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Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute

justuseapp.com

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Re: Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute

#151

Post by edwinwee »

jeroenhd wrote: post #128
edwinwee wrote: post #95

Edwin from Stripe here. (OP, I've just sent you an email and we can talk more over there—I'm terribly sorry for the trouble.) I can't get into too many specifics about an individual business publicly, but unauthorized charges have high potential to be disputed in the near future—and while Stripe itself doesn't have a dispute threshold, the card networks require businesses to keep disputes low. Although that email in…

I understand that you probably don't have the power to directly change anything about this, but what does it even mean when a company says they're "improving how they work with businesses in situations like these". Every time some big tech company makes promises like these, nothing really ends up changing. The emails always remain vague templates without details from a seemingly anonymous source. Companies end up cha…

As somebody who helped write that email a while ago, I actually agree with you. We think the improvements we're working on will be pretty tangible—as pc mentioned above, we're not just rewriting the emails, but are working on a project to reduce these types of rejections entirely.

Re: Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute

#152

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

pc wrote: post #108

(Stripe cofounder.) Ugh, apologies. Something very clearly went wrong here and we’re already investigating. Zooming out, a few broader comments: * Unlike most services, Stripe can easily lose very large amounts of money on individual accounts, and thousands of people try to do so every day. We are de facto running a big bug bounty/incentive program for evading our fraudulent user detection systems. * Errors like thes…

> We actually have an ongoing project to reduce the occurrence of these mistaken rejections by 90% by the end of this year. I think we’ll succeed at it. (They’re already down 50% since earlier this year.)

How can you tell? It seems, naively as an outsider, like the problem is precisely that you can't tell if they should have been rejected, in which case you can't tell how often it happens?

Re: Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute

#153

Post by LurkingPenguin »

hienyimba wrote: post #89
jeroenhd wrote: post #66

Offtopic but I'm amazed you can legally hand out free (virtual) credit cards like these without anything close to a banking license. The sales pitch, to pay for services anonymously, would make it trivial to use this service for money laundering. I hope the website is lying about how private those transactions really are. I'm also a little sketched out by the fact the business resides in Wyoming while the person writ…

Hey, the blog post says we incorporated in the U.S from abroad. We did that with FirstBase.io. Concerning the cards, we do KYC before the cards are issued and we submit same to Stripe. In extreme cases, we ask for users Govt-issued IDs. Our service might be anonymous to the outside facing world but our users are not anonymous to us and Stripe.

Earlier, your website apparently had the statement:

> Our credit card comes with a U.S. billing address, so you can unlock features restricted to the U.S or Western markets especially if you don't live there.

Allowing customers to easily "spoof" their billing address could be very problematic for me as a merchant. There are countries that I don't want to serve customers in, and in some cases am even prevented (by law or agreement) from serving customers in.

Re: Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute

#154

Post by hienyimba »

avianlyric wrote: post #143

Reading between the lines here, and based on the reply from Edwin in this thread, it looks like JustUseApp was collecting money for the virtual cards by pushing through unauthorised payments to the users original card. So payment using their privacy card would look a little like this. Merchant --> Privacy Card --> Users Real Card --> Users Bank Where the step between Privacy Card and Real Card doesn't involve a check…

Your prognosis is not quiet correct.

Users have to manually fund their cards. This takes care of all the issues you mentioned above.

Re: Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute

#155

Post by pc »

codegeek wrote: post #148
pc wrote: post #108

(Stripe cofounder.) Ugh, apologies. Something very clearly went wrong here and we’re already investigating. Zooming out, a few broader comments: * Unlike most services, Stripe can easily lose very large amounts of money on individual accounts, and thousands of people try to do so every day. We are de facto running a big bug bounty/incentive program for evading our fraudulent user detection systems. * Errors like thes…

"We try to make it easy to get in touch with the humans at Stripe" You used to offer live chat which is no longer the case, correct ? I understand that stripe has exploded as a business but with all the money being invested in Stripe, I would seriously recommend getting live chat back so at least we know we have someone out there looking for us. Perhaps offer this to customers who are diong a min. MRR (could be contr…

We definitely still offer live chat support!

Re: Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute

#156

Post by pc »

dkersten wrote: post #150
pc wrote: post #108

(Stripe cofounder.) Ugh, apologies. Something very clearly went wrong here and we’re already investigating. Zooming out, a few broader comments: * Unlike most services, Stripe can easily lose very large amounts of money on individual accounts, and thousands of people try to do so every day. We are de facto running a big bug bounty/incentive program for evading our fraudulent user detection systems. * Errors like thes…

Since most of us are mere humans don't have the ability to get your attention by a viral post, how should someone get in touch to get this reviewed and rectified if they find themselves in such a position? I mean, OP's post shows that Stripe still decided to close the account even after "further review", so simply contacting support doesn't seem to be enough. EDIT: I see that while I was typing you replied to a sibli…

You don’t have to contact me in particular — you can get in touch with anyone at Stripe. (Or even DM Stripe on Twitter.)

With regard to the last part of your comment — absolutely. This is a final recourse when the system breaks, not a part of the system that we hope you ever have to use.

Re: Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute

#157

Post by avianlyric »

jeroenhd wrote: post #128
edwinwee wrote: post #95

Edwin from Stripe here. (OP, I've just sent you an email and we can talk more over there—I'm terribly sorry for the trouble.) I can't get into too many specifics about an individual business publicly, but unauthorized charges have high potential to be disputed in the near future—and while Stripe itself doesn't have a dispute threshold, the card networks require businesses to keep disputes low. Although that email in…

I understand that you probably don't have the power to directly change anything about this, but what does it even mean when a company says they're "improving how they work with businesses in situations like these". Every time some big tech company makes promises like these, nothing really ends up changing. The emails always remain vague templates without details from a seemingly anonymous source. Companies end up cha…

Based on my guess of what's happened (informed by working on card dispute systems), is sounds like JustUseApp have been exploiting a little loop hole in how card transaction work, which creates quite a bit of liability for Stripe if they're pushing through a significant amount of transactions.

My guess is that Stripe would work with them to tweak their product so it can work without expose Stripe to all this risk. Might result in something clunkier and harder to use, but at least it'll still work.

Re: Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute

#158

Post by pc »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #152
pc wrote: post #108

(Stripe cofounder.) Ugh, apologies. Something very clearly went wrong here and we’re already investigating. Zooming out, a few broader comments: * Unlike most services, Stripe can easily lose very large amounts of money on individual accounts, and thousands of people try to do so every day. We are de facto running a big bug bounty/incentive program for evading our fraudulent user detection systems. * Errors like thes…

> We actually have an ongoing project to reduce the occurrence of these mistaken rejections by 90% by the end of this year. I think we’ll succeed at it. (They’re already down 50% since earlier this year.) How can you tell? It seems, naively as an outsider, like the problem is precisely that you can't tell if they should have been rejected, in which case you can't tell how often it happens?

Yeah, good question. First, we aren’t trying to calculate the absolute rate, just relative changes. (The absolute rate would be nice to know but it’s not needed to know whether we’re getting better or worse.) Methodologically, we sample/scrutinize rejections manually and also look at the occurrence of discovered false rejections. But you’re right that there could be some dark matter that we never become aware of.

Re: Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute

#159

Post by dkersten »

pc wrote: post #156
dkersten wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since most of us are mere humans don't have the ability to get your attention by a viral post, how should someone get in touch to get this reviewed and rectified if they find themselves in such a position? I mean, OP's post shows that Stripe still decided to close the account even after "further review", so simply contacting support doesn't seem to be enough. EDIT: I see that while I was typing you replied to a sibli…

You don’t have to contact me in particular — you can get in touch with anyone at Stripe. (Or even DM Stripe on Twitter.) With regard to the last part of your comment — absolutely. This is a final recourse when the system breaks, not a part of the system that we hope you ever have to use.

I suppose a related question then is if your review team is applying stricter rules than you are. Surely, in this particular instance, the review team should have been able to see that its a bug in the same way you are. I guess I'm confused by why contacting a founder helps here, are you overriding some checks somehow? Is that safe to do? If not, why did the review team not spot it?

Maybe it really was a strange and unusual set of circumstances that made this occur, so hopefully its rare that someone would need to escalate to you directly. Thanks for being responsive to questions and making your contact details available. That's a lot better than some companies do.

PS: since I have you here, completely off topic, I met you once in Dublin long ago and you got me interested in Lisp. Thanks for that :)

Re: Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute

#160

Post by ceejayoz »

ddtaylor wrote: post #101
hienyimba wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy cards means the cards protect the user's real cards not their identity. If you have ever been hacked or cannot cancel a renegade subscription, you would quickly grasp the need for Privacy cards.

Gym memberships are notorious for this, btw.

Said gym memberships tend to be because you signed an annual contract, with specific requirements to cancel early.

Using one of these one-time-use cards won't get you out of the debt itself, and these sorts of gyms will happily wreck your credit by sending it to collections.

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