Warning to Other Merchants – My Experience with a Leaderboard Member

Store Design
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1

am sharing my experience here to warn other Shopify merchants and to encourage caution when hiring service providers through this platform.

I hired Moeed, who appears on the Global Leaderboard and presents himself as a Shopify Partner, for paid work on my Shopify store. I trusted this decision specifically because of his leaderboard ranking and presence in the Shopify Community.

Here is what happened in my case:

  • I was asked to pay in advance for the work.

  • The work was promised to be completed within 5 days.

  • After more than 10 days, the work was not completed.

  • Communication was extremely slow and inconsistent.

  • When I requested a refund for the unfinished work, the refund was refused, despite the job not being delivered.

  • After requesting the refund, communication stopped completely.

Additionally, Shopify later informed me that this company is not recognized by Shopify as an official Shopify Partner, despite how they present themselves publicly.

The most frustrating part is that this individual/company continues to appear and operate within the Shopify Community platform, which gave me (and likely others) a false sense of security and trust.

I am posting this for awareness only, so other merchants can:

  • Ask more questions

  • Avoid paying upfront without safeguards

  • Be cautious even with leaderboard-listed users

If Shopify reviews this post, I am happy to provide screenshots, payment records, and communication history to support everything stated above.

Please proceed carefully and protect your business.

2

Yes in general, just as customers should be cautious about merchants, merchants should be cautious about people getting access to their store.

There are merchants who have had the misfortune of being completely conned and their store taken over, or an order routing app installed. So keep in mind that didn’t happen to you.

No reason to doubt you. No reason to doubt him. You didn’t like the service. You didn’t get a refund. Happens to the best of us :wink:

3

Hi @galeyandesign

Did you eventually get the service that you paid for?

4

Hi @galeyandesign

I know Moeed has been active for a long time and has helped a lot of people on this forum for years. But like you said later in the post, that alone should not be enough. And you should ask more questions before.

And as Maximus said, it happens. No excuse, like a holiday, family emergensy or something else. But that is why refunds exist. And I am sure @Moeed will reply here to clear some things.

5

Honestly, it’s insane how people always tell you their side of story and hides the dirty stuff they did to protect their reputation, only so they can ruin the other’s reputation.

Now let me tell you the whole story that he decided to hide only to protect his reputation.

It all started on 28th Dec when this guy asked me to do ONLY 4 CSS CHANGES in his website (after I helped him for free on his forums posts) and I simply told him that these 4 CSS CHANGES will fall under a paid task and then we agreed over a price and I got them done and he was all okay with it.

BUT after 10 mins he comes to me and tells me to do these more CSS changes and they were around MORE THAN 20.

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Isn’t it insane? A guy pays for 4 CSS changes and when those are done he starts to ask more and more WHILE BEING IMPATIENT TOO.

The fact I got all of those extra CSS changes done without charging any extra because I’m sure if I’d told him he would be like “oMg i aLrEaDy pAiD YoU, wHy aRe yOu aSkInG FoR MoRe mOnEy”

So, I didn’t even bother to argue over that and got those changes done for him at no cost.

The above is the story he won’t tell y’all of course to protect his reputation.

But anyways, moving on. One hour later, he comes to me and asks me that he wants his products to be integrated with other social platforms and I was like yeah sure I can integrate them and I quoted him a price which he kept arguing over for like 20 mins straight for what? Only for 5$

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Like seriously? Internet is free. If you can’t afford the price which I’m quoting you then you can search for someone else over the internet. But anyways, I was too tired to argue with him over 5$ so I just simply let it go and told him that we can get this started.

Then I needed him to quickly sign up which only takes 5 minutes and that? HE TOOK OVER 3 DAYS TO REPLY and somehow he still has the audacity to say that the delays are caused by me.

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Now, of course everyone has a life and me? His project wasn’t the only one I was dealing with, I didn’t get a reply from him, I started working on my other project and because of that it took me some time to respond to him and I kept telling him to sign up with complete details but he kept getting confused and then 1 day later he removes my access and tells me that he gave the work to somebody else and wants me to give him FULL REFUND.

Plus, I would like to add that HE TRIED TO LIED TOO in his post that I refused the refund, whereas I nowhere mentioned that I won’t refund him.

I only told him that he’ll be granted partial refund within 5 working days which I think makes complete sense because I myself spent some time working on his task so it’s obvious my time isn’t free as well.

That’s all I had to say, I won’t be replying anymore on this post. If client agrees to a partial refund then I’ll gladly do that because I don’t want his money to be wasted as well. Every story has two sides.

Cheers,
Moeed

6

Hi, unfortunately Mooed is not responding and I already contacted to legal@shopify.com and waiting for a responce and asap they ask me I will send all whatsapp screenshoots of all conversation in between me and Moeed. Also got in touch with my bank and declared what happened. Hope this will be sorted. Hire Shopify Experts, Developers, Designers & Freelancers. this website to check if a company shopify partner or not given to me by shopify customer service. Shopify told me Moeed is not shopfiy partner but it says it is in the company card was confusing and this gon in investigation I guess. thanks

7

There were two separate jobs.

The first job (small CSS changes) was completed and paid. I have no complaint about that work, and it is not what this post is about.

The second job was a separate, paid agreement, promised to be completed in 5 days. After more than 10 days, this job was not completed, and communication was slow and inconsistent.

Regarding evidence: I have around 20 screenshots related specifically to the second job. Only one screenshot from this second agreement was shared above, where the provider states “Sorry, I thought I already shared it with you” and asks me to sign up. This message itself was sent days after the agreement, and it already acknowledges delay.

For clarity on timing:

  • The agreement was made on December 28

  • The message referenced above was sent on December 31

  • I completed the requested sign-up on January 2, which was during the New Year period

  • I did not request a refund at that time

  • I continued communicating normally and waited

  • The refund was requested only on January 8, after continued delays and no meaningful progress

During this entire period, the only action taken was downloading a third-party app and mistakenly connecting another unrelated store to my Shopify account, which was later explained as one of the provider’s other stores or another client’s store. This raised serious concerns.

We are all human, and delays can happen—especially around holidays. However, professionalism means communicating clearly, acknowledging mistakes, and resolving issues responsibly. In this case, no actual work was delivered for the second job, yet only a partial refund was offered.

I respectfully ask the community to consider this question:
What is a partial refund for, when a job was not completed?

I am sharing this clarification only to provide full context and to help other merchants make informed decisions. I am happy to provide the full set of screenshots related specifically to the second agreement if requested by Shopify or the community.

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8

Hi Laza_Binaery,

I agree — we are all human and everyone has families, other work, and personal lives.

Please see the response I have just posted to Moeed along with the relevant screenshots. I genuinely cannot understand why only one screenshot related to the actual issue was shared by Moeed, while the rest of the context was omitted.

I would truly appreciate your fair and objective opinion on my update.

My main reason for posting here is to bring attention to a serious issue that I believe is important for all merchants and businesses on this platform to be aware of: an unrelated store was mistakenly connected to my Shopify account. While I fully understand that mistakes can happen, resolving this error took half a day and caused unnecessary stress.

I asked Moeed to remove the incorrectly connected store, but there was no response for a long time. Eventually, I removed Moeed’s access to my Shopify account and reached out to another community member, who thankfully helped me resolve the issue and remove the wrong connection.

Thank you for taking the time to review this, and I appreciate any fair guidance or feedback.

9

For future reference, “Shopify Partner” is so easy to get. AI bots can even have it. Scammers can be Partners. You cannot trust the phrase to imply legitimacy, only to mark a tiny box on a long list of trust signals.

Leaderboard simply means active on the forum board, not legitimate professional either.

I think most of the issues people have can be solved without intervention… I can Google anything and come up with a solution. And it usually comes from previous posts on this forum. And you’ll notice that a lot of solutions here are simply ai chat responses. Nothing you can’t do on your own. So far from what I’ve seen you need, there was nothing that warranted someone else coming into your store. It was all basic things you can get for free just by askimg here. There are some really sophisticated things though that even professionals have to research. Im fact, a lot of questions here are from “Partners” who have clients request and they can’t figure it out so they come here get an answer and act the hero to their clients. Don’t be fooled into a sense of trust in the term “Shopify Partner”. It lost its uniqueness and legitimacy.

10

Hey mate, I am offended by this!

:laughing:

sorry for the joke, I actually do agree with this post

11

Yes but I didn’t get service and refund this is another level. On the top another shop connected in my account a Diamond shop, I am a pillow cover and bag shop. I lost my money, time and almost was loosing my shop:)

12

Frankly, I believe there should be a mandatory reading before creating an account on the forum on how to ask for assistance, how to be cautious when receiving help (or “help”) here and how to mitigate risks (or try to).

But, for some reason it’s not.

And the risks are there, like in any business and most of us here do run business on the platform.

What’s happened is sad, I hope sharing the story here will help others.

Can anyone here force the resolution? Maybe, but probably not.
The most you can get here is to get the account suspended (as it happened before and that guy has already created another…).

Can go to Report a partner violation - Shopify, but I guess something like this was already done.

13

This is why I rarely even engage with anyone trying to exploit “free” design work whose put in no effort themselves as that’s not a hallmark of good clients to have around.
It’s race to the bottom nonsense filled with nonsense people that want to be told what they want to hear not reality.
Who can’t fathom that X days delivery includes how long it takes them to do some part that’s required for anything to start in the first place; or that weekends/holidays are not always included by default just because they need immediate gratifications.

The unreasonableness is there from the start because of get-rich-quick|grindset|guru-course mentalities.
And that’s not even counting the intermediaries that are just farming out their gig work to you all for free labor.

Then add in of the way shopify plausible-deniability positions the forums as some sort of free support ticket system while being an entrepreneurial space for everyone EXCEPT for contributors who are expected to just do uncompensated work for the customers of a billion dollar company.

The result is always going to be unreasonable scope creep on projects where it’s due tomorrow , the budget never matches the depth of requirements and you should be available 24/7 for $0.

Combined with LLM psychosis this entitlement will only get worse as you’ll notice more and more bot reponses on threads trying to solve a problem to the point there will be 10+ people discussing how to center some text. Then a poster hits them all with the “one more thing”.

It’s obnoxious but even for small gigs contracts may be required otherwise your not filtering out nonsense who can’t even tell how much of a favor you were giving them in the first place.
Unfortunately I don’t know of any contract generation tools that integrate with chat but could be something to look into, if you find one let us know.

14

:judge: :classical_building: :balance_scale: :hammer: Hiring party is responsible for the delay and undermining themselves.

Case closed.

You don’t need two points to draw a straight-line when you have the right tools.
Only one screenshot is needed for those with experience in managing client expectations.
We can tell what’s going on from the jump and who tanked the project.
All the other screenshots do is confirm the timeline is all over the place and misrepresented if not outright libel.

It’s very simple there was a requirement the hiring party needed to fulfill and they didn’t.
Yet somehow expect the hiree to be a time traveler; some misbegotten idea that just because they pick up the phone that somehow no time is passing.

If some project is going to take a week but the hiring party takes a year to put an important piece in place that doesn’t make the hiring party some clever legal genius playing the system to be able take umbrage at any delay.
It makes the **hiring party ** the one responsible for the delay.

A problem here is lack of actual budget for FULL engagement while acting like 24/7 is expected.
wanting to just “both be infront of the computer” means you need to compensate for more time used to synchronize around YOUR schedule

A real problem can just be lack of contract that spells out the person hiring has responsibilities as well as the hiree.
Even though in a sane world for small projects you shouldn’t have to point out such reasonable things.
In which the hiree gave the hiring party the courtesy of less paperwork for expediency; expediency the hiring party tanked rofl.

It’s only the grace-of-a-smidgen of professionalism that even a $0.01 refund should happen but i’d rule against that so someone learns a valuable lesson about respecting other peoples time when they delegate work.

15

Merchant education somehow paradoxically undermines retainment strategy.
Formula: see every “store for one year but no sales” * $29 *12 * silent-failures.
Where silent failures is countless others that don’t post among all total merchants weighted for loudest-in-audience-percentage.

Or engagement metrics.
read: new merchant posts of duplicate problems are good metrics. posts solved by bots are good metrics. long unanswered posts being necro posted by bots is good metrics. merchants NOT providing store urls&pass upfront boots posts count is a good metric. bots that are so good they can’t be marked as bots responding to other such bots is good.
etc etc .

Or not , yet the result is they just don’t bother as long as line seems to be going up.
If merchant education on forums improved outcomes in a substantial measurable way they would be very aggressive about it, but not being able to measure it properly also means being very passive-aggressive about it as a sump; QED.

16

Eh, did you not see the message where the “hiree” forgot to send them login instructions, and admitted such?

17

@galeyandesign Always beware of scammers. Scammers are in many fields from Black hat SEO, Fake Speed and Spoofed Core Web Vitals. Even Shopify also informed users to his blog about it.

All types of Scammers can get any badges.

Time is final, So any people must follow the time line.

Leaderboard means is not that; that person is professional. anyone post in any types of forum and show him as master.

18

es, mate, you’re right. It seems like these things are happening within the community. As an amateur, non-professional person who needed some guidance, I had no way of knowing whether the leaderboard actually meant something legitimate or not. When I was in the Shopify community, I never imagined that something like this could be fake.

Unfortunately, I was scammed, and I still haven’t received my money back. What’s even more frustrating is how long it’s taking for Shopify to respond to my complaint. It has been more than a week now. I’m still waiting for their response, and they haven’t provided any updates at all, even though I submitted clear evidence, including photographs.

This is extremely disappointing. At this point, it feels like Shopify is not standing behind us, which is very discouraging.

19

Yes, I also saw the part where it took the hirer THREE business days to get back to them and still had not done the required actions.
The hirees admitted was AFTER they had already discussed login, of which was the first business day of the week, of which the login req’s was for the app that was entire point for the hirer. Of which it’s on the hirer to manage and be responsible for in the first place and in the thereafter.

The hiree gave grace and did not get it back in kind when others also severely fumbled the ball while acting like they were concerned about time that’s the difference.
QEDQED

20

It’s not shopify’s job to run merchants businesses for them.
That false expecation is one of the factors of why shopify support has gotten so bad over the years and the push for AI support.
It’s not completely caveat emptor but shopify isn’t gonna manage bad client/provider relationships they aren’t the school playground.
Get contracts, define timelines, timeliness clause applies to clients as well: respond in timely manner to actions your are required to do for anything else to happen.

“Us” includes merchants AND partners.
Shopify deplatforms way more merchants acting in bad faith than they do partners by magnitudes.
And they cannot do anything about details that aren’t pointing to actual partners.

Not the first not the last, every reply and response behavior is cliched and expected.
Take the lesson in stride and move on with better self awareness and effort put into being a good client because not doing so literally costs you more money.