Store Terminated With No Explanation – No Response After Multiple Appeals and Escalations

Shopify Discussion
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Topic summary

A business using Shopify for online sales and in-store POS transactions had their entire store terminated on May 15 with no clear explanation. The termination followed an email stating their EIN couldn’t be verified, though their CPA confirmed all tax documentation was correct and properly filed with the IRS.

Timeline of events:

  • Initial issues with unreliable POS system performance
  • EIN verification notice received
  • Attempted multiple payment methods for a vehicle deposit (split payments, different cards), possibly triggering additional account flags
  • Complete store termination with loss of access to both online store and POS

Appeals submitted (no response received):

  • EIN letter from IRS
  • Missouri Certificate of Organization
  • Additional supporting documents
  • Multiple resubmissions over 2+ months

Despite repeated support chat contacts and promises of escalation with 48-72 hour response times, the business has received zero communication from Shopify as of August 18, 2025. They remain completely locked out with no ability to process payments online or in-person, seeking advice from others who may have experienced similar situations.

Summarized with AI on October 25. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi there,

We’ve been trying to get help with our Shopify account for over two months now and have gotten nowhere. Our business, TheRaceShop.com, was using Shopifyand the POS system to sell branded merchandise both online and in person and take partial payments. We were also using the Shopify POS system in-store — or at least trying to. From the beginning, the POS never worked reliably, but we pushed through and kept trying to make it work.

Then on May 15, we received an email from Shopify saying our EIN couldn’t be verified. We immediately contacted our CPA, who confirmed our EIN was correct and that everything on our end was properly filed with the IRS.

After that, but before the account was officially terminated, we attempted to use the POS to take a deposit on a vehicle in-store. We ran the transaction several different ways trying to get it to go through (split payments, different cards, etc.). We now believe that may have triggered additional flags on the account — but we still have no clear answers.

Shortly after, we received another email stating that our entire store had been terminated, with no access to our online store or POS. We were told Shopify couldn’t verify our business, and that we could submit an appeal.

We’ve submitted that appeal multiple times — including our EIN letter, Missouri Certificate of Organization, and every other supporting document we could think of. We’ve never received any kind of response confirming the appeals were received. No email. No update. Nothing.

We’ve reached out to support chat multiple times and were told each time that the issue was being escalated to the appropriate team and that we would hear back within 48–72 hours. That never happened.

Here we are on August 18, 2025, and we still have zero communication from anyone at Shopify about what happened, what we need to do to fix it, or how to move forward.

This has put our business under an enormous amount of strain. We cannot take payments, we cannot run transactions in person or online, and we’re locked out of a platform we built our entire merchandise system around.

We’ve done everything Shopify has asked for. We’ve submitted documents, involved our CPA, followed the appeal instructions, and reached out repeatedly. Has something like this happened to anyone else? If so, how did you resolve the issue?