have with the clients we have, we don't violate.  However, shopify doesn't care.  We even found a way to meet the requirements they first mandated against us, but they won't even reply to us after we submitted proof of such.  This ultimately means shopify never had any expectation of doing anything they said, and they were always going to limit our use of their platform, completely arbitrarily. 

There is no appeal process, there is nothing we can do to get this fixed, this is directly because shopify does not care, and never will care.  

If you are reading this page and have similar issues, do yourself a favor and find a better platform before you invest too heavily into this one.