Live Nightmare - Frozen on Halloween

I was eager to try the Shopify free 14 days trial. So I bought a Shopify hosted domain and set up my e-commerce store.

I was sold on the success stories on blogs and YouTube videos so I tried my luck.

The next step to learning enough knowledge as most people say, is to take the risk, grab the opportunity and start working on it.

I burned my eyebrows to have it set up as quick as possible despite how busy I am with my full-time job during the day. I then added items to my store from Oberlo and AliExpress, posted welcome message, disclaimer and return policy page to avoid freezing PayPal account, added useful plugins and finally had it advertised on Bing and Facebook to attract traffic and sales.

One of the plugins I had installed is Wish channel where merchants are allowed to display items on Wish market.

Here started my nightmare.

After importing the CSV file of my e-commerce store's product to Wish channel, I got sales. Wow!

Excited as I am, I hovered over my Wish dashboard. Then I found out that it was already marked "fulfilled" on my Shopify dashboard. It was then that I knew I had set my store on automatic fulfillment.

The first item was from AliExpress where fulfillment needs to be on laptops or computers with chrome extension browser. It's not possible through tablets and smartphones.

I had been to forums, chatted Shopify gurus for help through live chat, asking them to fulfill order on my e-commerce store because I can't do it through smartphone.

I told them I am a domestic helper living in my employer's house, without any day off and that my contract will soon end and when that time will come that I could go back to the Philippines, I could buy my own laptop and fulfill my Shopify orders. So I wished to pay for them just to fulfill my Shopify orders and nothing more.

After a couple of days of searching, I remembered someone who has a computer and could probably help me fulfill the already 3 days waiting for fulfillment customer order. Thanks to him. He knows who he is.

Taking much closer look at my Wish dashboard data, I wondered why they charged me or my customer of shipping when I am only arbitraging items without holding inventory online and I was offering free shipping to all items without requiring any minimum purchase upfront.

That means the manufacturer of the items will drop ship the item and the shipping charge are either free shipping or has a less charge.

What else had I noticed? They sold my items on very low prices. Actually less than half of the original price on Oberlo and AliExpress. OMG! Red alert!

They captured the payments from customers so I ordered those items out from my own pocket. And the worst part, it is still unsure if I will get paid. The eligible date of their payment to me will be March 1, 2018. Are they nuts?

I should have the items fulfilled within 5 days from the moment the customer places the order. I should abide to their recommended shipping couriers and rates. The customers should be satisfied so I could receive the payments due to me.

They had cut the prices of my items without notice and they kept sending emails of property infringement for those branded items. Who knows they might fake customer orders, reviews or else take that property infringement issue as an alibi when my payout schedule will arrive?

The moment I noticed the difference of the data on my Oberlo and Wish dashboard, I stepped back and canceled all those 6 fraudulent orders. Uh-oh!

They obliged me to refund the customers. If you were in my shoes, will you refund the customers? Definitely not, right?

Then I sent them email about opting out from negotiating with them, they kept sending spoofed email, property infringement and my obligatory refunds to customers.

What triggered me more? Shopify sent me an email stating they were unsuccessful in charging $21.95 from my bank account due to insufficient fund.

I was like, "What?!" My money in the bank before joining Shopify was 21,345 php which is equivalent to $414.371 insufficient to pay less than $22?!

I had the bank statement printed and checked.

Do you wanna know what was so shocking with the said print out? The Privy app which is 1 of the Shopify plug-ins. It has free and paid versions. Newbie as I am, I opted in with free version but grab the paid version of their email automation which is $10 for those who have 1500 subscribers.

I was deducted with that $10 and another 12, 607.20 php. OMG! I don't even have subscriber yet.

I asked for refunds by sending emails to Shopify support and billing, Privy and Oberlo. I hope I could get those refunds back, the soonest. I never even have any reply from Oberlo yet. I'm wondering if there are real people on that app or just fully automated app. I have not met someone real from Oberlo app.

See? Dropshipping is not a perfect business no matter how hard the gurus tried to hide the imperfections by talking about their newly bought cars which they had bought through it or their adventures on other places.

The refunds I am waiting for plus the advertisement I had paid nearly reach 19,000 php.

What's in on Halloween? My e-commerce is FROZEN! Let it go... Let it go... Turn away and slam the door!

I have not submitted a review on Shopify and its plugins yet. After a month or whenever I receive my refunds, whichever comes first, I will write a thorough review and provide the screenshots.

Have you tried the Shopify 14 days trial? How's your experience? Feel free to confide below. I'll be glad to hear from you. Come on. Please don't be shy. Care to share.