Is Shopify quietly blacklisting store owners when fraudsters complain?

[shopfy-2020]

Like any sellers, we are subject to occasional fraudulent transactions.

We started to notice that whenever we have a buyer engaged in attempted fraud (i.e. chargeback fraud; false complaint about our products to gain a refund and keep the original products for free; refund attempts for sales products that don't qualify for refunds), the sales to our store suddenly start to stagnate and drop drastically and sometimes comes to a complete standstill.

Although we don't have a huge amount of these frauds, the impact is always far bigger than the incidents. We began to notice a distinct difference in the flow of sales after Shopify asked us to provide proof of purchase of our goods, which we did. Once we had done that, sales suddenly started to flow daily after being stagnant for months.

On another occasion, we had ONE refund request from hundreds of good orders, and Shopify blocked us from selling on the Shop app—after one refund... Shopify's notice stated that our 'return rate is too high.' One return out of hundreds???

Let's compare this to famous stores like Zara, H&M, etc., where the return rate is 48%, and you realise how harsh and unrealistic Shopify treats its own customers. 

A few days ago we had a buyer use extortion attempts to try and pressure a refund without a return. He made a false complaint about a product to Shopify, and he also falsely stated our store was trying to mislead buyer by "copying" another store (out store looks nothing like the other store, our branding, design, stock has no similarity). We contacted the buyer more than once, asking for a return of the product so we could issue a full refund. He didn't respond. But sure enough, the sales to our store stopped coming in ever since he made this false complaint.

Is Shopify siding with fraudsters and shadow banning stores from their subscribers while collecting subscription fees?

[dylanpierce]

Hi,

> the sales to our store suddenly start to stagnate and drop drastically and sometimes comes to a complete standstill.

Sorry, can you clarify what channel you're seeing sales drop from?

Are you referring to general sales through your online storefront or through the Shopify Shop app?

Understanding the distribution of sales through which channels over time will help answer the question better. It might not be malfeasance by the platform, but instead competition on your marketing channels heating up and you're seeing a drop in sales because you have a drop in traffic from Google Search/Ads/social, etc.

[shopfy-2020]

I'm referring to all sales, all channels.

[dylanpierce]

Got it - thanks, just wanted to make sure. If you were referring to only Shop sales, then that's a marketing channel operated by Shopify.

Have you analyzed which traffic sources are responsible for the most orders?

Is there a significant drop in orders after a drop in traffic from this source?

If inbound traffic levels haven't dropped, is it possible there's some issue with your cart/product pages that is accidentally blocking checkout?

If you need apps to help define additional info for the order, like rental start date / end date, or specific sizes, etc. Then it's possible if there's a problem with those apps then it would result in dropped sales. Doing a test run of the checkout flow would help make sure that's not the cause.

[shopfy-2020]

You mean when all traffic suddenly drops only when there is a chargeback or a false complaint?

The traffic never drops for too long under any other circumstances.