Hi,
We are an online store that has been operating for 3 years. We are selling luxury handcrafted leather good, aimed at the adult market. We do not sell any bleepographic or adult material, but our products are of an adult nature.
For this reason we were using a 3rd party payment provider just to be safe since Shopify Payments appeared quite strict with anything with an ‘adult connotation’.
We were however time after time contacted by Shopify where we were encouraged to use Shopify payment instead of our 3rd party provider.
About 18 months ago, we had a direct conversation with one of your staff (Adam). Adam advised us after conducting a review of our site Adam stated ’ The prohibited business list does not mention anything
close to your business. There should not be a problem whatsoever.’
We then changed over to Shopify payments.
Last night our payment account was suddenly frozen and we received an email from Shopify saying our store is in violation of the payment terms and that we cannot use Shopify payments. The funds associated in our account are also froze.
When I spoke to your staff I saved the chat logs (attached) as I was worried that this was going to happen at some point.
From a business perspective this is distressing, unprofessional and inconsistent. In light of the fact that you contacted us a number of times, encouraged us to use Shopify Payments, conducted a review of our site (nothing has changed on our site) and the said go ahead only to suddenly do this to our business is really quite unbelievable.
I have of course contacted Shopify several times, but had no reply and our payment remains blocked, we are losing revenue by the hours (we have a sizable daily revenue at this stage). This is our livelihood, we have staff and you have put us in an extremely difficult position with your inconsistent ill informed advise. Worse no one is replying to us and there is nothing we can do at this stage.
We are all ears, where to from here?