Why was my online store suddenly shut down due to an APU violation?

[rhysb]

Our store was shut down suddenly by Shopify's Legal Team, due to "APU" violation. I have re-read the document multiple times and cannot find where we violated any part of the agreement.

I have multiple emails to legal and the below tickets open. It has been weeks.

This is making me doubt the reliability of Shopify as a software solution for our business model. 

I'm simply looking for the "why" behind the decision so I can avoid this in the future. This should have been given the same day. Very disappointed in how this is playing out.

Ticket 1: redacted

Ticket 2: redacted

[Skye]

Hi, @rhysb 

Thanks for posting to the Forums despite the frustrating situation.

That is absolutely a stressful, unfortunate situation. While I can't access your specific tickets, or account, if you can provide a little more information regarding your products and your business, I can potentially shed some light on the the situation from a general perspective. 

Thanks in advance! 

[jorgehp1]

Hello, how did you solve this?

[rhysb]

We were advised two weeks later that the store was shut down accidently by their legal team. It was automatically flagged for some reason by their system. After they reviewed, it was reactivated. 

It appears there is some automation to how stores are flagged for violating their terms, and the timeline to when this is reviewed is entirely at Legal's discretion. 

We suspect, since we used a third-party application as a warehouse, that we made a test order on the store while it was in development mode.

Since the item successfully shipped, this became a "sale" which conflicted with the store being in development mode. 

We never received a confirmation as to what the actual issue was, that is just our best guess. 

Additionally, we were advised that the process was broken, the store should not have been shut down without warning emails telling us about the violation with a chance to resolve, however these emails never came. 

To this day, we are not entirely sure what caused the original issue, it was never explained.