Payment woes

Rant time!

I discovered last week that shopify had switched off our ability to take card payments without any warning. It apparently started when I told them our new address back in Feb/March. There was a brief email exchange back then when I explained the reason was we had moved house, and then nothing until last Friday - 8 months later - they put a warning on our system dashboard  that they had suspended our ability to take card payments and also wouldn't payout any money from sales. I had had a few messages from customers before this that our system wouldn't accept cards so this may have been shut down earlier.

I complained to support and then subsequently got an email from a 'risk analyst' saying they needed to verify our business. They were demanding things like VAT certificate, Companies House Registration, Charity Registration, etc. none of which our perfectly legal UK business (a partnership) would have. We provided various documentary proof but were still being asked (on our dashboard) to upload types of documents we simply wouldn't have. Finally today we have uploaded further HMRC/Tax documents provided by our very helpful accountant Karen and miraculously the messages have disappeared so we should be able to take card payments again. No email to say it's sorted and certainly no apologies for shutting down our business for a week.

It has severely dented my confidence in shopify - it seems to run by faceless 'Have a nice day' people who can just act as judge and jury and shut us down without any warning simply because the script they use doesn't reflect our perfectly legal UK business.

I am hoping that card payments are now working again. I will be watching closely.