we’ve been receiving more frequent 1-star reviews for Shopify billing-related issues that are completely outside of our control. This is very demoralizing for our team that works hard to maintain a high rating.
merchant cancels in the middle of their billing cycle, the charge still appears at the end of the billing cycle.
merchant gets two separate monthly charges on the same invoice
From the merchant perspective, I can totally understand that both scenarios are not a great experience. However, the blame should not fall on the app developers that have no control over the situation.
What we do in response:
Contact merchant as soon as possible (reviews now seem to be delayed again, making this harder)
Explain the situation
Always send a refund (sometime the payment is not even received so we have to wait for the refund to be even possible)
We then have to beg that the review is removed by the merchant. At least 50% of the cases, the merchant just goes dark and stops responding.
Is this really the best way this can be handled? It’s obvious that app developers cannot charge a merchant after the token has been revoked.
App reviews are supposed to get reviewed; why are such reviews always posted? It makes no sense.
We’ve tried reaching out to Partner support about such reviews - it’s always “escalated” and then no response is received at all.
I would much appreciate the input of some Shopify folks and the app dev community! @Liam-Shopify
Thanks for flagging this, I definitely understand how this frustrating. I’m going to make sure this feedback (along with @Gulam_Hussain_Quinn’s related thread) gets surfaced internally. Can’t promise timelines on any changes or what changes would look like, but I did just want to reply here to let you know I’m sharing this on my end. I’ll follow up here if I have anything concrete to share.
@Alan_G, @Michael, I’ve had this problem several times, too. Merchants often contact us when they see an app charge after uninstall, and we have to figure out the billing cycle and explain.
I think the Shopify invoice needs to have elements to clarify the billing cycle to the merchant and provide peace of mind that no future charges will incur. This would probably reduce support volume for both Shopify and developers, as well as give assurance to merchants that their billing is being handled correctly.
Edit: If a chart like this results in more issues than is helpful, perhaps add a little text next to each amount with something like “This charge refers to the previous billing cycle and is the last charge for this app.”
At the moment, this is honestly one of the biggest fears for Shopify partners, and I’m saying this on behalf of many app developers.
Whenever a paid user cancels their subscription but still has an upcoming invoice, I always send them an email explaining that they may still see the app charge on their invoice and that we will refund it. Then we just keep our fingers crossed that they read the email and don’t leave a 1-star review. But this entire situation is completely outside of our control.
If Shopify could improve this experience or provide a clearer mechanism around these post-cancellation charges, it would be a huge deal for all of us in the partner ecosystem.
