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Ask HN: Stripe holding funds for 120 days for no reason

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Re: Ask HN: Stripe holding funds for 120 days for no reason

#101

Post by helaoban »

johnhaddock wrote: post #35

I’m the person leading the project to make sure that people have fewer bad experiences with Stripe. I’m not sure what is driving the uptick in posts on the subject to HN in particular (obviously we pay attention to broader online discussion in addition to monitoring our support systems, though we know it creates an incentive for people to publicize their situation). On the topic of Stripe and these kinds of incidents…

Is hiring support staff so expensive that it threatens your business model? Not having access to a human being is an unacceptable business risk for many. I have been suffering a six-month integration / certification process with Chase's byzantine Merchant Services API. It's a parody how awful it is, I mean shockingly, amusingly bad, but I have access to bankers directly when something goes wrong, and so I will suffer it.

Can't you just offer paid, guaranteed support? People will gladly pay for it.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe holding funds for 120 days for no reason

#102

Post by tpxl »

timmaxw wrote: post #99
slotrans wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telling the OP that this is the case. Offering them the opportunity to supply evidence to the contrary. The standard line in cases like this (whether it's a frozen payments account, a rejected app, or a suspended social media account) is that you can't tell someone what rule they broke, because this gives too much informative feedback to actual malicious actors about how they got caught. I call bullshit. Until someon…

> Until someone can demonstrate that this is an actual problem, I will believe it to be a fake problem If a payment processor suspects money laundering, it's illegal for them to tell the business that. Under anti-money-laundering legislation, this is considered a crime called "tipping off": https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470685280.ch... (Disclaimer: Used to work at Stripe, but not on this particular…

It is illegal to do so, but is it an actual problem?

This point is always repeated, and never proven.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe holding funds for 120 days for no reason

#103

Post by unethical_ban »

thot_experiment wrote: post #54
johnhaddock wrote: post #35

I’m the person leading the project to make sure that people have fewer bad experiences with Stripe. I’m not sure what is driving the uptick in posts on the subject to HN in particular (obviously we pay attention to broader online discussion in addition to monitoring our support systems, though we know it creates an incentive for people to publicize their situation). On the topic of Stripe and these kinds of incidents…

What if, get this, instead of all this vague shit about doing better you just had a support team you could talk to without blowing up on twitter/hn? If I wanted to charge people on the internet right now I would go with Authorize, even though I've used Stripe in the past and had good experiences. Now my understanding is that I pay for the convenience of the better API etc. with the inconvenience of being unable to ta…

I don't have a dog in this fight, but FYI (and it's been said before and may be said again) that there are LEGAL requirements by the US federal government for banks to NOT tell customers the status/reason for frozen assets if they have been flagged for potential money laundering. That may be the case here, it may not, and I don't know if Stripe is regulated like that or not.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe holding funds for 120 days for no reason

#104

Post by splonk »

johnhaddock wrote: post #35

I’m the person leading the project to make sure that people have fewer bad experiences with Stripe. I’m not sure what is driving the uptick in posts on the subject to HN in particular (obviously we pay attention to broader online discussion in addition to monitoring our support systems, though we know it creates an incentive for people to publicize their situation). On the topic of Stripe and these kinds of incidents…

> Publicly-described facts of specific cases don’t always match the actual facts...users do also sometimes publicly misrepresent what’s going on. We’re also restricted by privacy rules to not share specifics in those cases.

Not affiliated with Stripe in any way, but I used to work on payment fraud detection on a comparable scale. I'd say this describes ~90% of the cases that I saw that got traction on social media with a good sob story. Many of them were egregiously misrepresented to the point where it was obvious that they were trying to run a scam and use public pressure to get some result that they clearly didn't deserve. It's quite frustrating in those cases where your model says they're 99% fraud, your domain experts who actually investigated the issue say it's 100% fraud, and your privacy/legal/strategy policy prevents you from just responding with "this is BS and here's why".

Re: Ask HN: Stripe holding funds for 120 days for no reason

#105

Post by ZephyrBlu »

tannedNerd wrote: post #61
unethical_ban wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person posts an essay on their perspective and that’s what you have to say?

He’s not wrong. The length of the reply doesn’t make it good or worthy when most of it is wishy washy we’ll do better in the future we promise without any concrete steps to make that happen or metrics to prove so. In fact I would say he’s doing a bad job by the amount of stripe fucked me posts here recently.

You’re asking for a specific, concrete solution to an unsolved problem.

If it was just about executing I’m sure they would have done that by now.

What you call “wishy washy” is what I read as him laying out the problems on a high level.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe holding funds for 120 days for no reason

#106

Post by unethical_ban »

zomglings wrote: post #57
johnhaddock wrote: post #35

I’m the person leading the project to make sure that people have fewer bad experiences with Stripe. I’m not sure what is driving the uptick in posts on the subject to HN in particular (obviously we pay attention to broader online discussion in addition to monitoring our support systems, though we know it creates an incentive for people to publicize their situation). On the topic of Stripe and these kinds of incidents…

Quoted post unavailable.

It is mind-bogglingly hilarious how many people in this thread think banks do this stuff for fun, or are even legally allowed to talk about a case. The fact that Stripe people are even in this thread, frankly, is huge.

Just because the person you're talking to is a representative of a scolded vendor does not give you the right to be a jackass.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe holding funds for 120 days for no reason

#107

Post by drivebycomment »

zomglings wrote: post #57
johnhaddock wrote: post #35

I’m the person leading the project to make sure that people have fewer bad experiences with Stripe. I’m not sure what is driving the uptick in posts on the subject to HN in particular (obviously we pay attention to broader online discussion in addition to monitoring our support systems, though we know it creates an incentive for people to publicize their situation). On the topic of Stripe and these kinds of incidents…

Quoted post unavailable.

> What are you doing to solve OPs problem?

That assumes the OP's problem deserves to be solved. We have no way of knowing that unfortunately, as there's non trivial chance OP did something not quite kosher knowingly or unknowingly.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe holding funds for 120 days for no reason

#108

Post by ZephyrBlu »

splonk wrote: post #104
johnhaddock wrote: post #35

I’m the person leading the project to make sure that people have fewer bad experiences with Stripe. I’m not sure what is driving the uptick in posts on the subject to HN in particular (obviously we pay attention to broader online discussion in addition to monitoring our support systems, though we know it creates an incentive for people to publicize their situation). On the topic of Stripe and these kinds of incidents…

> Publicly-described facts of specific cases don’t always match the actual facts...users do also sometimes publicly misrepresent what’s going on. We’re also restricted by privacy rules to not share specifics in those cases. Not affiliated with Stripe in any way, but I used to work on payment fraud detection on a comparable scale. I'd say this describes ~90% of the cases that I saw that got traction on social media wi…

I can only imagine how frustrating that is.

In this case with the person from Stripe responding that the situation isn’t straightforward and the OP sharing minimal details and not making any follow up comments I’d be inclined to side with Stripe here.

Re: Ask HN: Stripe holding funds for 120 days for no reason

#110

Post by c7b »

gruez wrote: post #93
c7b wrote: post #21

Sue them for lost interest. You should have a strong case in principle, however, in practice, it's most likely not worth it for you (which is the real reason why this is happening). But if you have a lawyer friend who can give a first opinion for free, you could give 'em a call.

Their ToS probably gives them wide latitude to arbitrarily freeze funds without having to compensate you. Not to mention, any lost interest pales in comparison to any legal fees. The federal funds rate is currently 3.08%. Apply that over 120 days and it's only 1.01%. If a lawsuit cost $10k (very conservative estimate), you'd need to have 990k frozen by stripe for it to be worth it. Even if all it took was a sternly w…

ToS aren't law, what matters in court is what the judge decides, and they can decide that certain ToS terms were never valid. But the question is whether it makes financial sense to do so, where for most accounts the answer will be no (hence why providers can get away with it for a long time).

There are also some small chances that the company will try to reach a settlement to avoid a ruling that would give a lot of customers a strong lever before they can update their ToS (which could mean a much larger payout in return for signing some NDAs), that you are awarded additional punitive damages (pretty unlikely here though, I'd guess), or that you find a consumer rights organization that is willing to cover your legal fees. And of course, some people are willing to fight for their rights even if it doesn't make sense financially (this guy [0] fought and won a 22-year legal battle against Indian Railways over something like 20c).

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-62501688

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