Payouts are on hold indefinitely and SPF won't tell us why

Shopify Discussion
1

So, basically as the title said. We have 2 LLC, one of mine and one of my boss which is recently created. Mine as previous used to activated Shopify Payment, and when we got our boss’s LLC up, we asked Shopify Support how to switch to it.

They told us to deactivate and reactivate the Shopify Payment. We did, re-verify and everything and for a few hours things were fine until Shopify said that they would have to hold our payouts and our Payment Gateway has been deactivated, with no clear direction on what to do next, all because we followed their instructions.

The thing is, that payout would be going to our suppliers and our staffs - 11 people’s livelihoods, including my own, is on the line, with me included.

I chat with support a few times now, nothing helpful so far but a ticket. I have asked them on Twitter - no respond so far.

Anyone experienced this before? Any suggestions? I’m desperate

Update 1: So far, after 12h of Payout hold, we have not received any email update from Shopify regarding what to do. Their “advisor” is asking to literally just wait, but we need that money by Monday at the latest

Update 3: So far, we have chat to 4 different support, the 1st one opened an urgent ticket, and by the time we chat with the 3rd, the ticket has been closed. I don’t know what is going on and I can’t do anything about it. There is more than 11k$ stuck in Shopify and we need that as soon as possible

Update 4: they gave a new escalated ticket: 68885093. I don’t know how many ticket it would take before somebody actually do something about it

2

Update 5: The new ticket 68885093 got closed again. I’m starting to suspect the whole support inbox thing to be a giant stalling machine pretending to be helpful to justify for the lack of efficiency caused by replacing everybody with AI

3

Update 6: They gave us a new ticket 68885879 and closed it again! God I don’t know why this is like this. bleep this

4

Update 7: They have emailed us and surprise! - telling us to wait some more while issuing yet another ticket number 68887188, which doesn’t show up in our Support Inbox by the way - probably because they are afraid that we would see it was closed again. BLEEP SPF

5

Shopify staff aren’t here anymore, except on very rare occasions. There is nothing anyone can do for you here. They downsized the workforce and stopped providing conversational support in this forum. The forum managers don’t even comment. This is an account issue that is only between the merchant and Shopify. Opening more tickets only prolongs the process. Sucks. We know. But spamming a public forum isn’t doing any good. There are tons and tons of people with this problem, and the best thing you can do is continue talking to Support and do what they ask. That’s all you can do.

6

You see, 11 people depends on me getting my money on time, that’s including me btw. So I’m not gonna sit by and do nothing. Also, I’m not spamming anything. Everything here has been helpful resources for me to ask Shopify for help.

I’m simply leaving bread crumbs for the next person having the same issues to come up here and see what worked

7

But you’re not actually asking Shopify. They’re not here. This isn’t a Shopify Support forum. It’s a merchant forum where people help each other. Your issue cannot be helped by anyone here. You have posted over a dozen times. We all get it. We all feel you. Good luck.

8

Thank you for your empathy. But doing something is better than nothing. I have already contacted my lawyer for this whole debacle and would be sending a demand letter due to breach of TOS soon.

I will continue to leave breadcrumbs, even if I can’t do anything about it. At least others should learn to stay the hell away from Shopify, as I just recently learned

9

I have one rule i never ever break.

When changing anything related to money, cash everything out first. pause order payment or redirect payment orders to another provider like paypal for the time being until everything is smooth sailing. Even if you have to stop taking orders for a short time its still beat having to deal with issues like this.

Also, when making changes to the business info or anything related. Companies work on thier time, not yours. Your not the only client, the bigger the company expect longer wait time.

I know it sucks being in this sitution, I feeel you on the payments getting hold back esp. when you need it.

10

Holding Shopify Payment, our old-reliable payment gateway (at the time) seems like a really bad option. Also, we followed instructions from Shopify Advisors at the time, which is to deactivate AND reactivate the gateway, and they promised no issue to payouts time whatsoever, except maybe a 24h pause in payment processing capability from the customer’s side - a risk I was willing to take at the time as it did not hurt our cashflow.

Now though, our payout is paused, our livelihood is on the line, and I did initially think as you said, but their Shopify Advisor told me it would be fine.

Thank you for chimming in though, I appreciate the input but “company works on their time”? Well hundreds if not thousands of merchants have experienced this issue to prove that this is systematic and flawed, and they never fixed it. I’m not alone in this.

It’s not just me waiting for help. As I said earlier, I’m doing it out of the purely goodwill. If it doesn’t work out for me, maybe some other time, it would assist another merchant from wasting precious time and resources on this same problem

11

Update 8: Another email came 20min ago, from a different guy, saying that they are taking to human manual evaluation something something. But the end is the same: this is a stalling email asking me to wait, again

12

Update 7.5: just adding a little detail - 3 hours before I receive this email, I asked their 6th support person for today to update me on the status of the previous ticket 68887188, to which the person simply tell me to wait, again. And after 3 hours, they gave me another email, done a whole bunch of mumble jumble without actually explaining what is the problem, and tell me to wait, again

13

Update 9: Shopify Support tell me that somehow my case ended up in Fraud Operations, and that they are taking their sweet time with it.

Note: Don’t believe Shopify Support when they tell you that they are talking to their internal team by default. Pressure them for actual answers. I suspect that they are trained to keep customer happy to follow their guideline, not to actually assist merchants (I know, what a surprise)

I’ve given them 30mins after the last Support chat termination to email me with an update - any update. Let’s see if it works

14

Update 10: No new email received so far. Last night, I got the idea that if deactivate and reactivate Shopify Payment gateway caused this whole mess, maybe doing it again can fix it. So I promptly emailed to Shopify Support - using the same email thread which they said was assisting my case.

I promptly received a reply FROM THE AUTOMATED SYSTEM, telling me to look for it on https://help.shopify.com/en - which is as you all are aware, the same place where all the invain support came from. This proves 2 things:

  1. All those emails, tickets, etc - all those are stalling tactics, don’t believe a single word that those so-called support tell you. They are designed to stall you while the skeleton crew left behind after all the downsizing work through the enormous backlog

  2. Even when they do email you about your specific case - more often than not, it’s a one-way communication channel where they stall you even more so that you won’t take the case out to the public.

At this point, the only thing that would potentially get them moving is receiving a demand letter that they release the funds due to breach of TOS.

For everyone that follows me and would experience this issue in the future, skip all the support craps. Go after their legal department immediately - don’t waste your time with endless loop designed to drown out your determination for an answer

15

Update 11: @ShopifySupport on X actually responded, and REDIRECT ME TO https://help.shopify.com/en again, which is again, the same place where they have been using every single trick to stall me from getting any answer.

Don’t trust their support - they know nothing, likely being a third-party with no direct connection to SPF. Take immediate legal action, flood their legal departments with letters and lawsuits, and they will take you seriously

16

Update 12: and…a new support just explained that they “closed” the previous 68887188 because it was escalated so that’s how my email immediately got answer by their automatic response system. I don’t know why but all of this feels almost like endless bureaucracy at this point.

They gave a new ticket that they promised will be kept opened, 68895849. Let see how good are their words.

Note: The support basically says something along the line of “But it’s the weekend so nobody is working” - then what is the point of 24/7 support?

I’m checking to see if my lawyer is done with the demand letter - bleep Shopify

17

Update 13: So far, there has not been any other email updating me on what’s going on or the details on the various tickets that I had had. I had to contact support again this evening and specifically asked them to keep a ticket open and not to close it for it to remain so. I don’t know how much longer this will take

At this rate, I might have to turn to loan sharks just to keep my business afloat due to the sudden disruption in cashflow. My employee - the guy originally posted the first topic up there - actually decided to stick around with a delay in wage payment. I can’t stress this enough, but bleep shopify

18

Your issue hasn’t even been through one weekend yet… I think you are in for a rude awakening. Opening all these tickets just clogs an already choked system. You’ve been trying for mere hours. There are merchants waiting for months and months. And still waiting.

Sorry but nothing you do or say will make it go any faster, it’s not even a weekday, and you’re just going to explode if you don’t calm down and think critically and decisively. You put all trust into shopify. You put all money into shopify. You’re a business, you understood the risk of being placed on hold or having the store shut down.

And I say this to ALL merchants: You need a backup plan! Shopify Payments is not the only payment processing method.

So, I think, instead of coming here and complaining, you should get with your team and start planning and making decisions. This could very well take 4 months. So log out. Go do your thing. Go call your lawyers. Call your employees. Do something. Otherwise you’ll just let it wither away while you’re on this forum.

19

Thank you for your words Maximus, I already did those things - all of them. The reason I’m so frustrated is that all of this, everything, has been entirely avoidable - we simply followed their instructions with the belief that we would receive support immediately and 24/7 just as they advertised.

As for backup plans go - we have them. What we don’t have, at this moment, is a viable cashflow. What is the point of having a different payment gateway if we can’t afford to keep business operations from crumbling due to insufficient funds?

You said it yourself, there are merchants that waited months and months - but I was wondering: that incredibly frustrating lead time - is that our fault, or Shopify’s?

Update 14: the ticket that they promised would be kept opened, got closed last night, again, following another message from another support saying a lot of fancy words for “waiting”. Jesus!!!

20

Update 15: I’m calling support again after settling everything with my supplier and my staffs today. I’m able to put everything in place, for now - that’s the good news part. The bad news is that the ticket 68891486 was closed last night as well with some fancy words for “keep waiting” and after more than 16 hours things have not got better