I’ve spent weeks going back and forth through live chat with no resolution. AutoDS confirmed a refund
was approved and processed to Shopify on Aug 13. Shopify issued two official Credit Notes confirming
this (#572902217-CN-1, CN-2). But different Shopify support agents have given me contradictory
explanations: some say Shopify forwards third-party app refunds to merchants’ payment methods, others
say Shopify “does not process third-party payments at all.” My escalated case (#69896893) has had
multiple broken 24-hour commitments. Can any Shopify staff member here actually look into this?
Sorry to hear about your situation. Quick heads up first, this forum is merchants and partners, so no Shopify staff here can look at your account or action a refund.
Speaking of your actual issue, when an app like AutoDS refunds you, it usually comes back as a credit on your Shopify billing account rather than cash to your card, and a credit note is exactly that. So one agent was describing the credit, the other was describing why cash doesn’t go back through Shopify, and both were half right, which is how you ended up confused.
Worth checking: go to Settings, Billing and look for account credits on your account. If that money is sitting there, the money isn’t lost, it’s just been applied as credit that reduces your future Shopify bills instead of returning to your payment method. That alone might resolve it.
Hope that helps! If it did, a Like and Marking it as Solution goes a long way and helps others find the fix faster too.
Thank you for taking the time to explain this - I really appreciate it, and I understand the general mechanism you’re describing makes sense in most cases.
However, I want to clarify with specifics: I’ve actually already checked Settings > Billing multiple times over the past few weeks, including right after the Credit Notes were issued. Here’s exactly what I found:
I DO have one unrelated $19.90 account credit showing correctly in my billing (this was for a separate, smaller matter, and it worked exactly as you described - reduced my upcoming bill as expected).
However, the $358.80 and $2.99 amounts from the two official Credit Notes (#572902217-CN-1 and CN-2, both dated Aug 13) do NOT appear anywhere in my Billing > Fees history as an account credit. The fee history only shows the original positive charges - no corresponding negative/credit line for these two specific amounts.
So the $19.90 credit mechanism you described is confirmed working correctly on my account for that one item - but the $361.79 from the Credit Notes seems to have genuinely gone nowhere, neither as cash nor as an applied account credit. That’s actually the core of what’s been so confusing over the past month - the Credit Notes exist as official documents, but nothing matching them shows up anywhere on my account.
Do you know if it’s normal/possible for a Credit Note to be issued but never actually applied as account credit? That would help me understand if this is a known edge case or a genuine processing gap on Shopify’s end.
Did AutoDS refund Shopify, or did AutoDS refund your original payment method through Shopify Billing? Those are two different paths, which could point to different issues at play.
I’d also ask support to point to the exact transaction ID, date, and ledger entry where the $361.79 was applied.
That sounds really frustrating, especially if you already have confirmation from AutoDS and official Shopify credit notes.
At this point, I’d ask the escalated team to give you a clear written explanation of exactly where the $361.79 refund currently sits and whether it has actually been sent back to your payment method. The contradictory answers from different support agents are probably making the situation more confusing than it needs to be.
Since you already have the case number and supporting documentation, I’d keep everything attached to the same escalation rather than starting the process over with another agent. Hopefully someone from the escalated team can trace the actual refund transaction and give you a definitive answer.