So, back in October last year, We asked for us upgraded to Shopify Plus account. Since we had three separate brands, we asked if there could better structure which could work for us. The organization structure was approved to be all three brands in three separate organizations, with separate billing. I asked specifically for the pricing structure and all the bits for the contract before signing it. I was assured of all the things before hand.
When the changes went live, organization structure was messed up. They put one brand in separate organization and the other 2 in one separate organization.
I emailed the Sales POC right away. For weeks, I never heard back. Then, when the first bill arrived, it was with almost double the platform fees that we agreed upon. I tried to talk to Plus Specialists, and they said it was all correct and for any issues I should contact Sales POC for clarification. Due to support taking days or weeks to respond, it was already another bill generated.
Finally when I talked to Sales, they said they’ll check on this because the bill didn’t seem right. EVEN TO THEM. Eventually they got back to me about this saying, the bill was correct because of a revenue share. I asked them politely, I had provided you with the sales number from previous whole year. And also gave you projections for the coming year, and you took a day to provide me confirmation about how much billing would be charged, how can you say now that I owe almost double amount of what you pitched me, when I never even went above our projection of sales for the month.
Then Sales, involved their manager and they also agreed that the setup of organization and billing was their own fault. They messed that up. They never changed the bills to be separate bills for each brand so they could be paid separately, because “They can’t do that”.
All this time, I asked them, because of these delays in communication from your end we are just piling up the bills, we will need some time to clear those up in future once this whole settles. And they gave me written assurances that the stores won’t be frozen until the situation is handled. But then, they went ahead and froze the store anyways.
When I talked to Sales, they said “We have been in constant communication with Billing, we don’t know why they still froze the store.” and “To get the stores back up fastest, you can pay all the bills”. It took them 14 hours to restore the store.
Then they arrived at a solution for us, that they would allow us downgrade from Plus, but we still need to pay the whole bills. Yes, this was there solution for us. That is it.
They froze the store again for almost two weeks, until they got more than half the payment. After which, I informed them, that they should do an investigation on this matter, and whatever they decide, I’ll abide by what their conclusion is. But I need investigation proof of that.
The regional head of South Asia was CC’ed in one of the emails, and apologized for the misinformation and miscommunication from their end. But the compensation for all of this was that they would let us go down to advanced plans.
I have tried to reach out all the POC’s in the past, after several emails and days later without any response, Sales said to contact Plus Support POC, after 3 weeks of constant emails without a reply Plus Support POC said to contact Sales because we had downgraded and are no longer at Plus. Eventually, someone from Plus Support Specialists decided to help. They asked for all the communication receipts, which I gave them. I asked them to at least delay the freezing of store deadline until we have a final answer on this, provided most of the delay was from Shopify team not responding or dangling me to contact other team.
They sent out an email last week saying that the store won’t be frozen until 21st June, until then they’ll have a solution for billing issue.
However, today I woke up to with store being frozen. Upon talking to Support and Plus Support on call, they say they have escalated this issue and the team I am already talking to is as high up team as it can get.
This is beyond my understanding as to who is even running these things. I am getting all assurances but all of them turn out to be just hoax.