As a consumer, I made an online order with motocraft and after being billed $89.98 USD, it appears they have packed up shop. With no email address to confirm the order (They sent it via text), I’m unable to confirm an order with shopify’s confirmation link. I’ve written to shopify with screen grabs of the attempts to contact motorafts, dotsmart and vakpore and the bounced email to the non-existant info email addresses, Whois’s information is all redacted, so my options seems fairly limited.
Any suggestions within the community in dealing with online shop owners who seem to be operating out of the shadows?
Thank you for reaching out about this. I am really sorry to hear that you are having to deal with a situation like this. Being out both the money spent as well as the product is never a great situation and one I have also had to deal with in the past.
In these situations, your best next step is to report this transaction as fraudulent with your bank or credit card provider.
Shopify provides a platform for many businesses to run and host their stores on. We absolutely take claims of fraudulent businesses seriously and investigate any and all claims made. We have the ability to close down shops that we believe are going against our Terms of Service or our Acceptable Use Policy. When it comes to the financial transactions between that merchant and their customers, we are not able to get involved.
Requests for refunds, product exchanges, product returns, etc, need to be managed between the customer and the merchant. In cases where the merchant is no longer communicating or if you are unable to reach a resolution your bank or credit card provider has tools in place to dispute charges to your account. These dispute processes also create a flag internally on the store and our team reviews all of them.
I hope this information helps. Please note that our Acceptable Use Policy also has a form available to report potentially fraudulent businesses that you believe to be hosted by Shopify. You can find that form directly by clicking HERE.