First let me say I’ve been a Shopify stock shareholder for multiple years. Through the good and currently bad. Today the stock hit a low not seen since last year.
Naturally when I’m thinking of opening an online store I immediately turn to Shopify. I sign up for a trial to test out the platform. Within a couple days, I believe less than 5 days, I can’t login to the store. I receive the below error provided in the attached screenshot. I thought somehow the trial must have expired or I messed something up.
Here’s where the problem starts… I create a new trial store and try and link my domain URL to it. It says it can’t, and gives the following error: This domain couldn’t be connected because the stores are frozen. It seems my domain URL is frozen inside that other trial store I created. In my head I’m thinking simple fix, reach out to Tobi’s customer service team and within minutes the issue will be resolved…Or so I thought…
Hours spent in chat support (there’s no phone number for customer service), several chat support members, several days, several emails, guess where I am still at with the issue. If you guessed same spot as I started, you would be correct. Imagine my frustration level.
Tobi is this how you expect to grow profitability and shareholder value? You offer trials, freeze the stores within days of the trial start, and then have your customer service team send me the following email requesting several pieces of data that seem irrelevant to me testing out the Shopify platform? Failure all around if you’d like my point of view.
Email received today in regards to me not being able to login to my trial store, nor add my domain URL to the 2nd trial store I created. This is when I decided to write on open letter to Tobi.
Hello,
Thank you for reaching out to us. Please be informed that In order to reconsider your account for eligibility to use Shopify we require some additional information with regards to your business model. You can send the following documents as attachments in response to this email:
- Proof of address - Utility bill (e.g. water, electricity, or gas bill from the past 3 months), lease agreement (dated) or property insurance (dated)
- Proof of business association (i.e. business license, business registration documents (with company number) or business tax filing record).
- Proof of inventory (i.e. dated supplier invoices, dated manufacturing agreements)
- Social media links related to your business (if none, please explain how are you driving traffic to your store)
Please make an effort to provide all of the above. However if one is unavailable, please either provide a relevant substitute and/or an explanation as to why it cannot be provided.
Please provide the above at your earliest convenience so that we can assist you further, in addition to any relevant context on your business model.
If you have any questions regarding this matter please respond to this email.
Thank you,
Shopify Merchant Trust Team
you should be happy that they are having you resolve this issue now rather than you spending time and money building a website on their platform that will never go live because it possibly violations their policies.