last year i reanalyzed our expenses…. shopify was simply too large for us as a small business, but one feature kept me here - shopify protect. i manually approve every order that comes in… we make a custom artisan product specific to the customers request so we have large dollar sales, but few of them ($1500 + with about 30-90 orders per month). if an order looked sketchy, if it had any red flags at all (strange combinations, strange shipping addresses, etc) i would manually decline the order, and instruct them to place the order using paypal or shop pay because we had some sort of protection with either.
the inevitable happened… and we got a chargeback on an order. thankfully, this was one i already had flagged as the customer had come to the store, asked about trying one to see if they liked it first - which simply isnt possible. its like asking a tailor if you can try on a custom made suit first… it doesnt exist yet - there is nothing to try on. you can invision it… and we have artisans to help you navigate the options… and will bend over backwards to help you if you arent happy with it after the fact - but i cant do a demo product. i saw this customers chat with us asking about it… they placed a strange order that i knew would sound terrible when completed - reached out to the customer who insisted that is what they wanted - then paid with shop pay. the order had shopify protect - so i felt confident in selling.
fast forward a month after that order was placed and shipped out to the customer - and we have a chargeback. only now… the shopify protect is saying it cannot be covered, because the customer filed it as “unacceptable”
“You received a chargeback that wasn’t protected because product unacceptable chargebacks aren’t covered”
so i am now out the $1500 worth of product, the time creating it, and the money. sure, we can and have protested, and if its reviewed by a rational human being who reads the 30 pages of material i sent in response showing our policy they are forced to agree to before purchase with a checkbox acknowledging the build time and policies - and the fact that the customer was ‘ecstatic’ (their words) with it at first, but didnt like how it sounded… which i knew was going to happen, and reached out to prior to them making the purchase to confirm… then it will be overturned and decided in our favor. but im now out thousands, and have to hope american express does the right thing.
at no place in the documentation does shopify protect state that it does not cover “product unacceptable” chargebacks. it is designed to give you a warm fuzzy feeling… all it covers is fraud - which almost every platform already does. in fact - our original chat about this a year or two ago with shopify, they specifically stated it would cover ANY chargeback.
simply put - it doesnt. it only covers one VERY TINY point of chargebacks, that is already backed into most automated credit card systems. its designed to catch suckers like me apparently… into a false sense of security, in the hopes you never need it.
this has destroyed my faith in shopify as a platform. i am done, and will be building a store elsewhere to replace it asap.