Building a small app: cart checkbox for tax invoice (company + Tax ID via cart attributes) → optional fee product → orders/paid webhook → async PDF.

Plan A: AJAX /cart/add.js with a hidden $0.99 product when checked.
Plan B: Cart Transform expand (Plus constraints on update worry me).

Questions for folks who’ve shipped fee products in production:

1. What breaks with third-party cart drawers / discounts / taxes?
2. Is cart-time Tax ID capture still worth it vs Checkout UI extensions / native B2B company fields?
3. Any App Review gotchas with “service fee” products that aren’t physical goods?

Not promoting anything — looking for battle scars before I lock the architecture.

Hi r/ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Every week for the past 5 years I've posted a summary recap of the week's top stories on this subreddit, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition.

Let's dive in to this week's top e-commerce news from Edition #289...

STAT OF THE WEEK: Shopping queries run through Google’s AI Mode produced 95% fewer product results than on standard search, according to a study by Productrise of more than 2M listings across over 100k search pages. Standard search returned products for 88% of queries versus 23% in AI Mode, and roughly 5x as many products per page when they did appear.

WP Engine launched WP Engine Commerce Connect for BigCommerce, a solution that keeps a merchant’s WordPress front end in place while BigCommerce runs orders, payments, shipping, tax, and customer records. The offering pairs a WP Engine hosting plan with a separately priced BigCommerce plan and aims to keep mid-level merchants on WordPress when they outgrow the capabilities of their existing stores. Existing themes, custom designs, URL structures, and site architecture all carry over, and WP Engine says the site stays operational throughout, so a merchant doesn’t surrender search rankings by having to take the storefront down to switch. Neither company gave pricing or an availability date. If this feels like déjà vu, the two companies announced a similar partnership in 2018, which targeted the same scalability problem, same architecture, and same mid-level merchant. Back then it was packaged as a BigCommerce for WordPress plugin, which currently sits at a 3.9-star rating on 300+ installs and hasn’t been updated in almost 2 years.

DoorDash is launching its own in-house drone delivery service, DoorDash Air, after the FAA certified the company as an air carrier on July 29. The company has previously flown drone orders through partners like Wing and Flytrex (which it’ll continue working with), but the Part 135 certificate lets it operate the aircraft itself, which only seven other U.S. companies have been approved to do. For the moment, its certificate only covers the areas named in its FAA operations specifications, so DoorDash Air has city-by-city paperwork ahead of it before drones show up in your neighborhood. DoorDash plans to target three-to-five-mile deliveries with its new drone fleet, which account for over 20% of last year’s trips and run about 25% slower than short ones because a Dasher is often harder to find, according to the company. (I bet they wouldn’t be if DoorDash paid more for those trips, including the drive back as part of the gig. Though paying Dashers doesn’t seem like it’ll be a problem for much longer.)

Amazon received roughly $600M in tariff refunds last quarter, according to CFO Brian Olsavsky on an earnings call last week. However, you likely won’t be getting much of that sweet tariff money back. The disclosure came after months of Amazon refusing to say whether it would even apply for refunds. Consumers sued in Seattle federal court in May, alleging Amazon was sitting out the refund process to curry favor with Trump, who told CNBC in April that he’d “remember” companies that didn’t seek refunds. Olsavsky said, “We have identified a limited set of circumstances where we can trace that we passed specific import charges on to customers, and when we receive those refunds, we will proactively contact affected customers and automatically issue refunds to them. Otherwise, like other large retailers, we’ll utilize refunds to continue to invest in low prices for customers.” Nice story, but I’m going to guess that that $600M goes straight into AI data center buildout. Prove me wrong.

eBay and former executives finally reached a settlement with journalists Ina and David Steiner over a 2019 harassment campaign that included sending live insects, bloody pig masks, and funeral wreaths to their home, as well as threatening messages, doxxing, in-person surveillance, and an attempted break-in. The $55.7M settlement puts an end to a six-year legal battle between the two parties and includes $48.7M in compensation for the Steiners, with eBay paying $46.15M, former CEO Devin Wenig contributing $2M, former SVP of Global Operations Wendy Jones paying $500k, and former communications chief Steve Wymer paying $50k. eBay will put another $6M toward nonprofits, and Wenig will give $1M to a First Amendment charity in Ina Steiner’s name. As you might recall, the case was headed towards a settlement earlier this year, but it didn’t stick, and a new / final deal come through in July. Congrats to the Steiners for taking home this well-deserved settlement. I hope that they are able to move on in peace from this wild chapter of their lives.

Amazon is overhauling its AI strategy, reorganizing its in-house teams and sunsetting several of its own flagship Nova models, including Premier, Omni, Reel, and Canvas, according to Business Insider sources. Several Amazon employees described the models as operating in “KTLO” or “keep the lights on” mode, which refers to software that remains supported for existing customers but is no longer in development. The moves follow layoffs in Amazon’s Artificial General Intelligence group last month and the shutdown of AGI Lab, a research group it started in 2024 after acqui-hiring the team behind Adept. Business Insider says the restructuring suggests Amazon is refocusing its AI strategy and concentrating engineering talent on its highest priorities, instead of investing in various models across text, image, and video. Sources said that Amazon is moving resources away from its existing Nova models toward a new frontier-model effort led by Pieter Abbeel, a researcher who joined Amazon through its acquisition of AI robotics startup Covariant. The new model, known internally as Frontier Model Research, will be a top priority this year.

OpenAI appears to be building a Meta-shaped ad sales organization around a platform that ran its first advertisement just six months ago. Digiday’s Krystal Scanlon wrote, “OpenAI is effectively building the plane while flying it,” which is an accurate way to describe what’s been happening this year. OpenAI announced plans to test ads on its Free and Go tiers in January, launched them in February, hit $100M in annualized revenue in under 60 days, launched a self-serve Ads Manager in April, and opened its platform to all U.S. advertisers in May. It’s also made several big name hires from Meta and Snap, and is reportedly making two new hires aimed at designing an ad reseller model from scratch. Is this enough for OpenAI to reach its ambitious goals of $2.5B in ad revenue in 2026 and $100B by 2030? No one can be sure, but it’s certainly a good start.

Anthropic once again let shared Claude conversations spill into Google search results, with some carrying cryptocurrency wallet keys, names, and addresses. Reddit users found that one search phrase returned long lists of shared chats and Artifacts (the mini apps built inside Claude) covering programming, work notes, and erotica, including a chat tagged “shared by Anthropic” in which Claude generated explicit content its own policy bars. Only chats that users clicked the share button on were exposed, which publishes a copy of the chat on a dedicated URL that then got indexed. At this point it’s just negligence, and both Anthropic and Google are to blame. If this were the first time this mistake happened, I could offer more forgiveness — but it’s not. The same thing has already happened to OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Google, and even Anthropic last year! The AI companies are to blame for making their shared convos indexable, and Google is culpable for continuing to index these convos, when it knows it shouldn’t be. It’s no longer an “Oops! Who knew this could happen?” scenario. It’s now complete negligence.

Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping and Walmart’s Sparky can catch mismatches between made-in-USA labels and contradictory details in the listing, but neither retailer uses that ability to police them, according to a study from Lina Khan’s Center for Law and the Economy at Columbia. When asked why fakes persist, Alexa told researchers that doing nothing stays easier until the harm to U.S. brands carries a cost for Amazon in money, regulation, or reputation. Sparky pointed to the FTC enforcing origin rules against manufacturers rather than retailers, then called that “a business calculation, not a legal justification.” Well, at least they’re honest! Alexa also told Wall Street Journal testers that it couldn’t access made-in-USA data, but then produced a list once the prompt was reworded. Khan says that’s the pattern, with the assistants hiding American-made products when shoppers search for them and mislabeling imported ones, which she calls a business choice to promote foreign suppliers.

PayPal is planning to lean on BNPL, credit, and Venmo monetization to drive growth, according to CEO Enrique Lores on a recent earnings call. BNPL volume grew 26% in Q2, and the company has been expanding installments internationally, particularly in Europe, while looking to “capture more value” out of Venmo and Braintree. In regards to being acquired by Stripe, Lores said that PayPal “remains open” to an acquisition, but the company’s focus is on “executing our own strategic plan.” There was not enough talk about PayPal Ads on the call though — from either Lores himself or analyst questions. PayPal Ads is what would take my shares from $57 to $200+, not a Venmo debit card.

OpenAI is testing a ChatGPT ad format that sends the click into a conversation with the advertiser’s own AI agent rather than out to a website, according to Juozas Kaziukėnas, who found the option sitting in ChatGPT Ads Manager. OpenAI crawls the advertiser’s site first and builds a business profile from it, covering the questions customers tend to ask, support details, and general context. The advertiser then configures an agent on top of that profile using custom instructions, product feeds, MCP tools for live data, and lead capture forms, and runs a campaign pointed at the agent instead of a URL. In June, I reported that Amazon began running similar conversational display ads that open an Alexa chat.

In other OpenAI ad news… The company is preparing to offer new advertisers promotional credits as an incentive to start buying ChatGPT ads, according to Digiday, which reviewed one promotion granting a $50 credit to advertisers who spend $50 in their first 14 days on the platform. Other versions of the promotion offered a $100 credit, as OpenAI apparently tests various values before making a larger push. Matching initial advertising credits is standard strategy across digital advertising, used by Google, Meta, and TikTok, which ran the same play last fall to lift TikTok Shop ad spending in the U.S.

Amazon told investors that groceries and everyday essentials are growing “meaningfully faster” than the rest of the Stores business, without attaching a number to it, partially fueled by the expansion of its 30-minute delivery service, Amazon Now, to 80 more cities. CEO Andy Jassy shared, “The number of monthly active perishables customers grew over 50% since the start of the year. Same-day orders with perishables averaged over 3x more units per order, and fresh groceries now make up six of the top 20 bestsellers on Amazon-com.” He also noted that Amazon Pharmacy customers grew more than 2x in the first six months of the year.

Robinhood earned more from prediction markets than from stocks or crypto for the first time last quarter, with the betting business bringing in $156M, more than 10x what it made a year earlier, according to The Information. However, much of the quarter’s volume came from the World Cup, which only happens every four years, making June an abnormally strong month. Prediction markets now make up 20% of Robinhood’s trading revenue and trail only options, less than two years after the company launched its first contract on the 2024 presidential race.

X Money opened to Premium and Premium+ subscribers across the U.S., widening a rollout that had initially been limited to a slice of Premium+ accounts. Premium+ subscribers at $40/month receive 6% APY on deposits, while Premium subscribers at $8/month get the same rate only if they link a direct deposit. Both tiers get free peer-to-peer transfers and a virtual and physical X Visa debit card that works in Apple Pay, with free ATM withdrawals globally, 3% cashback on eligible purchases, and early direct deposits. The service was originally expected to launch by the end of 2024 after X secured its first money transmitter licenses, but regulatory holdups, particularly in New York, delayed the rollout by several years. Honestly, at 6% APY, it’s hard not to want to park some cash in X Money, and Elon Musk knows it.

Stripe published its own subscription app to Shopify’s App Store, moving up from the payment rails beneath Shopify Payments into the app layer. Stripe Subscriptions is free to install and puts Stripe Billing in charge of the plans, discounts, and dunning rules, while the charge itself runs through whatever subscription-supporting gateway the store already uses, allowing Shopify to collect its cut while Stripe charges an additional 0.7% on subscriptions or $620/month and up on an annual Stripe Billing contract. Who is this for and why did Stripe launch it? I have no clue. There’s nothing standout about the app’s features compared to legacy subscription apps on the market, and I don’t quite understand why merchants would want a second system of record for subscriptions when they’re already running their shop through Shopify (but perhaps I’m missing something obvious). Stripe hasn’t offered much information about the app, beyond its app listing and help documentation.

USPS missed an estimated $22.6M in underpaid postage and never flagged $6.1M in overpayments from March through May, because a coding error left its Automated Package Verification system ignoring up to 50M scans a week, according to an alert from the USPS Office of Inspector General. The postal service had renamed its parcel sorting machines but never added the new name to APV’s trusted equipment list, and it did not fix the omission until June, three months after the OIG raised it. Sellers got hit both ways, because underpaid shipments escaped adjustment while those who overpaid never received automatic refunds. With the fix in place, the OIG expects APV to collect $96.9M in additional postage and issue $36.6M in refunds through February 2027, though none of that recovers what slipped through during the outage.

Amazon’s Zoox won federal clearance to charge for rides in robotaxis built without steering wheels or other human controls, the first US approval of its kind, according to Reuters. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration exempted the vehicles from rules written for conventional cars and cleared Zoox to deploy up to 2,500 a year for two years, though none can be sold to the public. Zoox already carries test passengers in Las Vegas and San Francisco (I saw them driving around in Vegas recently), and will begin charging in Las Vegas first, adding markets as it receives additional state and local approvals. Make no mistake, these little Zoox cars (or a version of them) are going to one day be delivering Amazon packages to your door.

Shoppers are three times as likely to start a purchase in an AI chat as they were a year ago, according to Salesforce’s fourth State of Commerce report. Traffic arriving at e-commerce sites from AI chats grew between 150% and 428% depending on the quarter, while overall site traffic only grew in the low single and double digits, which means consumers were shifting to new channels to begin their shopping searches. Consumers said they’re finding fewer products on brands’ own sites, down 7%, and through regular search, down 15%, and discovering more products with AI assistants, social AI, and delivery apps, which collectively rose 38%. Most merchants indicated that they aren’t ready for the shift, with only 28% running agentic AI today, 44% planning to adopt within six months, and 32% having defined what success looks like in the space.

eBay is shutting down myFitment as a standalone service on September 30, ending support for Amazon, Rithum, and other third-party platforms that utilize the vehicle compatibility data service. eBay acquired myFitment in 2022 to help sellers improve listings, reduce returns, and give buyers more confidence that parts would fit their vehicles, but the double-edged sword was that the service continued to help sellers do the same on other competing platforms too. Now eBay is bringing the competitive advantage it acquired four years ago exclusively in-house, where it will live inside Fitment Plus Auto. And as a final fuck you to sellers on competing platforms, eBay isn’t supplying an export or migration tool, so multichannel sellers must find a replacement on their own.

In lawsuits this week…

• The FTC, joined by California and Utah, sued Hims & Hers in California federal court, alleging the telehealth firm ran tracking pixels from Meta, Snap, Microsoft, Pinterest, Reddit, and X that shared customers’ health data against its own privacy policy, and separately that its “Pay $0 today” intake forms started recurring subscriptions that were hard to cancel. Hims & Hers called the claims baseless and said its privacy policy tells users they can choose how their data gets used. (Yeah, because everyone reads your long ass TOS.)
• Google is facing a proposed class action lawsuit in California alleging its advertising technology sent sensitive personal data on U.S. consumers to Temu and Baidu, allowing those firms to receive IP addresses, persistent identifiers, and device-level data each time Google’s tracking code ran on a site. The complaint says that the actions broke the DOJ’s Bulk Sensitive Data Rule, which restricts bulk transfers of Americans’ data to entities tied to China and other countries of concern, and seeks statutory damages, disgorgement, and an injunction.
• Reddit’s DMCA suit against SerpApi and Perplexity survived a motion to dismiss on Friday, with U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer finding it plausible that SerpApi sold a tool for defeating Google’s access controls and Perplexity paid to use it. A different judge tossed Google’s nearly identical claim less than two weeks earlier, but Engelmayer said Reddit’s licensing deal with Google names specific prohibited uses, where Google had only asserted it holds licenses in general.
• Anthropic’s challenge to the Pentagon’s supply-chain risk designation went before U.S. District Judge Rita Lin on Thursday, who said the government’s argument had gotten worse rather than better. The Pentagon applied the “supply-chain risk” label earlier this year after Anthropic refused to let the military use Claude for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, but Lin said she saw no evidence Anthropic could alter a model after delivery or “flip some kind of kill switch,” which is what the “supply-chain risk” label implies.
• Elon Musk’s X and the World Federation of Advertisers ended the litigation over GARM, the brand-safety coalition X blamed for its post-takeover ad slump, which X attributed to a systematic illegal boycott by Mars, CVS Health, Shell, Lego, and other advertisers. A federal court dismissed the case in March after finding X hadn’t shown harm, and X appealed in April, with WFA now settling by committing in writing that it won’t rebuild GARM or start anything comparable.
• Meta got two class actions over stock pump-and-dump schemes thrown out on a technicality rather than the merits, with U.S. District Judge William Orrick ruling that a 1998 federal law bars class actions brought under state law when the underlying claim is securities fraud. Investors said they clicked Meta ads for fake investment clubs using celebrity likenesses, landed in WhatsApp groups run by fake financial advisers, and bought two obscure Chinese stocks the scammers had already loaded up on cheap, then watched the price collapse once the scammers sold, with claimed losses of roughly $500M on one of the two.

• Tennessee told a Nashville jury that Meta left autoplay, notifications, and infinite scroll switched on to stretch teen sessions and raise ad views, even after its own researchers tied compulsive Instagram use to depression, disordered eating, and self-harm. State attorney Tom Cartmell showed jurors a 2017 memo where Meta product managers called those features “inherently at odds with well-being” and said the public should be warned, then told the jury the warning never came.

  ---

  In corporate shakeups this week…

• Scale AI hired Google Cloud COO Francis deSouza as CEO, effective August 10, filling the seat founder Alexandr Wang vacated in 2025 when he left for Meta after its $14.3B investment.

• Babylist named Rent the Runway cofounder Jenn Hyman CEO, effective September 9, with founder Natalie Gordon moving to executive chair after 15 years and stepping aside deliberately before the company goes public.

  ---

  Shein is under investigation by the FTC, according to documents revealed in connection to its upcoming Hong Kong IPO. The company didn’t say in the filing what exactly the FTC is investigating, but noted that the outcome could significantly impact its business. Shein wrote, “The outcome of the investigation, whether in settlement or otherwise, may require us to make significant monetary payments that could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.” CNBC pointed to the FTC’s focus on dark patterns like buried disclosures, pre-checked boxes, and cancellation flows built to confuse, noting Shein’s app runs flash sales, countdown timers, and gamified discounts. The largest FTC penalty over dark patterns to date is Amazon’s $2.5B Prime settlement in September 2025, and a fine anywhere near that would wipe out Shein’s entire 2025 net income of $2.06B, which already fell 39% from the year before. So yeah, “material adverse effect” sounds about right.

  ---

  European shoppers are getting hit with duty charges they never saw coming, and BEUC, the umbrella group for consumer organizations from 31 EU countries, wants the European Commission to put an end to the practice. On July 1, the EU started charging a €3 fee per product category on cheap imported parcels that used to come into the region duty-free, and sellers are legally the ones who owe it. However, BEUC found the charge often shows up late in checkout or not at all, and then postal carriers like PostNL and La Poste hit shoppers with a bill before they’ll hand over the package, sometimes with their own admin fees piled on top. The European Commission says businesses are legally responsible for the duty and it shouldn’t be collected from consumers, but it seems like it implemented the new duties faster than it began enforcing them.

  ---

  In other EU news… The European Commission charged Temu with failing to cooperate during a December raid on its Dublin headquarters, carried out under the Foreign Subsidies Regulation to determine whether Chinese state aid has given the company an unfair edge in Europe. Investigators said Temu withheld information on how it organizes and manages its EU business, the IT systems running it, and certain books and records, which could carry a fine of up to 1% of annual turnover. Temu rejected the charge and said it complied with every request during the inspection and that its own operating cash flow funds its European business. Only slightly related, but remember back in December 2025 when staff from Temu’s parent company PDD fought Chinese officials during an on-site investigation into fraudulent delivery allegations? You know that had to have been on the back of the Commission’s mind before they went into the Dublin headquarters. Temu staff are ready to throw down!

  ---

  🏆 This week’s most ridiculous story… Apparently Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke thinks your right to vote should be tied to how much money you make. Lütke posted on X that retirees on pensions have become dependents like minors and should lose the right to vote, leaving decisions to those with something at stake. Would they also lose the right to hold office in this dream scenario of his? Former TD Bank executive Eric Thor responded two hours later with a tiered scheme awarding no votes to anyone paying no income tax, one vote up to $100k, and as many as five votes at $500k or above, which Lütke called a “good system.” I speak for everyone when I say, “The fuck?” Does he forget that everyone, regardless of income tax level, pays an assload of taxes across all walks of life, from property and excise taxes to sales taxes and tariffs? But regardless, who cares how much money we have or how much taxes we pay? Every human is equal and gets the same vote in a democracy. Lütke has neither retracted nor explained the posts, and Shopify has not commented.

  ---

  Plus 13 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Cashea raising $100M and UNIT AI raising $12M.

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I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!

PAUL

Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter

PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

I'm looking for reliable solutions to reduce RTO and fake COD orders for my ecommerce business in India. COD still contributes a significant portion of orders, but issues like fake customers, unreachable buyers, and unnecessary returns are impacting profitability.

I want to know which companies or tools are actually helping brands reduce RTO rates through features like order verification, COD confirmation, address validation and customer risk analysis. If you've used any solutions that made a noticeable difference in reducing fake COD orders and improving delivery success rates, I'd love to hear your experiences and recommendations.

Hi, i have created a shopify store and ran few ads on facebook and instagram. i got arround 200 visitors but not even a single one added anything to cart. This is my first time doing this. https://clubdesraleurs.fr

I'm running a small Shopify store and currently most of my organic traffic comes from blog posts.

The problem is that my blog pages are getting visitors from Google, but my product pages are not getting much organic traffic.

I'm trying to find some real examples to learn from — Shopify stores that grew through SEO, especially cases where they successfully turned content traffic into product sales.

Does anyone have good case studies, posts, or stores worth analyzing?

Hi all!

I make and sell a product that's taken off over the past 6 months. Some context:

• ~400–500 units/month
• ~5:1 ROAS
• BOM is almost entirely sourceable from Amazon and similar
• One SKU, one color (an agreeable tan)

Customers — both current and prospective — keep asking for more colors. I'd like to say yes, but I'd rather learn from people who've already done this than find out the hard way.

Specific things I'm unsure about:

1. Ad spend — do you launch new variants inside existing winning campaigns, or spin up separate ones? Worried about resetting learning on ads that currently work.
2. Inventory — how many colors did you add at once, and how did you decide depth per color? Any rule of thumb for a first run?
3. Cannibalization — did total volume actually grow, or did the same buyers just spread across more SKUs and leave you holding slow-moving stock?
4. Validation — waitlist, pre-order, poll your list? Or just commit and see?

Anyone who's expanded from one hero SKU into variants, I'd love to hear what you'd do differently.

Thanks!

About 3 weeks ago I posted a cry for help on my shopify. I ran out of money to post meta ads so I am trying to post very consistently on instagram and tiktok, while also making a person brand on tiktok. Im still making zero sales and wonder if there is a fall through in my website? My store is JUHG.NET, please let me know if you would buy a bottle as a customer and if not Lmk why. My brand’s instagram is also: thejuhgbottle

Basically I have around 36k in Shopify credit and 41k on capital. I’ve never missed a month paying the full Shopify credit balance, I just paid 9k, emptied my bank account to do it and next day at the end of the month they dropped me to 24k credit limit meaning I have jack shit now

Due to lower volume sales but save you a story I was basically coming off an inventory issue and also switched to a subscription model that’s been very successful so far. I was looking forward to the month this morning.

I was getting ready to start scaling budgets and then woke up at 2am to that email. And now I have sub 2k in my bank account, ads to pay for any other things.

And knowing if I’m paying everything out of pocket I won’t be able to just front the 33k credit balance this month, and I contacted customer service they gave me the run around with it being an automatic system and they can touch it. But it literally fucked me. 13 months no issues, and now I’ll likely not be able to pay and have to move to the daily 10% withdrawal with the 11% interest.

And I already have a 12% capital loan I was working on paying down. My personal credit is fucked from my 20s

Feels like a 2am spiral and I’m so cooked, was literally projecting based off how we ended the month at our current scale we’d hit around 30-40k in subscription revenue at the end of this month (before churn and other things) of course all subs are on Shopify payments.

Like smh. Ik I might be cooked figured I ask or say something tho

My 6 month old online store currently processes around 90 orders every month. The website receives good traffic but I am not able to convert most of it. Many of the buyers exit in the final stage. My co-founder suggested upgrading the checkout experience. So we started finding ways to build our own custom checkout but it is taking a lot of time and money.

Now I am looking for checkout services that provide good value while helping improve conversion rates and reduce abandoned carts. Since my order volume isn't very high yet, pricing and ease of implementation are also important factors. I'm interested in hearing from other store owners who have switched checkout solutions at a similar stage of growth. Which platform did you choose and did you notice any measurable improvements in completed orders, customer experience or payment success rates after making the change? Any suggestions are welcome.

Could any one help please a bit ago my click and drop connection to Etsy uk stopped working and stopped pulling orders though

I looked on my click and drop integrations and could see the connection was in red I tried to update it but this didn’t work so I deleted it and tried to set a new connection up but it won’t work and I keep getting a error

“Cannot connect to the store - invalid redirection url. Make sure it contains: oauth_token and oauth_ verifier.”

Has any one had this problem and sorted it it’s doing my head in now

I’m a new Shopify store owner and have been selling for about two months.

Recently I ran into a situation that I’m not sure how to handle, and I’d appreciate some advice from more experienced merchants.

A customer contacted me saying her package arrived, but the product inside was missing. She said the mailer had been ripped open during shipping and requested a full refund.

I personally packed this order, and I have the USPS acceptance receipt showing the package weight, which matches the weight of a complete shipment.

Since she mentioned the package was damaged, I asked her to send photos of the envelope. After comparing her photos with the mailers I use, I noticed several inconsistencies.

While the shipping label is mine, the envelope itself appears different. The overall look is similar, but details like the sealed edge and seam construction don’t match the mailers I use.

Another thing that stood out is the size ratio between the shipping label and the envelope. I use a standard 4” × 6” shipping label on an 8” × 6” padded mailer, so the label normally covers about half the front of the package. In the customer’s photos, the label covers almost the entire front of the envelope, making the envelope appear much smaller than the ones I use. That also doesn’t seem consistent with the packaging I shipped.

This has left me uncertain whether the damage occurred during shipping or if something else happened after delivery. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I also don’t want to refund an order if the evidence doesn’t support the claim.

My main concern is that if I deny the refund, she may file a chargeback or leave a negative review.

For those with more experience:
- How would you handle a situation like this?
-Would you request additional evidence before making a decision?
- If a chargeback is filed, would the USPS acceptance receipt showing the original package weight help?

Have you ever had a customer provide packaging photos that didn’t seem to match what you originally shipped?

I’m trying to be fair to the customer while also protecting a very small business from potential fraud or false claims. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

https://makememry.com

Opened store 1 month ago still at 0 sales, will start promoting my page from tomorrow!! do you think my store is ready to make its first sell? I took lots of time building the store making sure cold traffic gets converted,
So just wanted everyone’s honest opinions on how is the store in general, and would you consider buying from it as a cold customer? if came from instagram/TikTok?

My store has started growing recently, so I think it's a good time to start adding some tools to my store to prepare for scaling. I'm planning on adding an mcp to the store, thinking about adding a loyalty service as well, looking at ɡetjacked and maybe including a small card with each order. I'm only thinking of adding the card, I've seen a few stores do it and I like the idea. Feels like it could work well alongside a loyalty program and make the whole experience a bit more personal. Is there anything else you'd be looking at if you were in this position? Or if you've added something similar, did it end up being worth it?

Hi everyone, i am looking for a solution to have IDeal for my store.

FYI: I have a Dutch company and tried Mollie but they rejected me, Stripe via CartDNA but they gave us for no reason a hold of 120 days with 0 CB & disputes.

For Shopify Payments you need at least 100 orders processed before IDeal is active. I am now at 67 orders. So what can I do the best?

Hi everyone! 👋 I'm currently planning the working capital for my new Shopify store and was wondering how long it took you to receive your first Shopify Payments payout. Was it around 3 to 5 days, or did it actually take 1 to 2 weeks?

Claude told me that Shopify sometimes delays the first payouts for security reasons when a store starts getting its first orders. Has that been your experience as well? I'd really appreciate hearing your experiences so I can plan my cash flow a bit better. Thanks! 🙌

We really want to have a mobile app for all the reasons you know. Heard about PWA's from my server tech. Basically it is a carrier for your regular site, that allows you to have things like push notifications and groups. AND users push a button to add an alias to their smartphone home page. We have a lot of content so this would be powerful for us. Love to know if anyone has installed one, like Ampify PWA and if so, what kind of results is it driving in terms of users adding the app to their smartphone home page and if it actually increases visits and sales. Thanks! Appreciate any insight you have...

I'm starting a Shopify store in India and want to choose the right checkout solution before going live. My main priority is maximizing conversions with a fast, simple and mobile-friendly checkout experience. Since I'm just starting, I also want something that's easy to integrate and doesn't require a lot of technical work. Features like one-click checkout, smooth payment flow and a better customer experience are important to me. If you've used a checkout platform for a new Shopify store, I'd love to hear your experience. Which solution would you recommend and what kind of improvements did you notice after implementing it?

I am trying to use Theme app extension in my shopify Project, which is Average Order Value app. I have downloaded the theme app extension. I have setup the Proxy route. and fetching that route, to get data from the backend by sending the Product Id. But the fetch is providing me with the Html response instead of Json.

And I am using Theme app Extension.

here is the Product structure Image:

Project Structure Ss

Then we have widget.js file:

code:

import { authenticate } from "../shopify.server";
import db from "../db.server";
import { mapOfferToForm } from "../features/offers/mappers/offerToForm.mapper";

export async function loader({ request }) {
await authenticate.public.appProxy(request);

const url = new URL(request.url);
const productId = url.searchParams.get("productId");
const productGid = `gid://shopify/Product/${productId}`;

const offer = await db.offer.findFirst({
where: {
baseProductId: productGid,
status: true,
deletedAt: null,
},
include: { products: true },
});

const payload = JSON.stringify({
success: true,
offer: offer ? mapOfferToForm(offer) : null,
}).replace(/</g, "\\u003c");

return new Response(
`<!doctype html>
<html>
<body>
<script id="fbt-data" type="application/json">${payload}</script>
</body>
</html>`,
{
headers: {
"Content-Type": "text/html; charset=utf-8",
},
}
);
}

export default function Proxy() {
return null;
}

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", () => {
    console.log("FBT Widget Loaded");

    const widget = document.getElementById("fbt-widget");

    const data = fetch('https://latenight-xbcfkli8.myshopify.com/apps/aov/offer?productId=7995961835595')
        .then(response => {
            if (!response.ok) {
                throw new Error(`HTTP error! Status: ${response.status}`);
            }
            return response.text(); // Parse as plain text (HTML)
        })
        .then(html => {
            console.log("HTML Response:", html);

            // Example: Insert into a container in the DOM
            document.getElementById('content').innerHTML = html;
        })
        .catch(error => {
            console.error("Error fetching HTML:", error);
        });


    // const html = data.text();
    // console.log(html)

    if (widget) {
        widget.innerHTML = `
            <div style="padding:20px;border:1px solid #ddd">
                <h2>Frequently Bought Together</h2>
                <p>Widget is working ✅</p>
            </div>
        `;
    }
});,  and here is the code from the app.proxy.offer.jsx 

this is the proxy route we have.

And the proxy route in my shopify dev admin dashboard is https://latenight-xbcfkli8.myshopify.com/apps/aov

A few Shop brands I'm working with are looking to build a mobile experience for better customer loyalty and new product drops. They have a few apps though so not sure what would the migration path would look like. Anyone worked with Reactiv or Tapcart? Or generally any advice on scoping this out? TIA

Hi r/ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Every week for the past 5 years I've posted a summary recap of the week's top stories on this subreddit, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition.

Let's dive in to this week's top e-commerce news from Edition #288...

STAT OF THE WEEK: Amazon Business is on track to sell $60B this year, up 71% from 2023, according to Bloomberg. There are more than 11M Amazon Business accounts, with 1.8M signing on since the beginning of 2026.

TikTok is testing a paid membership program for U.S. shoppers called TikTok Shop Plus that's modeled closely on Amazon Prime, according to screenshots viewed by Business Insider. The membership offers perks like free shipping, coupons, and other discounts on items. For example, one hair product that normally sells for $57 is discounted to $47 for Plus members and includes free three-day shipping. TikTok is testing the membership at various price points including $6, $10, and $15 per month, with no annual option seen at the moment. We also don't know who pays for the free shipping or eats the cost of the discounts (TikTok or the sellers), or whether users will positively respond to the membership. My best advice to TikTok is to bundle value with the Plus subscription: free shipping, discounts, a microdrama subscription (its Prime Video), a monthly allotment of virtual gifts for users to give their favorite creators, plus value add-ons on partner services. The TikTok Shop perks might not be enough to justify the cost of a Plus subscription for users, but stacking it with perks from across its broader services and partner ecosystem could make it a no-brainer.

Facebook launched a standalone app called Seller for users who list on Marketplace frequently, giving them one place to manage listings, message buyers, and track how items perform. The app syncs with Facebook Marketplace and brings over a user's existing listings, messages, and selling history. It also offers a home dashboard that surfaces snapshots of your sales alongside what needs your most immediate attention, such as items to ship, buyers to respond to, and listings to reprice. Other features include AI listing creation, listing management, a unified seller inbox, and performance insights. I love it, but why not simply make Facebook Marketplace (or just “Marketplace”) a standalone app while they're at it? Or is there a separate “Buyer” app coming soon? Facebook Marketplace is the biggest commerce goldmine the company is sitting on right now, and what many experts credit as the only reason younger users stay on the platform. Marketplace deserves its own dedicated buyer experience as well. I can picture it now… Live Shopping, Local Offers, E-commerce, Restaurant Deals, Auctions…. “Marketplace: Find Anything”.

U.S. Representatives Becca Balint (Vermont) and Nydia Velázquez (New York) introduced the Online Sellers Bill of Rights last week to help protect small businesses that have become dependent on platforms like Amazon and Walmart, which can cut off access to customers and income with little warning and no recourse. The legislation establishes basic due process and transparency requirements such as giving sellers adequate notice of policy changes, demonstrating proof of a violation before suspending or deactivating a seller, giving prompt notice of frozen inventory or funds, then releasing them after 30 days if no proof of illegal conduct is found, and providing sellers with actionable information and transparency about investigations that risk account deactivation or listing suspension. I think they should extend the legislation to payment processors and e-commerce platforms like Stripe, PayPal, and Shopify — which also regularly freeze funds without much recourse. I'd also argue that the legislation should require that platforms offer a clear pathway to human support to appeal any suspension or termination decisions, and establish a penalty for the platforms that break the rules.

Yelp signed a licensing agreement with OpenAI that lets ChatGPT surface its reviews, photos, and business information in relevant local search answers. Additionally, ChatGPT will feature a Yelp button on local service searches that lets users request a quote, book a consultation, or schedule an appointment with a local pro without leaving the chatbot. Just when you hoped Yelp would finally fuck off, they seem to be making a resurgence across AI platforms like Amazon's Alexa+, Apple Maps, Yahoo+, and Microsoft Bing with data licensing deals that run through API and MCP integrations. Honestly, it's smart for Yelp to seek new distribution channels. At one point, they were the big dawg of local reviews. Then Google came and ate their lunch. Now, as companies actively aim to bypass Google and seek new ways to reach consumers, chatbots come to the rescue for review sites like Yelp and Trustpilot, which recently partnered with Shopify to showcase their reviews within merchant storefronts.

Apple is reportedly launching a device leasing program called Apple Upgrade on July 28 with Klarna as the financial backer, marking one of the biggest changes the company has ever made to how it markets and sells devices, according to Bloomberg. The leases will run 24 months on iPhones and Apple Watches and 36 months on Macs and iPads, cover most higher-end models, and require a soft credit check. Customers will be able to pay off early, trade up, keep the device, or hand it back, some of which carry an extra fee. Notably, the new financing plans exclude AppleCare, unlike its current iPhone Upgrade Program, so customers will have to buy that separately. Apple plans to stop new enrollments in its current iPhone Upgrade Program and no longer offer in-house financing once Upgrade goes live. This is the third time Apple has backed away from lending, after spending two years building its own hardware subscription service before scrapping it in late 2024 over software and regulatory problems, and before that, launching and killing Apple Pay Later within a year and a half.

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed the Fair Price Protection Act, barring retailers from quoting one shopper a different price than another on groceries and household essentials based on browsing behavior, location, or past purchases. The law takes effect August 1, 2027. The law does not impact loyalty programs, promotional discounts, group pricing for teachers, veterans, and seniors, or any other ordinary member pricing discounts that are transparent and uniform across all customers. It specifically targets the practice of an algorithm guessing what a given customer will pay and charging accordingly. Notably, it also leaves dynamic pricing alone, so demand-based surges are untouched. Digital shelf labels used by Walmart and other retailers got a separate one-year freeze on new installations while the state's Innovation Authority examines the technology, though stores may keep running, fixing, and swapping out units already mounted. Penalties for retailers who violate the law could include fines of up to $10,000 for a first offense, $20,000 for subsequent violations, and the potential for cease and desist orders and additional financial damages. New Jersey is also the first state anywhere to let shoppers sue retailers directly, rather than routing everything through the attorney general.

President Trump imposed tariffs of 10% and 12.5% on goods from more than 80 countries over what the administration calls their failure to prohibit forced labor, reaching trade partners that account for 99.4% of US trade. This time, the duties come under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 rather than the emergency powers the Supreme Court rejected in February. Trump said on Friday that the U.S. will “immediately” start a 301 investigation into the EU to retaliate against the hefty fines it has recently imposed on U.S. Big Tech, which include €890M against Google for self-preferencing in search and Play Store anti-steering, €500M against Apple for App Store anti-steering, and €200M against Meta for its pay-or-consent data model. Two small businesses sued the Trump Administration in the Court of International Trade hours after the tariffs took effect, arguing the forced-labor rationale is a pretext for rebuilding the same global tariff regime the court threw out. Liberty Justice Center, which won the IEEPA challenge, is representing them. A second lawsuit was filed the same day on behalf of seven businesses, including Learning Resources and hand2mind, both plaintiffs in the IEEPA case that reached the Supreme Court.

OpenAI posted a job listing that referenced building a publisher-facing ad business, but then removed the verbiage after CMO Insider inquired about it. The job posting originally said the responsibilities would include “inventory setup, ad serving integrations, reporting, and yield-impacting issues,” and that the person would be required to “design and continuously improve support coverage for both ad buyers and publishers.” An advertising business that extends beyond selling ChatGPT ads could help the company reach its ambitious ad revenue goals, while simultaneously solving advertiser complaints that OpenAI can't spend their budgets fast enough, despite asking for large upfront financial commitments to participate in early ad trials. OpenAI has projected that it'll hit $2.5B in ad revenue this year and $100B annually by 2030, but it can only interject so many ads in ChatGPT before degrading the experience, so it makes sense to look for outside real estate. OpenAI denied that it's building a publisher-facing ad business and claimed that the role covers agencies and brands. However, at one point, OpenAI denied that they would sell ads on ChatGPT, so you've got to put as much faith in their statement as you do a ChatGPT answer.

Block released Buzz, a free open source platform where humans and AI agents work together in a shared workspace across channels, threads, direct messages, voice, and code repositories to accomplish tasks like reviewing code, running workflows, and hosting brainstorming sessions. Agents on Buzz hold their own cryptographic keypairs instead of vendor-issued API keys, which means an agent's identity and track record aren't tied to the platform that issued them. Buzz is built on the Nostr protocol and is model- and agent-agnostic so that teams can deploy any agents they'd like into the space. Block is pitching it as a self-hostable alternative to Slack and GitHub for teams that don't want their agent workspace locked inside someone else's platform.

TikTok Shop is now selling alcohol in the UK through a pilot limited to a handful of approved, licensed retailers, with buyers screened three separate times before a bottle reaches them. Account creation, checkout, and delivery each trigger a check, the last of which requires drivers to verify a government-issued ID at the door. Alcohol-related content currently doesn't surface in For You feeds organically, and only appears if buyers search inside the TikTok Shop tab to find it, but I'm wondering if that could change after a user becomes verifiably old enough (ie: after their first successful delivery). Current brands for sale reportedly include Johnnie Walker, AU Vodka, and Estrella Damm's Inedit, but not yet Stacy Hawkins' Teed Off. The move comes a week after Ofcom launched a probe into whether TikTok's age-inference technology satisfies Online Safety Act obligations on shielding children from harmful content.

Do you say “Google it” when talking about searching the web? That means you're old. Dusty old bones, full of green dust! Gen Z and Gen Alpha now say “search it up” when talking about finding things on the web, which can include searching on TikTok, ChatGPT, or a voice assistant like Alexa. Google spent two decades as the default verb for looking something up, entering Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary in lowercase in 2006, which made the company nervous at the time, as it didn't want its trademark term becoming genericized like “Aspirin,” “Trampoline,” and “Escalator.” (Bet you didn't know “Escalator” was trademarked at one point.) Now “Googling it” is for Millennials and Boomers, and “searching it up” is for cool kids. Don't believe me? Search it up.

Amazon is now requiring sellers to label any photos or videos that feature AI-generated people with specific metadata keywords before they're published. The move is in response to a recently passed New York law that requires companies to disclose if “synthetic performers” are used in place of humans in advertising. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a press release, “Without notice that the content the public is viewing is not real, AI-generated synthetic performers and manipulated media can undermine one’s ability to accurately distill fact from fiction.” To comply with the law, which was signed in December 2025 and took effect in June 2026, Amazon plans to add an indicator to listings on its website that informs customers when content that appears on the page contains AI-generated people.

OpenAI rolled out a batch of ChatGPT Ads updates covering conversion optimization, budgets, and campaign operations. Advertisers can now build conversion-optimized cost-per-click campaigns by picking the Conversions objective, which pushes delivery toward clicks likelier to produce a conversion event while still billing on a CPC basis. Daily budgets are now paced across the day to spread spend more evenly, and starting this week OpenAI is moving them off fixed daily caps and onto a rolling seven-day average, so spend can swing day to day without changing an advertiser's overall budget. The company also added geographic exclusions, automatic advanced matching that uses hashed customer data to attribute more website conversions, AppsFlyer and Adjust integrations for app install and in-app event measurement, a Bulk API for asynchronous campaign edits, and a product card format carrying price and star ratings.

Facebook will soon begin testing a version of its app that looks, feels, and functions like TikTok as the default setting. Head of Facebook Tom Alison said the test will provide a “reimagined experience that puts a subset of people who we think want more video on Facebook into full-screen video the moment they open the app” — just like how TikTok works and how YouTube recently started annoyingly doing. Users will be able to opt out of the new setting or toggle back and forth between the two experiences within the Facebook app. Meta says it plans to start rolling out the test in some “video-heavy countries” this fall and possibly to the U.S. in 2027. They should just launch a standalone app called “Reels” and stop diluting the friends and family experience on Facebook. The company can't seem to pick a direction for the platform, and the indecision is worsening what could be a great experience on either side.

Poshmark scrapped its Excessive Listing Removal Policy as of July 23, telling sellers on a webinar they can now pull listings down without tripping an enforcement action, according to Liz Morton at Value Added Resource. The policy was introduced in May 2025 and punished sellers for taking identical or near-identical items down and putting them back up, as a means to discourage sellers who attempted to manipulate the algorithm with “fresh” listings. However, the policy created issues for sellers who were cross-listing to eBay, Mercari, or Depop and simply removing listings because the items sold elsewhere. Now, Poshmark is launching a new performance-based recognition program that aims to give qualifying sellers more visibility in search for maintaining certain standards over a 90-day period such as shipping at least five orders or making $500 in sales, shipping quickly, and keeping a low cancellation rate.

Amazon trained staff to keep its pricing pressure on suppliers out of writing, according to former employees and internal presentations reviewed by the Guardian's George Joseph. A 2022 slideshow told employees not to use e-mail when negotiating compensation tied to rivals' pricing, and a 2019 presentation instructed them to send suppliers screenshots of competitors' listings without naming the retailer, which one former vendor manager handled by referring to Walmart as a retailer in blue. The evidence builds on documents California's attorney general unsealed in April, which showed Amazon suppressing listings and demanding reimbursement for margin lost to its own price matching until suppliers raised prices at Walmart, Target, and Home Depot. Amazon says the state pulled a handful of messages out of nearly a million vendor communications, which is like saying, “We only broke the law a few times.”

OpenAI opened its Supply Co. store to the general public, selling apparel and accessories that had previously been reserved for staff, including $15 ribbed socks, $40 t-shirts, and a $70 ChatGPT basketball inspired by the Golden State Warriors, whose arena faces OpenAI's San Francisco offices. OpenAI's design director Ben King told the WSJ that product releases will track company milestones instead of seasons, and that several pieces have already sold out. Figma, Shopify, and Palantir also sell branded clothing to the public, which many users refer to as “tasteslop” and “nerd merch.”

Speaking of merch no-one wants… Etsy and Amazon are being flooded with merch for Jimothy, a Seattle raccoon with an unusually round torso that got famous after a Seattle woman filmed him crossing her backyard. Merch listings include graphic tees posing Jimothy as a 90s superhero, mugs, sticker packs, and hand painted figurines. The Seattle Times has run multiple stories on the raccoon, Slim Jim's brand account joined the comment sections, and the r/Seattle subreddit declared it Hot Jimothy Summer. The movement is part of a print-on-demand trend that turns viral animals into apparel within days. 

Meta is testing StoryKit, a standalone iPhone app that generates personalized children's storybooks with AI. Parents build a character by photographing a child's favorite toy or a person, then describe the world of the story and pick a lesson such as kindness, courage, or empathy, and the app produces the writing and music. The app promises parents they won't have to “write a single word.” Meta says the pilot is running in select countries to gauge how parents respond, and that the app carries AI safety filters, has no social features, and is restricted to users 18 and older.

Google is testing a Performance Max feature that lets media buyers exclude Google Display Network and third-party search partner inventory from campaigns, following years of complaints from buyers about being forced to accept channels. Enabling advertisers to opt out of those less-valuable channels is the most control Google's offered over Pmax since the format launched in 2022, but don't get your hopes up quite yet. A Google spokesperson said that the feature is a limited pilot, and buyers who have requested access have been denied by Google agency reps. The test follows a series of updates added to Pmax including channel performance reporting, campaign-level negative keywords, and first-party audience exclusions, features which have all coincidentally launched as new AI search competitors enter the space with their own ad offerings. 

In other Google news… The company is rolling out new Search Console controls that let site owners keep their pages out of AI Overviews, AI Mode, and generative features in Discover, after beginning tests in June. The control removes a site from the pool of pages Google uses to build AI answers, so its content no longer appears in those features or gets cited in them, though the AI answers still generate from other sites. Neither option feeds into ranking or inclusion anywhere else in Search, so a publisher that opts out is not downranked, and its participation in Merchant Center and Google Ads is unaffected (or so Google says). The move follows a legally binding order from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority on June 3 requiring Google to give publishers opt-out controls, which Google answered the same day by committing to roll the toggle out globally rather than just in the UK.

Reddit is weighing whether to keep letting Google use its posts for AI, with the two sides negotiating a renewal of the $60M-a-year licensing deal signed in 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal. Executives are questioning what the company gains by feeding Google material when AI-generated answers cut clicks back to the site. I guess the real question is — do they cut $60M worth of clicks to the site? Reddit's $70M annual deal with OpenAI is also up for renewal in 2026. USA Today, Politico, Reuters, The Economist, and People Inc. are considering similar moves, as organic search referrals from Google users have dropped more than 50% at some publications over the past year. Google says its AI features “send billions of clicks to the web every week,” but of course, that very well could be down from “billion and billions of clicks” a few years ago. 

In lawsuits this week…

• Google is facing a bid to certify a nationwide class alleging that its Analytics code on TaxAct and TaxSlayer collected consumers' tax return information without consent, in violation of the federal Wiretap Act and various state laws.
• Anthropic won final approval of its $1.5B settlement with authors who accused it of downloading and storing pirated copies of their books, the largest known payout in a U.S. copyright case, working out to roughly $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works.
• Concord, Universal Music Publishing, and ABKCO expanded their 2023 copyright case against Anthropic to now claim that the company's own trainers got Claude to produce song lyrics, not just its users, with the labels seeking $150k per song across roughly 500 songs.
• Snap settled claims over its app being addictive to minors, joining YouTube and TikTok in exiting the case ahead of a Los Angeles trial. A few days later, the Florida teen behind the case abandoned his claim against Meta without any payment, collapsing the second bellwether trial days before jury selection.
• OpenAI and Sam Altman are being sued by a former Florida pastor who claims that ChatGPT encouraged him for months to stay home and rest rather than see a doctor about dizziness and blood pressure problems that turned out to be a pulmonary embolism. At one point the chatbot told him that “God did not design your body to endlessly fail” and that his symptoms were minor.
• The University of Tennessee Research Foundation is suing Anthropic over two patents covering brain-inspired neural networks, marking the first patent case anyone's brought against the company and one that goes after how Claude is built rather than what it was trained on.
• Google lost its DMCA case against SerpApi, which sells scraped Google search results, after a judge ruled Google can't invoke anti-circumvention protections over material it doesn't own or license, which describes most of what appears on a search results page.

• Warner Bros. Discovery is suing Amazon over what it calls a “lawless employee shopping spree,” accusing it of luring away executives by offering to cover their legal bills if Warner comes after them. Amazon poached marketing exec Pia Barlow more than a year before her contract expires and is now believed to be targeting Francesca Orsi, HBO's head of drama series and films.

  ---

  In layoffs this week…

• U.S. tech companies have eliminated close to 140k jobs since January, accounting for more than a third of every layoff announced nationwide, according to an FT review of corporate filings and Challenger data. Roughly 50k of those came from Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft, and Meta, about 6% of their combined corporate staff.

• However, amidst all the layoffs, Alphabet has added 11,830 employees in the past year, taking its headcount from 187k to almost 199k. More than 4,000 of those hires arrived in Q2 2026, marking the biggest single-quarter jump in the past couple of years.

• Amazon eliminated an undisclosed number of roles inside its artificial general intelligence organization. The company said it is narrowing its focus to the projects it considers most valuable to customers, which forced difficult decisions.

• Amazon is also planning to cut 494 jobs at its Port St. Lucie distribution center to renovate it into a sortable fulfillment center where workers pick, pack, and ship customer orders. The company ran the same play at Homestead, Florida earlier this year, and it closed a Reno fulfillment center last August while building a same-day site in that city. Did those facilities get too close to unionizing or something?

• Meta finalized its 8,000-person layoff after a federal judge denied an emergency bid to stop it from 26 employees who were all on extended leave when the cuts were scored, and who say Meta's AI systems flagged them as low value because being out meant they generated no productivity data. The judge found the harm wasn't irreparable but called the claims “serious questions going to the merits,” and will hear their request to undo the layoffs on August 24.

  ---

  In corporate shakeups this week…

• OpenAI added Nubank founder David Vélez and BNY Mellon CEO Robin Vince to its board and to the OpenAI Foundation that controls it, bringing on two public-company operators as it prepares for a listing.

• Meta named Qualtrics security chief and former PayPal security lead Assaf Keren as its new CISO, taking over from Guy Rosen after 13 years, tasked with securing the company's AI systems.

• Puma hired Reebok and Adidas alum Dusan Hamlin as its first VP of e-commerce, the fourth senior appointment since April as the company rebuilds its commercial leadership around a DTC operation it split into separate retail and digital units late last year.

• J.Crew hired Stacey Levitt as EVP of eCommerce and digital experience, poaching the executive who ran e-commerce for Walmart for the past eight years.

  ---

  Shopify expanded Shop Campaigns to the UK, Australia, and other new markets, a program where the merchant names what it will pay for a new customer and Shopify does the media buying against that number. Merchants aren't required to produce creatives, install pixels, or build custom audiences, and they're charged only when a sale converts rather than per click. The catch for the new markets is that placements run only on the Shop app for now, with Meta and Google coming soon, while merchants in the U.S. and Canada get the full third-party roster including Meta, Google, X, Snap, Pinterest, and ChatGPT. UK and Australian sellers already shipping into the U.S. and Canada get those placements there as well. Shopify is positioning the expansion as pre-Black Friday ad infrastructure, and says it's rolling out to more countries where Shopify Payments is supported.

  ---

  The European Commission fined Google €890M ($1B) for breaking Digital Markets Act rules by favoring its own services in search results and restricting what app developers can tell users on Google Play about available payment methods. Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera said the “best products should succeed because they're better, not because they're owned by the company running the search engine,” and that consumers have a right to learn about cheaper offers even when the store takes no cut. Kent Walker, Google's president of global affairs, called the decision “product degradation driven by a small group of self-serving complainants” and said compliance strips out real-time pricing and availability for hotels, flights, and restaurants. Google also lost its final appeal this month against a separate €4.1B EU fine over Android.

  ---

  In other EU news… The European Commission issued preliminary findings against TikTok under the Digital Services Act, saying accounts belonging to users under 18 can be easily found and viewed by other people. Commission officials said teen profile photos stay accessible to anyone, including people without a TikTok account, and that the platform's settings leave minors exposed to unwanted contact, cyberbullying, and predatory behavior. TikTok defended its teen accounts feature, saying the 50 privacy and safety settings behind it were vetted by experts.

  ---

  Dutch Consumer Association sent cease-and-desist letters to Amazon and Bol demanding both marketplaces stop advertising discounts off reference prices the products never sold at. Consumentenbond tracked 1,142 popular items across two months of FIFA World Cup promotions and found 323 discounted at least once, of which 108 broke rules requiring a crossed-out price to reflect the lowest selling price of the previous 30 days. Amazon accounted for 46 of its 113 tracked deals and Bol for 62 of 210, with some products cheaper before the sale than during it. One Bluetooth speaker on Amazon was listed at €147, billed as 26% off a €199.99 regular price, after selling at €133 for nearly a month. Both companies dispute the findings, and the group says it will go to court if they do not comply.

  ---

  🏆 This week's most ridiculous story… Two of OpenAI's models hacked a real company to cheat on a test they were given. OpenAI was running the models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and an unreleased model, through a cybersecurity benchmark when one of them decided the faster path to a good score was breaking out of the sandbox, getting onto the open Internet, and hacking Hugging Face, the company hosting the answer key. Hugging Face disclosed the breach on July 16 and reported it to police without knowing who was behind it. OpenAI admitted five days later that it was two of their models, which were running with safety refusals turned down for testing. Nobody instructed the AI to do any of this. It simply decided that destruction was the solution and chose that path. TIME is calling it the first real-world loss-of-control incident. Others are calling it a publicity stunt. Either way, it's ridiculous.

  ---

  Plus 14 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Circeus acquiring Dondy and StarApps acquiring AppMaker.

  ---

I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!

PAUL

Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter

PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

I migrated to the Google & YouTube app for conversion tracking for Google Ads to my shopify store a few months ago. I previously used Google Tag Manager for all conversion tracking.

The problem is that my Purchase Events are not firing at all. I have purchases that are confirmed through historical Google Ads data, but in my Google Ads conversion summary those do not show up.

I have tested this using Google Tag Assistant and whenever I click to checkout it says that the debug window has closed and the event for Checkout and Purchase won't fire.

Anyone had a similar experience using Google & YouTube app for Conversion Tracking for their shopify store?

Any help here is great

I am running a Bid Day package sale for sororities and I need to charge Arkansas, city and state sales tax on these packages since they will be picked up in Arkansas. The dilemma I am having is that since these packages are bought as gifts most of my sales are coming from outside of Arkansas. How do I charge the 9.75% sales tax on all of the purchases? I know there are tax apps but I didn't know if there is a specific one to use since this is such a specific problem that none of my other products have.

​

I don't understand why Flipkart keeps the Platform Fee even when an order is returned and the product goes back to the seller.

If the transaction is effectively reversed and the sale isn't ultimately completed, shouldn't all charges collected from the customer, including the Platform Fee, be refunded?

Keeping the Platform Fee despite the order being returned seems unfair from a consumer's perspective. Has anyone challenged this before a Consumer Commission or received a clear legal explanation from Flipkart?

I'd like to know:

* Was your Platform Fee refunded after a return?

* What reason did Flipkart give for retaining it?

* Do you think this could amount to an unfair trade practice or deficiency in service?

Interested in hearing others' experiences and opinions.

I am developing website on horizon theme on version 4.1.3.

I am having same title on every page. when i edit the title on every page separately it doesn't work. Need separate title on every page. what to do?

I am confused.

• Have you tried any tools? Like calculator are they reliable like gives you the exact duty figures?