I am a female owned, one person operation. I paid a web designer thousands of dollars to help get my Shopify store up. I came to Shopify from WooCommerce as I had heard such wonderful things about it and WooCommerce was very difficult to use, as I am not website designer or developer. I make and sell wildcrafted sea moss gel and am a fully established business for over 3 years and have my product being distributed locally in multiple locations with multiple different distributors. I have all my business papers, food license, EIN, state papers, etc. There is absolutely no question that I am a fully operational business in the state of Nebraska and if I missed anything that requires further proof (which would be a complete oversight and not intentional), I am absolutely happy to provide any necessary documents.
My store hadn’t even been up for a month, and I didn’t even get the chance to fully learn the backend operation of it with my designer before I all of the sudden started receiving calls from angry customers of mine that my website was completely gone. Type in my domain, there’s nothing there. Nothing! Not even a explainer page, 404 page, or anything that communicates what’s going on. I had no idea this had even occurred and was absolutely horrified when I went to check on it and couldn’t even login to my store/site! On top of that - I am still being charged by shopify and my add-on apps!
As a small business owner, I am VERY busy. I do many local festivals, farmers markets, and similar events in which I am fully working by myself. After I found out my website was locked, I searched my email and found that Shopify had given me a four day notice to get some document uploaded to the backend of the site, or they were terminating my store. Four days. I do check my email pretty consistently, but in this particular instance and at the time that email was sent to me, I was preparing and working a very large local festival, in which I had to prep all my product and work the booth myself, so I did not check my email over that time period. I have absolute proof that I was working this festival to back up my claims, that I’m happy to supply. I wasn’t too worried about not checking my email during that short time because I am very hands on with my customers, and my direct number is listed on my website (or was listed), and I am the sole person that deals with the orders. So should anyone need to get a hold of me or want to place an order directly rather than through the website, they normally text or call before they send an email. I’ve been doing this for 3 years, and I know first hand the typical process of how customers get in touch for orders. They rarely send an email if they have the option to call or text.
I am extremely upset with Shopify, literally at a loss of words. And at first, I couldn’t even figure out how to get in contact with anyone from shopify, as every time I tried logging in, I got a message saying:
“Your account doesn’t have permission to view this page. Try using a different account or going back to the Stores List page.”
And there’s no options for anything else! It’s like a circle loop of clicking into no where. I can’t login to my store and view my current orders? I have customers calling me, texting me, sending me facebook messages that they placed orders they haven’t received, and I’m not even able to get into my site to see what I need to fulfill! I have no way of getting contact information for my local deliveries or even just to reach out to communicate to anyone what is actually going on with my site! I was also getting new customers from that festival where I was actively promoting my new website, in which I’ll probably never get back again because there’s literally nothing when you type in my website address.
The email I received claimed that I could submit an appeal if I believed my store termination was a mistake. I have submitted that appeal, provided all the necessary documents, followed up with support live chat now two times, in which I was very patient and gave a couple weeks of waiting time in between - yet I still have no answers as of today! Support claims they cannot escalate this to a higher level for review and that I just have to “wait” until the appeal process has been completed. I’ve requested to speak to someone on the phone and that appears to not even be an option (how convenient), and I cannot begin to explain the amount of damage that has been and is being done to my business because of this move by Shopify! What am I supposed to do in the meantime? Pay to get a landing page up claiming my site is having difficulties? How does that look to the public? Can we guess how much of an effect something like that could potentially have on my business, making it almost appear as if it’s illegitimate? How many customers am I losing right now because of this? Does Shopify understand that I am literally losing my source of income right now as well because I have no website up?
I could NOT be more disappointed, and I feel absolutely robbed. Shopify - you claim to be the “avenue” for small business owners like me, yet you take my site down with hardly any notice and with no explanation as to why, when I happened to be working a large festival, and you still continue to charge me monthly fees and all my add on apps fees! Why can’t anyone give me an answer as to what’s going on or how long this is going to take? How can you keep charging me for a product that is not even available or usable to the public? This is an absolute disservice to your customers. I have already discussed possible next steps with my legal counsel and will not hesitate to take action. This is bad business and from the research I’ve done on similar instances like this, it appears a lot of people never receive answers.
As a paying customer - I demand a sufficient explanation as to what is happening with my website and why it was taken down and what Shopify is going to do to make this right. I highly warn other Shopify users to be aware of these cases like mine, as it is a complete disservice to customers, dishonest business by Shopify, and is having an absolute detrimental effect on my business operation.