Customer needs a product exchange but won't respond to emails

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A merchant accidentally shipped the wrong product to a customer and is now unable to establish communication despite multiple attempts. The customer has contacted the store twice through the website contact form but hasn’t responded to any email replies—whether sent through Shopify’s system, directly to their email address, or from alternative email addresses.

Communication attempts made:

  • Multiple emails from different addresses
  • Facebook messages
  • Phone calls (number appears invalid/non-existent)

Current situation:

  • The merchant is willing to exchange the product but needs to ask clarifying questions first
  • They’re concerned the customer may escalate to a Shopify complaint or chargeback
  • The merchant doesn’t believe this is a scam since they did ship the incorrect item

Seeking advice on:

  • How to resolve this communication barrier
  • What Shopify’s process is for handling such complaints
  • How to prevent this from becoming a formal dispute
Summarized with AI on October 27. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

We have a customer that we mistakenly shipped out the wrong product to. They contacted us through our store and we replied through the shopify contact email and also directly to their email address and there was no response. We tried contacting them through the phone number they supplied but the number doesn’t exist. A week later they contacted us again through our site. We’ve tried to email them multiple times from different addresses in case our email server was an issue, found them on fb and sent messages, phone number is still no good…not sure what to. At some point I figure they’re going to escalate this to a complaint with shopify and want a refund or something. We would gladly exchange the product but we have a couple questions we need answered first. I don’t think he’s trying to scam us since we did actually send out the wrong product.

Any ideas how to handle this so it doesn’t end up as a shopify complaint issue? What does shopify do in this case? First customer we’ve had that doesn’t ever respond to emails so we’re at a loss.

1 Like