Why is there no appeal process for account termination?

[zale]

A site I had recently got terminated for violating the Acceptable Use Policy. I read through the policy and I can't figure out how we violated it or what part of the site was in violation. I responded to the email to inquire and a Risk Analyst responded saying that "for security and privacy reasons we are unable to divulge the results of our reviews and investigations. Once an account has been declined the decision is final." I've seen many posts on this forum with the same issue, so I've gathered that this is not unusual.

Questions:

1. Why is it your practice to terminate accounts with no explanation?

2. Why is there no appeal process for these terminations. 

3. Are these terminations automated?

From a user perspective, this is a very frustrating experience. Why do this? Can this be improved?

[Don]

Hi there @zale!

Thanks for sharing your perspective on the difficult situation you find yourself facing.

Though it is surely not what you want to hear in this instance, we would not be able to disclose any info of any sort on the processes used to arrive at such a decision.

As you're also aware, these decisions are final once made and no inquiry can be entered into.

Without being able to disclose any info on our teams' secure processes, I know from my own experience in different positions with different companies that in order to ensure these processes are secure, it is not possible to disclose info of any sort on how these decisions are made.

A seemingly-unimportant piece of information could ultimately be used by malicious actors to avoid the sort of security systems we need to put in place, so we are not able to comment in any way on this.

I know this is not the answer you are looking for here, but I can only be honest with you about the admittedly difficult outcome you're dealing with.

Do let us know if there's any other topic we can assist with at any time.

All the best!

[zale]

Thank you for the response @Don. It is not ideal for users who aren't bad actors but I can understand it from Shopify's perspective. 

Another issue I'm wondering about - It seems Shopify also doesn't allow users to recoup the content that was on their site when it is terminated. Is this correct? And if so, what is the reason for this? Is it also a policy decision? Or is there a technical challenge?

[Zapryan_Valkov]

 

I just have my own site terminated and we just invested for upgrading the site and Shopify appeared and just terminated the site like nothing. You have no right to do this especially without explanation or option to appeal. You are worst than amazon . We have lost £10000 investment to try to build the brand with Shopify and I already regret this. Who gives the right this platforms to close businesses just like that . I wish nothing but you to disappear from the market as soon as possible and by looking at the net worth you might be on the right path . 

Now I understand why big brands don’t use platforms like this because they have no control of their existence. They use in house developers all custom made. So for any one looking to build business online don’t use platforms like Shopify, square space wix and many more just don’t use it

you have no control on how long you are going to exist.
Lesson learned