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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

#61

Post by tannedNerd »

unethical_ban wrote: post #48
WheatMillington wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’m the person leading the effort to make sure that people have fewer bad experiences with Stripe. No offence, but you're doing a bad job.

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.

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

#62

Post by thewebcount »

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…

To maybe add some constructive criticism to this thread, you say that you want to make sure that people have fewer bad experiences with Stripe. There is a common thread to each of these posts which neither you nor any of the other Stripe employees who post here ever seem to address. Namely, that it’s impossible to reach a human being who a) listens to what the actual problem is and b) can actually take any meaningful action to fix it. Several people have mentioned emailing your support and getting nonsensical replies back that have nothing to do with the question they asked or incident they referred to. Perhaps you have something broken in your support ticket routing and don’t realize it? Or perhaps your support people are not incentivized to do a reasonably good job? Or maybe you are relying too heavily or in the wrong places on automation? You can say that “uniformly good support at scale in a highly adversarial environment with very financially-motivated actors is not easy,” but that is what you signed up for when you decided to process payments. You’re basically stating that “the hard job we agreed to do is hard.” It’s unhelpful. You say you’re “pretty confident that we can make a lot of progress,” but if that were true, how did you get to where you are? What you’ve tried appears not to be working very well for a fair number of people, so maybe you should be less confident.

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

#63

Post by maxbond »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #44
colechristensen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business of payment processing is actually the business of managing fraud, and everybody tries to lower costs as they grow and age. Unless there’s specific external regulation, there’s a regression towards being awful.

I would guess AML, not fraud.

I think they're saying there's an inherent ponzenomics to payment processing, wherein the might use AML as an excuse to paper over a lack of liquidity by stalling withdrawals. Lots of cryptoasset exchanges will freeze withdrawals over fictitious security or AML concerns when they're going under, for instance.

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

#64

Post by toss1 »

smoldesu wrote: post #8
xwowsersx wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that OP (and many others) have felt they need to post on HN in order to escalate is a reflection of the fact that, however good Stripe support may be (and I've no doubt they are swamped, trying their best, etc.), it is clearly not "great." This is the third or fourth time just this month I've seen people at their wit's end, reaching out on HN because they have nowhere else to turn. As in the other posts, Edw…

I don't have to pretend Stripe Customer Support is great to know that Hacker News is the wrong place to whine about it. At least, it severely dilutes the intellectually gratifying content with banal, emotional diatribes. Every company experiences this, regardless of the quality of their customer support.

>>Hacker News is the wrong place to whine about it.

If this were true, these posts would not gain sufficient upvotes to consistently make it to the front page.

Clearly something is wrong at Stripe, it has potential to affect many HNers, and it is not merely whining but is seeking advice.

In any case, it appears both from the front-page location and the very light gray font on your comment, that your view is strongly outnumbered this month.

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

#65

Post by JshWright »

WheatMillington wrote: post #38
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…

>I’m the person leading the effort to make sure that people have fewer bad experiences with Stripe. No offence, but you're doing a bad job.

I took the GP comment to mean that Stripe recognizes they are doing a bad job hear and this individual is leading a (recent) initiative focused on addressing that.

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

#66

Post by enraged_camel »

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…

My understanding is that in most cases of fraud, what customers are looking for (clear explanations for why the account was suspended, funds are being held, etc.) will simply not be possible, either due to legality, or that the company will intentionally withhold information so that the fraudsters won't figure out how to work around the protections. Obviously this hurts legitimate customers who get tripped up by the system, but at Stripe's scale that's probably the "price of doing business" as the saying goes.

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

#67

Post by johnhaddock »

thewebcount wrote: post #62
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…

To maybe add some constructive criticism to this thread, you say that you want to make sure that people have fewer bad experiences with Stripe. There is a common thread to each of these posts which neither you nor any of the other Stripe employees who post here ever seem to address. Namely, that it’s impossible to reach a human being who a) listens to what the actual problem is and b) can actually take any meaningful…

Agree - there's multiple problems to solve (a) make incorrect actions exceedingly rare (b) correct them quickly (c) give people who reach out about them substantive help. Have major initiatives underway to improve on all 3. We're furthest along on (a), more to share soon. Interaction of (b)(c) is particularly complex, as we find the right way to make high-stakes decisions while being responsive to people asking for help (especially as we do the work to differentiate good and bad actors).

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

#68

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

This is pretty standard, if a card processor thinks there is high probability of chargebacks then they will hold your funds for 3-4 months to make sure they can cover those chargebacks. After the deadline for cardholders to make disputes passes then they release the funds.

It might not be anything you did personally, it might be based on location or business type.

Talking to them is probably the best course of action though the front-line people won't be able to make a decision. I'd lookup their CEO's e-mail and send a short "I'm a small business and my funds are being held 120 days, please help" and that will usually get routed to someone who can make a decision.

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

#69

Post by ycombobreaker »

maxbond wrote: post #63
KptMarchewa wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess AML, not fraud.

I think they're saying there's an inherent ponzenomics to payment processing, wherein the might use AML as an excuse to paper over a lack of liquidity by stalling withdrawals. Lots of cryptoasset exchanges will freeze withdrawals over fictitious security or AML concerns when they're going under, for instance.

AML regulations are real, though. Crypto exchanges' fictitious claims wouldn't fool anybody if it wasn't already "a thing" in the more-regulated side of the world.
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