I was casually checking my Partner dashboard today and noticed that Shopify had automatically refunded the last 4 months of app subscription charges for one of my customer. I never received any email or notification, so I had no idea this had happened.
The merchant was still using the app until today, and then closed their store immediately after the refunds.
Does anyone know what typically triggers these refunds? Are they usually chargebacks/payment disputes initiated by the merchant, or does Shopify issue them automatically in certain situations?
I’ve already reached out to Shopify Support, so this post is just out of curiosity to understand how this works and whether anyone else has experienced something similar.
No, they were on the Basic plan and subscribed to my app’s monthly plan.
I’ve actually seen this happen before when merchants close their store. It doesn’t happen every time, but in some cases Shopify seems to automatically refund the last month’s app charge.
I even had one case where I’d promised the merchant I’d refund them after they paid their Shopify invoice. They paid it, but Shopify had already automatically refunded the app charge. Neither of us realized it at the time, so I ended up refunding them again.
I never really looked into it because it was only one month. This time it was four months, so now I’m curious what’s actually triggering it.
Support has escalated this to their billing team, so let’s see what they come back with. I’ll share the response here once I hear back.