Bigcommerce platform advice

[big bad bruce]

Hi all there is two reasons for this post
1 to make anyone else aware
2 feedback and advice on the legality of their behavior

So I have run a site on this platform for over a year I can not say its been easy /a pleasure as from day one I had doubts the timing of issues the lack of knowledge of techs but I carried on until they took an extra payment without informing me or asking basically at a certain level they auto upgrade you but the upgrade gives no better service other than abandoned cart emails (which you can get for free via mail chimp)
So basically on the 27th I'm billed for the normal amount then on the 1st almost 3x normal subscription is taken via PayPal
I contacted to ask why and I'm informed we changed the billing cycle billing period and upgraded you and given a congratulations on upgrading! I then ask would it not be an idea to tell customers your about to do this to which I got a laughing face emoji then a link to terms of service stating we don't have to tell you anything about increasing subscriptions we just do it
Still reeling from the laughing emoji I then requested a cancellation and with absolutely no issue accepted this
So afterwards I read the terms and find a clause stating only pro rata payment difference can be billed immediately and another stating the billing cycle will be maintained throughout the contract and if changed a notification will be sent to email or posted on bigcommerce website neither of which happened so another live chat customer service argued with me same as before until I pointed out that no notifications were made at which point suddenly the person I was chatting to was from the wrong department and this should be sent via email to another department that only works via email
So based on this I contact this department and open a dispute
I get a response which admits the terms should be updated and will refund if the PayPal dispute is closed first I counter why can this not be dealt with in the proper manner on the dispute no reply
I get a request from PayPal to upload details of contract and evidence at 1 am on Thursday and I go to get it from big commerce account to find the account unaccessible and my website offline all data had been erased and I mean everything including order details which I had to recover through payment gateways and emails I tell PayPal this and decide to go in favour of BC as I could not give them the details that BC just destroyed
I have opened an appeal and cited the direct debit guarantee stating advance notification must be given
What do you think my chances are? Any ideas on other options and finally take a look at these terms are they even legal. bigcommerce com/terms/merchant-client-terms/

 

[TotalWebSolutions]

We don't have much direct experience with BigCommerce (we enquired about integration with our Payment Gateway on several occasions having already been integrated with the previous incarnation Interspire but to no avail) so I cannot really comment on the customer experience aspect.

In terms of other options, are you looking at another hosted all-in-one solution (Shopify, Freewebstore, ECWID etc)? Or would you consider something open-source such as WooCommerce or OpenCart ? The latter will offer you free/low-cost options without a tie-in. The ease of migration will depend on which platform you choose but there should step-by-step guides and migration services available for the more recognised platforms.

 

[TheoNe]

I haven't dealt with 'Bigcommerce' in the past and after reading your post, I doubt that will change in the future. Thanks for sharing.

 

[big bad bruce]

Well its been a hard few days I have managed to get a new site up using duda it seems a promising platform it uses ecwid for the ecom side far more
Freedom and pagespeed is good had to do it quick as big ripoff left my ranking pages on website down page even though it is paid up for another month I would emphasise again anyone thinking of using these I have not exaggerated anything I have said I'm too tired to be making things up this experience has taken everything from me and this has taken me to the point of giving up
I just can not understand how they still trade I have now seen many more posts with a similar story their behavior has been and still is hostile all because I complained about money just being taken without even a heads up as a Web service provider they must know the damage to my organic rankings that their actions would do as if business isn't hard enough already