81–90 of 124 posts
> We’ve been investigating this case for the past 24 hours, and it's not straightforward. I can’t share more publicly here, but we’re in touch directly with OP.
Can you lay out your version of the events please and give written permission for the Strip guy to lay out his version as well?
Curious to see how the two line up.
Contact your state’s money transmitter regulator [1]. If you suspect bad faith, looping in FinCEN may not be a bad idea [2]. [1] https://www.mtraweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Contact-l... [2] https://www.fincen.gov/contact
Given how buddy-buddy payment industry is, I'd advise against this unless a lawyer is willing to take it pro-bono on the basis that your case is so strong it'd be a layup.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We’ve been investigating this case for the past 24 hours, and it's not straightforward. I can’t share more publicly here, but we’re in touch directly with OP.
OP can you lay out your version of the events please? And also give written permission to the Stripe guy to lay out his version? I want to see how the two compare. Feel like watching some drama this evening.
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.
The complainer can also misrepresent the case, while Stripe cannot disclose how they see it. Making any assumptions about service quality on that base is not wise.
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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 h…
This is not hard. The thing we want is the confidence that if something goes wrong we'll be able to talk to someone who can help sort it out.
The uncertainty is the problem. You are not doing a good job of making me feel like you understand that.
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…
Square started doing that with my business. Without warning or cause, they began withholding 20-percent of all incoming transactions in case of chargebacks. Makes me wonder if a regulatory change has occurred.
* Your funds are suddenly frozen. No easy recourse (if any)
* The percentage they withhold is suddenly higher. Tough luck
* Your business is deemed high risk and they cut ties. Their reasoning is a black box
Why is there never advance warning? It's the lack of courtesy that gets to me.
This should be illegal. It is literally a loan with no interest.
That would be an interesting way to solve this type of problem: make the payment processor pay interest on money withheld. Even at a low interest rate, it would hopefully incentivize them to figure out better ways of handling the risk. Are there any US legislators on HN?
Some napkin math:
Assuming that a customer gets paid monthly by stripe, that would mean the amount frozen by stripe would be 1/12 of a customer's ARR. Applying the federal funds rate to that over 120 days works out to a cost 0.0843% of customer's ARR. Meanwhile, stripe charges 2.9% in fees. Not all of that goes to stripe, some goes to banks in the form of interchange. If we assume stripe gets 0.5% after interchange, that would mean the losses from losing the customer for one year alone would be 0.5%, an order of magnitude higher than whatever interest they'd be forced to pay.
[1] current federal funds rate is 3.08%. if it's applied over 120 days, it works out to around 1.01%
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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 wonder if providers like this could offer an option to pay some chunk of money that would cover the cost of a thorough background check and human review of all aspects of your business. They would then be able to trust you enough to not freeze anything without future human intervention.
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Given how buddy-buddy payment industry is, I'd advise against this unless a lawyer is willing to take it pro-bono on the basis that your case is so strong it'd be a layup.
That's really not how regulation in the payments industry works