An experience story that 'Shopify's account was frozen for some reason and sales could not be withdrawn'



Shopify is a platform that allows various retailers to easily open online shops, and is expected to compete with Amazon due to its diverse ecosystem. However, Matt Zoller Seitz , who runs an online bookstore and small publisher at Shopify, reported on a Twitter thread that 'Shopify's account was frozen and was hit hard.' increase.



Seitz ran a small online bookstore and publisher called MZS.Press , which opened an online shop on Shopify. While selling books from various major publishers, MZS.Press was also involved in selling in-house published books that were solicited for investment through crowdfunding. However, on June 16, 2022, Shopify's payment account was frozen and I couldn't withdraw my sales. In the meantime, Seitz, who ran out of company funds, had no choice but to deal with personal living expenses, as he had to keep shipping books for pre-orders received at Shopify's online shop and crowdfunding rewards. It says that it was.

Seitz, who managed to process the order, contacted Shopify's customer service, saying that although the account was frozen by a 'financial partner,' it wasn't revealed exactly which financial institution was involved. That. Initially, Shopify didn't reveal what was wrong, but after a few email exchanges, it was legal to sell a 'trademark' or 'brand' with links to books related to 'Star Wars.' He asked for a reseller certificate to show his rights.

However, in the first place, the principle of first-sale doctrine is applied to books, and products that have been properly distributed based on this do not infringe copyright even if they are resold or transferred. Although Shopify said, 'If you don't respond within 48 hours, you'll delete your admin account,' Seitz has no choice but to delete all the titles in the section, but 'First-sale doctrine is a copyright once purchased.' Guarantees the right to sell, rent, and give protected items. '' Shopify wanted to create a (non-existent) license to sell books. '' Shopify is legally wrong anyway. Was. '



In addition to this, Shopify repeatedly asks for a driver's license and requests the creation of a document approving the sale of non-existent branded products, 'a winding, discouraging, meaningless process. It seems that he asked to step on. However, when Seitz asked to tell him 'which book is branded or is causing the problem,' Shopify didn't respond at all.

At the time of the report on June 29, Shopify's payment account had sales of about 7,000 dollars (about 960,000 yen), but Mr. Seitz was forced into a difficult situation because he could not withdraw these funds, and the loan I ended up forming a group. Seitz, who gave up on Shopify, reported that he had decided to move to another platform, saying, 'If you're an entrepreneur of all kinds and you're considering using Shopify, don't do that.' increase.

The reason Shopify frozen Seitz's account is that someone may have alleged infringement because the book it publishes is based on drama production secrets and interviews. However, these books contain criticism and journalistic elements, and HBO 's legal department, which holds the rights to the drama, has answered that there is no problem, and HBO also arranges interviews and provides materials. Mr. Seitz said that he supported the production accordingly.

One hypothesis is that Shopify has been sued by textbook publishers for online shops in the past, making careful decisions about online bookstores. However, Shopify hasn't given a clear answer to Seitz himself, so I'm not sure what the problem was after all.



Twelve hours after Seitz posted a series of threads, Shopify unfrozen payment accounts. Seitz says it may be possible to change Shopify's response by tagging and posting on Twitter for people who have suffered similar damage.



After that, Mr. Seitz was very unpleasant, such as being sent a threatening email from Shopify saying 'I will cancel the refund of hundreds of thousands of yen I made in April and delete the administrator account if I do not provide evidence in writing'. It looks like I thought. 'We've been interacting with Shopify's customer support, legal, and accounting departments, and in each case we've made threatening and suspicious allegations (all subsequently withdrawn by Shopify). Shopify says we're not submissive. We obeyed because we made it clear that we would shut down. This company is rotten. '



In addition, this thread is also talked about on the social news site Hacker News, and it is said that the same thing happened with the experience story that 'the same thing happened to ourselves' and the payment services Stripe and PayPal . Comments have been received.

The dark side of Shopify | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32034643

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in Web Service, Posted by log1h_ik