Review Policy Double Standard

Shopify App Store
1

Hey Shopify community CC @Liam-Shopify

We all remember when Shopify rolled out the policy removing reviews from inactive stores. It hit a lot of us hard: many apps lost a significant number of hard-earned reviews. It was painful, but at least it was a consistent rule applied across the board.

Here’s our problem: we have 1-star reviews on our app from stores that are now closed. By the same logic behind that policy, these reviews should be removed too. We’ve contacted Shopify Support three times: in April, then on May 6th (ticket #66741037), and again on May 27th (ticket #67551700). Each time, they acknowledged the issue was valid but gave us no timeline, no follow-up, and no resolution. Every ticket gets the same generic response.

It’s incredibly frustrating. The policy was enforced broadly and quickly when Shopify decided to act, but when we raise the same principle as individual developers, we’re stuck in a loop of unanswered tickets for months. We’re not asking for anything unreasonable. We just want consistent enforcement of the rules that already exist.

And sadly, this doesn’t seem to be an isolated case. Looking through this very forum, there are multiple threads from other partners raising similar concerns with no response from Shopify at all. It’s hard not to conclude that partner feedback is simply being ignored.

If you’ve experienced something similar, please share your story in the comments. The more partners speak up, the harder it is to ignore. Let’s make it clear that this is not a one-off complaint. It’s a widespread problem that deserves a real answer. The strength of this community is in our collective voice, so let’s use it. :oncoming_fist:

2

Hi Alejandro,

We are experiencing the exact same issue.

We have reported this multiple times to Shopify Support and even compiled and submitted a complete list of reviews left by stores that have since been closed.

What is unclear to us is that Shopify’s policy regarding reviews from inactive stores has already been communicated and enforced in the past.

We are simply asking for that policy to be applied consistently. Furthermore, when a store has been closed, we have no practical way to assist the merchant, discuss their concerns, or request that they update or remove their review, as they no longer have access to their Shopify store and the review management features. :cry:

We would greatly appreciate some clarification on how these cases are being evaluated and whether partners can expect any action on previously reported closed-store reviews.

@Liam-Shopify, if you have any insight into this situation, or any updates you are able to share, we would really appreciate hearing your perspective on how these cases are being evaluated. Our latest ticket number is #67995438.

Thank you in advance for your reply.

3

Adding another voice from the app-builder side. The closed-store rule was painful but at least had a clear logic to it: an inactive store can’t validate whether the app still works for them, so the review’s signal value has decayed. That logic applies identically to negative reviews from now-closed stores. It’s not a different situation, it’s the same situation.

The piece worth pushing for in any escalation is the asymmetry: the inactive-store removal pass was applied unilaterally and at scale, but the reverse-direction request goes through the manual support form and gets the standard “we have reviewed and it does not violate our policy” template. That template treats the question as “does this review contain banned content” when the actual question is “does this review have any current signal value to merchants reading it today”. Different question.

What has worked for other app developers in the same boat:

  1. File the report through the Partner Support form with the explicit framing: “this review was published while the store was active; the store is now closed; under your own June 2024 closed-store policy, this review now has zero current-merchant signal value”. Frame it as policy consistency, not as content complaint.

  2. Include the closed-store proof in screenshots: the .myshopify.com URL returning a 404 or “store unavailable”, plus the date you first observed it closed.

  3. CC a partner manager if you have one. The general support queue is the wrong path for policy-consistency requests; partner managers have direct lines into the App Store policy team.

  4. Post here as well (which you’ve done), because the App Store team does watch the dev community for systemic-pattern complaints. A handful of similar threads from different app builders moves the needle faster than a single support ticket.

The longer-term fix would be Shopify exposing a “store status” badge on the review itself (active / closed / inactive 30d), so the question of which reviews are current-signal becomes self-evident rather than a manual review on each one. That would close the asymmetry without requiring policy litigation per-listing.