Never in a hundred years did I think I would run into this issue with Shopify.
For context, our business operates on a relatively small scale (only because we’re just opening our first brick and mortar store) but have had 0, and I mean ZERO disputes or charge-backs with any payment ever made and 0 PayPal claims, on top of that. We fulfill our online orders within 1-4 days and since opening 3 weeks ago have took around 91 IN PERSON transactions where someone inserted their card into our Stripe supported card reader. We had purchased the Shopify hardware including a cash register and receipt printer that worked pretty much flawlessly with the Shopify POS application we were using for in store payments. In total, our store since beginning as a side hobby in 2019, and now opening an official store here in 2021 have processed around $6000 in transactions.
Definitely not anything to write home about, but from taking a side hobby to a whole store, felt like the right move considering our growing social media following and increase in sales since we started taking it more seriously. Over the last three weeks since our shop opened, things have been going great… Here, take a look at our google listing and reviews, etc…
We sell Die-cast model cars, and specialize in Tomica Limited Vintage, a brand exclusively available in Japan. We have supplier invoices from these suppliers, but currently know there are other Shopify stores selling the same products. It’s all here IN STORE at our showroom location and we absolutely DO NOT drop ship or pre-sell any inventory. Our business has always been careful to make a clear distinction that we buy from credible sources and have put the effort in with support in the past to make sure they could support our products properly. As mentioned, there are dozens of other Shopify stores selling Hot Wheels, Johhny Lightning, and plenty of other brands that are not affiliated with Mattel, Tomy, etc. and secondly, IF THERE WAS A COPYRIGHT ISSUE, or product issue, wouldn’t Shopify send a warning or notice? That seems to be standard practice to verify the products being sold, etc in accordance with their own policies. We are no unique exception and never pretend to be. Our clients know exactly what they are buying, and authenticity is one of our biggest claims to fame. Considering we have had the store since 2019 and made plenty of sales, this seems unlikely to be the issue. We all know Shopify has gotten fickle with resale of branded goods, but usually just request to verify the supplier. Something we have no problem doing. I still do not believe this is the issue.
After 3 weeks of successfully taking in person orders at our showroom and as well as sending invoices from Shopify to online customers, AND allowing buying on our eccommerce site, I went to login to our POS to start the day and it would not allow me to. I thought it was unusual so I signed out, closed the app, and restarted it.
Well, after putting my password in, it said “store access not permitted” - I have read horror stories on forums before and immediately got worried. I checked on my personal phone, and had been logged out, the work phone, the store tablet, and the store computer. All completely unable to access my Shopify backend.
Immediately, I contacted Shopify Support chat who told me they could not identify an issue with my account, but to hold on because there could be something that needs to be addressed with the risk team or security team… Alright… That’s fine, but I had at the time 0 (ZERO) notice from Shopify in my email inbox. In fact, the only and last email I had received from them was an order confirmation email from a late night customer.
After waiting around 15 minutes, a representative from the “risk team” sent me the following…
Notice the smug, “THANK YOU AND I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST WITH YOUR BUSINESS MOVING FORWARD.” immediately after dropping some of the worst news I think I have ever had broken to me.
I sent a few replies, asking for more details and attempting to maintain a professional demeanor. Stuff along the lines of, “What was the reason for this? - This has to be a mistake, right?” “How can I formally appeal this decision?” and further explanation that our business is very easily identifiable and reputable, etc. This fell on deaf ears for around 3 hours when I got this very helpful reply…
… So, completely unable to help, in any way, nor appeal / contact them… Right.
Shortly after this, I took it to social media and asked for assistance by tagging them in our Instagram stories and as well as replying to a twitter thread of a business experiencing similar issues.
Surprisingly enough, I did get an ultimately unhelpful message on twitter. That essentially told me to email the risk team again. Woo hoo.
Here’s the thing… If Shopify decided they no longer wanted to work with our business, as sad as it would be, I would be willing to accept it, BUT as a condition of that, don’t you think we should have been giving a warning? An initial one to correct what they deem to be a “risk” and a second one on the consequences of not correcting it?
Or… Allowing us “X amount of days…” to prepare things for transfer?
COMPLETELY LOCKING US OUT WITH NO OPTION TO ACCESS ORDER HISTORY, CUSTOMER DATABASE, FULFILLMENT DETAILS, THEMES, everything that makes our store ours, and especially DOMAINS completely takes away the suggestion on their part to “move to another platform.”
Shopify in a sense, has completely deplatformed us, with no explanation, and is hiding behind a risk team that does not take calls or give context on their decisions, irresponsibly hurting a family owned brick and mortar business that was just starting to see success coming off the Covid-19 pandemic. We cannot even access our back end, which makes the transfer to another ecommerce platform impossible. Years of SEO work and building a great email database pulled with nothing for us to do.
Does anyone have a suggestion on our next steps? How we can appeal? How we can access the order lists we have for fulfillment OR so we can transfer the domain?
Or any advice on the steps for recovering our account? I know for a fact that they have restored stores previously lost to the same fate and I do not think we have done anything extraordinary or reprehensible at all… (Once again, this is not a payment processing issue, we actually use Stripe so…)
Thanks in advance.