Mounting Shopify Complaints from Online Consumers and Retailers

Internet retailers know what Shopify is all about, even if it’s not a household name among consumers. Among several available eCommerce platforms, Shopify is the first name that most businesses think of in terms of online shopping platforms. It is undeniably famous all over the world.

Overall, it’s a complete eCommerce cloud-based tool. Affordable, it saves not just money, but time and resources as well. If you want to have full control over the setup and structure of your store, then Shopify is the perfect platform of choice, and Shopify app development has become an in-demand service.

The online platform offers backroom operations by working as a storefront, processor of credit cards, and web host for a client list of over 800,000 merchants. In the last three years, its share price has grown 600 percent, and in 2018, its revenue ballooned into the one-billion-dollar mark for the first time. Nonetheless, there are several merchants claiming the excitable growth has come at their expense through interest, added fees, and chargeback disputes.

The company that’s based in Canada is spending a billion dollars to set up its fulfillment network and letting merchants store and ship their merchandise via Shopify. While complaints come from consumers about online retailers and their platforms are big, the reality is that a lot of retailers also aren’t happy.

The major sore point is what’s called chargebacks, a process wherein consumers could contest a charge, claiming it to be fraudulent or the merchandise was faulty, incorrectly priced, arrived late, or just wasn’t satisfactory.

Chargebacks and Complaints by Retailers

Chargebacks are a great headache for all concerned, and there are several merchants claiming that Shopify is too quick to side consumers when complaints occur, and they’re also handed with charges heavily, which take much of the profit and fun out of doing business online. The worst thing is that there are a few merchants stating that even when consumers withdraw their challenge, Shopify just ignores them and continues pocketing the money it clawed back while adding penalties and fees.

In some instances, critics state that the platform has increased its future charges fee for merchants who received a complaint. It’s not only small businesses that are exasperated with Shopify, email giants as well, such as in particular MailChimp had a nasty break-up with the platform in the early part of this year. What exactly went awry isn’t clear, and neither party is being forthcoming about it.

Unexpected Account Shutdowns

Retailers were concerned about sudden account closures. One merchant stated that the online shopping platform has on-boarded his computer-selling business and shut down his store later, claiming that his business was high risk.

Worse, is that Shopify does not retract its decision on closures. Retailers who spent monthly charges in the skies to boost their business say that all their attempts of restoring their closed accounts have failed.

Seizures of Money

For retailers of Shopify, getting its hands on their hard-earned money also is a problem. They have complained that Shopify has been holding their funds back, asking for several verification data, promising to reply within three days, and then going mute for weeks, and freezing money.

Rumors of a Lawsuit

Unhappy and unsatisfied merchants reported hearing of rumors of a pending lawsuit, but so far no pending actions have been reported in public. Shopify indeed faces at least one lawsuit charging that it’s being very slow in removing scams as well as fraudulent business from its system. Nonetheless, even receiving hundreds of complaints from merchants and consumers in the past three years, Shopify is given an A+ rating by the Better Business Bureau, but notes the following: “Customer Reviews weren’t used in calculating the BBB Letter Grade Rating”.

The ratings are no guarantee of a brand’s reliability and performance. It recommends that consumers take into consideration the BBB rating of a brand, aside from all the other information available regarding their business.

Shopify Response

Shopify, in response to all the complaints, has stated that being a platform, offers business owners with tools to sell their products both online and in-person. They, however, didn’t comment on the specific cited incidents. They claimed that they adhere to the industry standards, which include network rules from debit and credit card providers, and additional rules from Shopify Payments processor’s financial service providers as well, which outline the kind of businesses it was able to house on its gateway.

Furthermore, Shopify claimed that when it comes to the chargebacks, it’s responsible for sharing information to the issuing bank of its merchants, wherein in most instances could result in more interchange fees. Also, the shopping platform stated that it provides recommendations, resource guidelines, and support for the merchants, which include a Shopify Help Center to ascertain that it supports both merchants and customers.

Shopify also claimed that chargebacks could be very burdensome for merchants, thus last year it rolled out a Fraud Protect to its Shopify Payments merchants, specifically in the United States to address the issue.

Despite the rising complaints regarding Shopify, it still is an in-demand eCommerce platform. Shopify web development services continue to flourish. For a better understanding and weighing, if the platform is the right choice for your brand, it’s a good idea to check out its pros and cons.

The Shopify Pros

1. Speed

Shopify, being an all-in-one solution, enables you to think of the site loading speed of the business over to the professionals, and let them worry about caching, compliance, hackers, and so on. It can handle both speed and security extremely well. It has a 100 percent SSL, keeping their websites screaming fast, and integrates well with payment providers.

2. Terrific Customer Support

The platform has a big database of email/chat support, FAQs, and phone support with knowledgeable, true representatives on the other side. When you’re focused on running your online shop, this net of safety of having someone at your back always is worth the Shopify subscription basically.

3. All Important Features

Whether you’re shopping for an all-in-one solution or making your own eCommerce solution, getting all the pieces together of an online store could actually be a bit challenging. Shopify has all the features necessary to run an amazing online store, without spending a lot of upgrades, or left hanging without a major feature.

4. Design

A good web platform always should offer at least 2 customization levels. First, it should look good out of the box, and second, it should be seamlessly improvable with no need to hire a professional graphic developer or designer.

There are tons of custom themes in Shopify that you could buy and apply, and it also could be wielded by a professional designer to create a site that’s truly high-end.

5. Plugins/Add-Ons

Shopify comes with plenty of built-in features, but no platform possibly could accommodate all the needed features. Shopify, therefore, took a page from Apple, Android, and Facebook by starting an application store.

It provides the platform and all the major features, plus it lets developers offer ultra-specialized products that seamlessly plugin to the Shopify platform. Some are free, some are paid.

The Shopify Cons

1. Pricing

Pricing in eCommerce could be very confusing. Between the subscriptions here and the fees there, it could become frustrating fast. In many ways, today, Shopify does a whole lot better than its competitors with transparency in the pricing, and value overall. If you completely purchase into the Shopify platform, you could get the best price in the field.

However, there are several cautions that put pricing in the negative. Check these out:

1. Monthly price. A Lite Plan starts at $9/month and goes up from there. Keep in mind however that the Lite plan is for the Buy button sellers only, thus Shopify relay starts at $29/month and higher.
2. Transaction fees. The additional fee you have to pay to a platform as a percentage of the sales.
3. Credit card charges. Shopify Payments run their own processing and POS networks, thus you need not go through a third party processor. There are however lock-in issues to consider.
4. Plugin/add-on fees. These are third-party apps that usually have one-time purchases. However, they run off transaction fees.

Shopify, just like all hosted platforms, will be consistently costlier every month compared to a self-hosted store that you run yourself.

2. Customization Hacking

Shopify uses a unique setup to customize themes against using something for their templates, such as PHP. In a lot of ways, it’s also a big plus, but for those who love to tweak things without doing full customization, it could be irritating.

3. Marketing the Content

Content marketing is a big eCommerce marketing medium. You could boost organic traffic, grow your brand, increase social shares, and educate your consumers. The shopping platform comes with in-built blogging software, but not the greatest, particularly if you’re spoiled for WordPress.

4. Jargon

Each eCommerce platform has a learning curve. However, Shopify has a steeper curve simply because the jargon they use is a bit off. While this may not be a big drawback, there are other solutions that are much more straightforward with their UX.

To Conclude

All the issues have come at a time when the platform’s future is promising. Yet, these are not hindrances for an organization with a vision. Instead, they’re small challenges that any customer-centered business could fix and pave the way for more business growth.