@PurplePartner
The name choice was only partially tongue-in-cheek, as I continue to be extremely reasonable while I suffer through the silence of another Shopify nightmare. Given my continued lack of sleep due to this matter, at some point, I may need a name change.
Thanks for the link and advice, and while your recommendation appears logical, it does not work.
Since my account was mysteriously closed by Shopify for some unspecified violation of something (even though have been no substantive changes to the site over the past year+), the platform won’t allow me to fully connect to the store, and then access the chat. I can partially do one or the other, but not both.
The bot in the support chat is the common theme. It was either horribly designed, but in good faith, or extremely well-designed to prevent access to a human being, while enabling Shopify to claim to offer the 24/7 support it clearly does not. Since creating a functional support bot is a simple task, I’ll give Shopify the benefit of the doubt, and assume this is intentional and not a matter of complete incompetence.
After hours of attempts and troubleshooting, my options appear to be:
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Log in to the account and attempt to connect to the store – I believe I’m briefly “connected” to the store although I can’t enter it. (Instead, I receive this: “Your account <EMAIL doesn’t> have permission to view this page” – and then attempt to chat. If I’m able to access the chat, the support gatekeeper bot will not allow me to speak to a human, and instead provides a canned instruction that I need to first connect to a store. If I attempt to do this, it just restarts the loop.
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Log in and attempt to access the chat. If it allows me to, then the support gatekeeper bot is there to stop me, with the same canned response about first connecting to a store. If I follow the bot’s directions, I’m back at option 1.
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Attempt to access the chat with a different account (I don’t assume this will work, but I’m clearly desperate for a solution). I don’t have authorization to connect to the account.
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Log into the account, attempt to connect to the store, and then open another instance of the browser to connect to the chat. Unfortunately, this results in the following response:
"We were unable to connect you with Shopify Support.
Please use another contact option." – although none exist.
5. (PROGRESS?? Nope) Log into the account, open a new store, and then proceed to the support page to battle the bot. After some trial and error, I was able to connect to what appeared to be a human being who was extremely slow to respond, likely because the individual was “assisting” multiple customers at the same time. However, the chat function as a whole is poorly created, and filled with errors. One of these errors is often, the chat does not list responses in a chronological order or fails to show the user that there was response. After a brief discussion, the rep said to hold while the rep contacted a different department. I waited and waited, and then the rep closed the chat due to alleged inactivity. I repeated step 5 and eventually was able to speak to another human being. I explained the situation, the rep did the same, but this time, upon return, said a different department was currently working on it. The rep did not allow me to contact this department, nor did the rep have any idea what they were “working on.” I stressed the urgency of this matter, which the rep said he/she would relay to the department, and that I would be contacted shortly. I remained in the chat, waiting to be contacted, but the rep eventually left and did not return. 8 hours later, here I still sit.
Luckily, I’ve been able to save two sales when the customers called directly to inform me the site was down. As for how many sales I’m losing, and how much advertising money I’m flushing down the drain? I’m trying to refrain from thinking about it, due to my mental health. The choice to utilize this platform was a complete failure on my part; the likelihood of me continuing in this role is minuscule. In fact, the charity is considering pivoting away from online POD and will just sell items in person. It’s hard for me to disagree, since this “business” will certainly be a net-negative due to this fiasco happening on literally the worst day possible over the last three years.
We’re just about to hit 24 hours of downtime. Well, there goes 3 years of SEO, as well as the organization’s overall reputation.
Until they take this post down, let this be a lesson to anyone – particularly non-profit organizations – considering this platform to conduct any important business. Shopify does as they please. They’ll shut down your site without telling you why. They’ll charge you $500 – unauthorized – for useless software you never used and have PROOF you deleted during the trial, and then refuse to refund the money. Instead they allow the third-world scam artists who built the useless, outdated app to decide whether they want to refund or not. The scammers would take months to respond to my simple inquiries, pretend to be different “employees” each time, and then never answer any questions. In the end, they said a refund was not proper due to the computing resources I used… when I never even used the app. Unbelievable. And then Shopify pretended that they had no say in the matter! Hello, legal department?? You had my credit card information. You processed the fraudulent transaction, through your payment processor. You rejected the request for refund. You financially benefited from the unauthorized transaction. In the US, we call this a “conspiracy” to commit “fraud.”
As info, for your future recommendations to others, I would avoid using the words “should” or “will” as it relates to the support gateway bot Your advice appears quite reasonable, but a "I want to discuss with an agent/ a human" or similar request is met with the same canned response. You can repeat the request an extremely extensive number of times, and each time the response will be the same. This will continue for some time, until either the chat kicks you out, or you change your request. Then, any explanation of the situation related to your Shopify store receives a canned response that the support gatekeeper bot can only assist with issues related to Shopify stores, and to let it know if you have any future Shopify-related issues in the future. The bot is at least 99% “A” and perhaps 1% “I.” A fitting final touch to my Shopify nightmare.
Any advice, @PurplePartner ?
Anyone?
Of course, when I clicked reply, the site errored out. And I wasn’t logged out. But I’m not that stupid; I knew to copy the text before pressing send… obviously, I’ve been around the Shopify block a time or two.
