Shopify terminated my account this morning without any reason. The email I received simply states:
**"**We have reviewed your account and determined that your shop presents a level of risk that we are unable to support. As a result, we are no longer able to host your account…"
When I go into the Shopify dashboard, there is an alert that says:
“Your store doesn’t meet the requirements to sell on Shop. Go to Settings for a closer look at Shop’s eligibility guidelines.”
So when I click to review the requirements, it says:
“Your store is prevented from selling in the Shop app for reasons other than those listed below.”
There is then a button to contact Shopify support. But when I talked to the agent, they said the only help I could receive was directly through the initial email. But when I respond to that email address, there is no indication that it has been received or any assurance that a response will be sent. Most of the time when emailing any sort of support, an automatically generated email will be sent back, assuring that the message has been received and will be addressed within a specific time frame.
I’ve been using Shopify since 2018, selling the same type of products since then (vintage toys and collectibles). I haven’t the slightest clue as to why my account was terminated. I have a massive inventory built up on here and it would be nothing short of devastating to lose all of that.
Any help, guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
The majority of the collectibles I sell are called “keshi”. They are small little rubber figures from Japan. They look like the image below. But I sell all kinds of vintage toys, cards and other collectibles.
the same thing happened to me 2 hours ago, its very strange that both our store in the anime industry were affected by this. Did you get a trademark infringment letter? i did, but it doesnt say the trademark owner name, or the trademark in question, just a link to a product, which i already sent the supporting documentation to show that i am authorized to sell this item.
I received no additional information which makes this all the more frustrating. If it were a copyright issue then at least I could remove the products they are worried about. But it says whatever the reason is, it’s not listed. No details in the email I received either other than my account "presents a level of risk that we are unable to support"
My accounts are based in the USA, but I am physically in South Korea and ship from here.
I am hoping that this was just some sort of bot/ai glitch and that the accounts can be restored without issue. I have thousands of items listed as my specialty is cheap, small little toys mostly. So the idea of migrating everything to a new platform sounds just miserable. And I’m a one man operation and my profits are not so huge that I can afford to pay an app or company to do the migration or anything like that for me.
I REALLY hope someone from Shopify can step in soon and help and advise us on this.
Currently, we are unable to offer account-specific support through the Shopify Community. If you’ve already received an email regarding your account, please continue to liaise directly with the team handling your case, as they are best positioned to assist with any queries related to your account.
If you haven’t received an email about your account yet, please reach out to us directly here. We’ll ensure your inquiry is directed to the appropriate team.
Wow. So this is now the third instance where I heard it was related to Godzilla. I never received any details on to why my shop was terminated, but I have plenty of Godzilla related products available. A customer of mine on Instagram told me his friend’s Shopify was terminated too because of a Godzilla product. And a user on the Shopify subreddit also told me the same.
So I think it’s safe to say that Godzilla was the keyword their bots used for this mass termination action.
Oh, and surprise surprise, still no word back from legal@shopify.com about this issue. I sent a second follow up email to them last night.
I love how they give us this ticking time bomb of everything being deleted by June 7th, but they take their sweet time responding to their emails.
Absolutely disgraceful actions on the part of Shopify. If it was a specific product or IP that was the root of all this, why not just notify the shop owners and give them a temporary shop closure until the affected products are removed.
I’ve already moved on from this honestly. I am still curious as to what Shopify’s reasoning was behind all this, but I didn’t have time to wait around and have already migrated to a new platform.
Got to the bottom of this, toho has filed a lawsuit againts 250 merchants, apparently they are known for, you aswell, case number is 1–24-cv-04006, i was able to get mine dismissed since i buy from bandai directly, now im sending all these proof to shopify and requesting to reinstate my account, lets see what happens.
Wow, so this was all Godzilla related? But I am pretty sure there is nothing illegal about reselling used/vintage items without needing a license from the company. Sites like Ebay wouldn’t exist if that were the case.
Also wait, are you saying there is a case filed against me by Toho now too? LOL
I found that case number online btw, but can’t find any way to download any of the related court documents without having to pay. Do you happen to have a list of the 250 merchants they are filing a suit against? I wanna make sure I’m not on that list for any reason.
“You will continue to be able to access your admin for two weeks if you wish to export your store data. On June 7, 2024 your account will be permanently closed and you will have no further access to your store or its data.”
But we are not able to access our admin on the 2th of June not 7th of June.
This is too terrible.
This is not the same as the initial announcement from shopify and there has been no response.
I’ve emailed them several times since this has happened and haven’t gotten a single response. And their live chat told me that email address (legal@shopify.com) was the only team that could help me and that they could ONLY be reached through email.
Still never got a clear explanation as to why my shop was deemed “risky”.
