For about 3 weeks now, almost every purchase made via the Shop channel/app has ended up being a fraudulent order. Not only that, the orders were not flagged by Shopify's system - Shopify Fraud Protection did not catch those things and we got hammered with fraudulent orders and chargebacks - we found out on our own either from people calling in after the orders went through, or when we look through the order details and payment capture information. Yes, we do look at each order that comes in - we're not a large company, we're a small business, and we like to know where each one of our products go to; being that we are a small business, these fraudulent orders have caused losses and stress on the team that is almost unbearable.

The first one we noticed was about two weeks ago, when that person actually called us and told us they never placed this order. The shipping address was his mother’s and the billing address was his old address. He said he hadn’t used the Shop app in months. We chatted with Shopify’s support but the only thing they said was that they think that person's account got hacked.

Fast-forward to two weeks later, and we get a chargeback from someone else with nearly the same story. They ordered something that’s custom-made and takes about 4-6 weeks to build, so it hadn’t even shipped yet - but production has begun and parts ordered so that sucks a bit. But, same story: they had never heard of us, and didn't even know we made licensed Star Trek things.

A bit of digging, and we see more orders where chargebacks were filed but they were protected by Shopify’s Chargeback Protection and we didn’t even get notifications about those. But all of those were also pretty much the same stories.

And here’s where it gets really weird: The shipping addresses do match those of the owners of the hacked accounts, all are correct - some packages are still en route, and some are now at nearby UPS stores waiting to be picked up. So no, the scammers who hacked those accounts don’t even have the merchandise.

Shopify is absolutely no help with this. All they do is send us articles to forward to customers about how to protect their accounts: basically they want us to do their jobs.

Our question here is: Why are they doing this? They don’t even get the merchandise. Does anyone of you have similar experiences?

We do think Shopify knows about this, because why else would they offer the chargeback protection for Shop app orders when shipped within 7 days.

Here's actually a little excerpt of the chat with Shopify after a call with the first customer mentioned above:

"16:59 Agent (Support Advisor): Thank you for waiting we have double checked our resources and also based our Support Shop Department they mentioned to me that they don't have the visibility as to why this particular order got a fraudulent or high risk they can only provide some general information or general insights and suggestions:
16:59 Agent (Support Advisor): * Account security: It is possible that the customer's account may have been compromised or hacked. In such cases, fraudsters gain unauthorized access to the account and place fraudulent orders. It's important for customers to use strong, unique passwords and enable two-factor authentication (if available) to enhance the security of their accounts." 

‼️ PLEASE Shopify, do not tell us fraud can happen and to use your fraud prevention system like you did in another review. We ARE using your fraud prevention and your system doesn't catch it!!