Shopee: Account Limited

Shopee is an online marketplace, where you can buy and sell goods. They've focus on being mobile accessible and operates in South East Asia and Taiwan

I've used Shopee for years, as I currently live in the Philippines and it's been a great option. I always believed I was in good standing and followed their guidelines

Then out of the blue I get an notification stating Account Limited and no clear reason is provided. When I tap the notification, I'm sent to an support page with a list of possible reasons to why my account could have been limited, but no clear reason why my particular account was limited

Reaching out to support

When I talk to the agent, they ask for screenshot of the issue and if I can use Shopee Pay (payment solution from Shopee). As I haven't tried and just straight contacted Shopee support to figure out what was going on. The agent did a check and could find my account is under investigation, but couldn't provided any more details as to why and told me to wait for support to reach out

As the agent mentioned Shopee Pay. I tried to buy something after speaking to agent, to see what happened and when trying to checkout I get Action Failed(A02): Your account has been restricted from buying and selling due to a violation of our policies. As I believe this is a mistake, I don't take any further action and just wait on Shopee to reply

Request for personal information

This instantly raised red phising flag and I reached out to support to validate if this is legit. Shopee support confirms it's legit, but are not able to answer on how long retention period they have for these personal information's being stored on a 3rd party site

Based on the provided Shopee reasons to my account being limited, I also don't get why Shopee would need all the requested personal information to handle the appeal. The agent said it was for verifications purposes, but that could also have been solved by sending an OTP to my mobile and not by having to send over a lot of unrelated personal information. I asked Shopee for an alternative method and they say they'll check with the assigned team of my case and come back once they have an update

Almost instantly after ending the chat, I get above message on e-mail and now I'm told the reason is voucher abuse. As I haven't changed my purchase patterned recently and have been doing similar purchases for years, I don't find it clear on what exactly what they considered was voucher abuse and I reached out to support once again, to see if I could get any more clarification. Support agent didn't want to tell me on chat and said it would be e-mailed to me as soon as the chat ended

This reply just confused me more, as I haven't done any purchases on the 29th (or 28th) that included vouchers. I contacted support once more, to check on how I could proceed with getting my account suspension lifted, as this feels as an mistake. Support agent says my case was still being investigated and I should just wait

A week past and still no words, so instead of contacting the support agents on chat (again). I wrote an summary of what have happened and asking how we can resolve this issue, by filling out a support ticket on their website that should give a response over email

I received an automatic email to confirm my inquiry was received and after about two weeks, I got an vague reply

Meaning my account is still limited, I still can't get a proper answer to why and Shopee don't provide me any options to remove the limitations

Shopee paradox of voucher usage

On the front page multiple banners are always advertising for vouchers for you to use and there's even own menues (yes, there's more than one) just for vouchers for you to claim

When you go to checkout, there's a constant reminder to apply free shipping vouchers and when you click to apply a voucher, you'll also be prompted to add discount vouchers

Shopee also don't have clear guidelines on what they consider to be abuse, so if you apply vouchers to your purchases in good faith. You might wake up one day banned for voucher abuse and a cold shoulder from Shopee, when you try to figure out why you were suspended and trying to resolve the issue

Final advice?

If Shopee had a better process for Account Limited, where they first give you a warning with information on what they believe you're doing wrong and chance to change how you use their service, before getting limited. I believe most users would happily follow the advices provided and Shopee would build stronger relationship with their users

I've been using Shopee for years and have not changed how I used them. Meaning whatever got my account limited, I probably have been doing for a long time without realizing it was against their vague rules. I've reached out to Shopee Support multiple times to try to find a proper solution, they're not interested in resolving my issue or tell me what the issue even is

My final advice is, if you plan to use Shopee, be careful with using vouchers or any other discounts. They advertise heavily for you to use them, but end of the day they might limit your account for taking them up on their offer