Be prepared for a long read. Also this is not resolved yet and I will keep this thread updated on the findings and results from this entire process, so long as they don’t ban me for making this thread. I have removed any names/sensitive information out of this to ensure that it did not violate anything by posting it here.
I am generally not one to resort to forums and online posting in any way, but I thought that I might be able to get some assistance here or at least help others going through the same thing as myself. I run an automotive parts business, we sell only brand new sealed in the MFG package items. We average $1million a month of online sales through our Shopify Store, and have for several months now. We noticed a few more than normal chargebacks last week, but each was for a delivered item where a customer had requested to cancel the order after it had shipped/customer was saying they had not received the item when the tracking showed they had and then 2 for credit not processed which was also because the items had not arrived back to us yet from the customer for a return. None the less, things that are out of our control. Everything was fine last week, we processed orders like normal etc. Then on Tuesday morning we received the dreaded email from the Shopify Risk Team:
Seeing our account being stuck in limbo I instantly jumped into live support talking with them to help try and get a better idea of what was going on. The support agent informed me that the Risk Department is not able to be contacted by phone or online live support, that the only means of contact was to submit an email response to the original email received from the Risk Department. Doing like any business owner would do I instantly jumped into our email and shot a multiple paragraph explanation to each of the chargebacks that had popped up. This email response was sent Tuesday at 10:31am EST. I sent another follow-up email to the Risk Department on Tuesday evening at 1:33pm EST, and then called Shopify and spent about an hour on the call with a very nice Shopify Support Advisor that tried to help me get the process moving along. Sadly that call ended with no resolution so I then shot an email response to all of the support staff including the Risk Department at 5:54pm EST, of which I did receive a response from the Shopify Support Advisor but not the Risk Department. My email went something like this:
At this point I did what I didn’t want to do and I started decreasing the traffic to the website, to try and limit the transactions occurring onsite during this time frame while the review took place. I also went through and found every customer that had a back ordered part, contacted them to tell them “Sorry I have to refund your purchase right now, if you still want this item like your last email states you do please purchase it again, I do not want to risk having to many outstanding orders that have not shipped due to an issue with our credit card merchant account”. This of course started a frenzy of customer calls and emails that my staff added to the all ready growing quantity of customers starting to ask where their orders were at. I then waited patiently until 8:30pm EST to jump into the live Shopify Chat again. Once again I was met with an amazing Support Advisor, who genuinely seemed to care and want to help with my situation. We spent a little over an hour going back and worth trying to get responses from the Risk Department involving my case, but the best we could get was that that they would respond back to the original email that I sent within 24-48hours. I got done with the chat and went to bed early, very discouraged with the results thus far. I wake up today, Sept 9th 2021 and decided to jump into live chat at 11am and once again got a very helpful, and likely the most helpful Support Advisor yet. This gentleman at least gave me a little more details, as well as that the time frame for a response and resolution to my case was expected within 24-72hrs from receipt of the original email from Shopify Risk Department.
Each time during each conversation I explained that I had several hundred customers waiting for products to ship for the funds to be released so that I could pay our vendors on orders that had shipped out from Wed @ 7pm- Friday evening, and that these vendors were not willing to ship any more products without payment for the previously shipped items. I let them know that this is disrupting my business 100%, causing negative Google and Facebook reviews to my business since I can not provide tracking to my customers with orders pending from Friday 09/03/2021 to current date of typing this Thursday 09/09/2021 5:54pm EST. Shopify has all of our funds Held, our deposits Held, and even the refunds that I have processed to customers are being Held. I honestly do not know what to do at this point. Its like they are trying to shut my business down, because that is what has happened here. Again we are a high volume 100+ orders a day company that does over $1,00,000 a month in online sales through our Shopify store. Of which Shopify gets their % of the transaction fee’s and the website hosting fee’s. They have received their money, our customers have paid their money for their parts, and we can not ship or even purchase the customers parts until this situation is resolved. Also please note the entire time that I am advised to keep operating business like normal while this Hold and Review takes place. Below is what my Payout area looks like, showing the message that has been constant from Shopify as well as the “In Transit” which made me think that payment was at least coming to pay my vendors from orders shipped last week from this payout but then next to it you will see “Payout on hold” which signifies that help is not on the way to be able to handle this crisis.
I don’t know what else to do and honestly hate resorting to a forum for a solution but I am honestly just needing answers and resolution. I also hope that this may help show others in the community what to expect when dealing with the Shopify Risk Team and the time frames for responses or the lack there of. If you notice the last picture you will notice that over $130,000 is being held, as well as 230 customer waiting on their paid for orders to ship to them. Shopify has built an amazing platform that makes it super easy for anyone to sell. Heck an old guy like myself who is not even that good with computers has been able to build a $1,000,000 a month selling machine here, but at what risk/reward level? Shopify has made their system so computer automated that it has removed the human out of the equation almost fully. The fact that I can not get to the Risk Department at all by Live Chat nor Phone still has me lost for words, esp when I am doing the volume that I am with them and them holding this much money from my business. I have sent a lot of people into my industry to Shopify for opening/operating their business over the years, but honestly with how this incident has been handled and more so the lack of communication from the Risk Department in general it has me questioning if I set each and every one of us up for failure in dealing with Shopify as a whole. You have a situation at hand where they are withholding over $130,000, and I can’t get a clarification email for 3 days; that is simply unacceptable after I send over 10 emails, and 4 phone calls and 4 live chat sessions after almost an entire business week. I now, after dealing with this team fear reprisal in the form of them just shutting down our store; my only hope is that someone who actually has the power to do something about this sees this and can help us not be forced to shut down.