Shopify is an amazing platform for eCommerce businesses and has been the ultimate solution for growing our business. I have recommended Shopify to multiple other eCom brands using other platforms that have since transferred, and whilst I still love the platform I must unfortunately report that Shopify has let us down in an astonishingly way today on 23rd of December in one of our busiest times of the year.
We have two main stores a retail store which was created by a web developer which is a custom website and a wholesale store, our wholesale store which is a copy of our retail site.
In June 2023, Shopify Legal emailed us stating that our wholesale site may be have a licensing issue, we replied with some query’s and the ultimate reply was “Thank you for your response. Nothing further is required at this time.” Ticket ID: e197b2d0-f982-4406-ae03-b50ab8cc1b2c refers.
In on 23rd of December 2:52AM AEST time Shopify legal emailed us about or retail store with the same issue stating there is a DMCA notice, saying that our store will be taken down in one business day, as we are using an unlicensed version. I can only take it that our developer used some base code from another theme, but I am only guessing there.
At 4:27AM, I again replied to query that email and was told we needed to purchase the theme ‘Motion’. Although it would have been great to be shown the code or what part of our website is using this licence theme, that did not matter at the time, either way I wanted to do the right thing and purchase whatever was required.
At 4:46AM I replied requesting some instructions on purchasing the theme and finally went to bed.
At 6:22AM, Shopify emailed me with the general customer support for theme related issues.
At 10:00AM when I woke up, Our store was offline and taken down by Shopify Legal. No one in Shopify Support could help us as we wanted to continue to query where the link was to that theme and if required pay the theme. I was told the only was to get the website back online was to purchase the theme. I don’t know what time it went down but it certainly was not one business day as the warning suggested. Ticket ID: 6e964070-5734-4f88-b16e-3e6b711ac2fd refers.
At 12:57PM, I emailed Shopify legal after purchasing the theme for it to come back online. My team and I then spent the afternoon creating support tickets being told that the issue would be resolved soon going around and around in circles. We were reaching out to anyone we know in the space to help and really felt very helpless and like we had been taken hostage by Shopify. We have so far lost a days revenue and losing customer faith and trust which we all know how hard it is to build, and something which we have spend 3 years doing. Some indication is that our site cannot be brought back until Shopify Legal is back on Monday (2 days time) which is Christmas Day.
The frustration is in that we have always been Loyal to Shopify, always paid bills on time, bringing in consistent revenue for the platform and recommending it to anyone we can. At Christmas time between 23th - 26th of December we have the potential for our store to be shut down the whole time, something which very well may cripple our business and after 1. Being told in June that no further action is required, 2. cooperating with Shopify when the issue raised again and 3. having no one to talk to on the phone, no higher level emergency support to assisting in bringing our website back online in an emergency situation like this. Understandably other issues can wait, this one could not and there is no one that can help. We are helpless and at the mercy of Shopify. I don’t know what else to do but post here.