# Shopify apps behaving badly and costing merchants money

Market: Shopify

Shopify merchants using third-party apps report withheld funds, unannounced charges, and broken features, and they want reliable, transparent apps that handle their money honestly and work as promised.

Source: https://idea.2folk.com/clusters/32

## Verdict: skip (low confidence)

Only three lines, with three unrelated complaints, mostly about payouts and billing support. Only the tracking one is buildable, and it has a single author and no payment signal.

## The problem

Three separate 1-star app reviews describe stale tracking data with ads, payouts held for 365 days, and unannounced transactions that got a card blocked. The lines cover different problems, so no single clear pain emerges. Costs are lost trust and tied-up money.

Who: App users with Shopify-linked orders or payouts. The lines don't say business size or role; one may be a seller, others may be shoppers.

Would they pay? weak. No price paid or wish to pay found. Only a complaint about money held for 365 days and a card blocked by unannounced transactions.

## Idea: Carrier Tracking Refresher

A clean order-tracking page for Shopify stores that pulls live status straight from carriers, with no ads and reliable refresh, so customers stop checking carrier sites by hand.

Smallest version:
- Pull tracking status directly from major carrier pages by tracking number
- Branded tracking page that auto-refreshes on a schedule
- Simple email or link sharing for customers

Why it can win: Ad-free and refreshes reliably, automating the manual carrier-page workaround the reviewer already uses.

## Tools people use instead

- AfterShip: Ads keep returning, feedback button does nothing, background tracking updates stopped working so info goes stale

## Risks

- Only one line supports the tracking idea; demand is unproven.
- Carrier data access may be restricted or need paid APIs.
- The other two lines are about payouts and billing, which this idea doesn't fix.

## Test it this week

- Search Shopify app store reviews for tracking apps and count complaints about stale updates and ads.
- Post in Shopify merchant forums and subreddits asking how they handle tracking page reliability.
- Make a landing page for an ad-free reliable tracking page and see if store owners sign up.

## Size

- Posts: 3
- Unique authors: 3
- Average severity: 3.7 of 5
- First seen: 2026-09-08. Last seen: 2026-10-06
- Trend: 2 posts in the last 28 days, 1 in the 28 days before
- Authors who say they plan to switch: 0

## Who has the problem

- none found

Store size hints:
- none found

## What they do today

- opens the carrier's tracking page directly to force the app to refresh

## Tools named

Tools they complain about:
- AfterShip \(1\)

Alternatives they name:
- none found

## Price hints

- held for 365 days

## Evidence (top 3 by severity)

- [1-star review: the app shows ads that keep returning, the feedback button does nothing, and background tracking updates no longer work, leaving stale info.](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id507014023#review-14632463592) — 2026-10-06, apple, severity 4
- [One-star app review accusing the company of withholding the author's money for 365 days without reason and warning others to stay away.](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id371294472#review-14525211413) — 2026-09-08, apple, severity 4
- [1-star app review: unannounced transactions by the app led to the author's card being blocked.](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id371294472#review-14611880966) — 2026-09-30, apple, severity 3

## Before you build

- This is a signal, not proof of a buyer. Talk to at least 5 of the authors first.
- Check each named tool for price, rating, and recent reviews on its own site and app store.
- Write down what a buyer would pay and what they pay now.