Stripe banned us for payment disputes but we never had a single dispute • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by saksham_agrawal » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 6:44 AM UTC

noahtallen wrote: post #285

ryan29 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be at the top of the comments IMO. I'm honestly stunned by this blog post because I always assumed a relationship with a payment processor like Stripe was akin to a banking relationship where you'd have an account manager that would reach out to you to resolve problems. If the banks can do it, why can't Stripe? Is it simply a difference in regulation and what they can get away with legally? All of the big…

This is a fair critique. In cases like Stripe, I’m sure there are viable ways to have humans involved. More generally, the big problem is that most internet companies are trying to achieve growth and user numbers which aren’t incompatible with having humans moderate everything. For example, everyone likes to hate on social media companies doing a terrible job moderating. But the reality is that you cannot hire enough…

Just came to say that the "billions of things daily" is a red herring. The companies are simply too big to handle moderation even with an algo+human solution. So maybe any network should have only millions of things, or thousands.

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

#292

Post by rubynerd » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 9:24 AM UTC

aeontech wrote: post #290

rubynerd wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that from your perspective as the founder of Stripe, that's the workflow you'd like to have for when things "go wrong", but from the perspective of someone currently interacting with Stripe support, I strongly doubt that simply raising a support ticket or reaching out on Twitter would result in any meaningful movement on a rejection like this. Regarding Stripe's support: I emailed last night to confirm…

Just a heads up that your domain (ghostworks.io) seems to have an expired SSL cert... (not relevant to your post, but figured you might like to know)

Ah! I knew I was forgetting something: much like that dude living in a cave in Lost, I have to SSH into that server and HUP nginx every ~80 days, as the user that does the certificate renewal isn't the same user that runs nginx.

One day I'll overengineer something to solve this, but for the meantime it's "ssh statichost -- sudo kill -s HUP 947" every so often. Thanks for reminding me, much appreciated!

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

#293

Post by aeontech » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 10:53 AM UTC

rubynerd wrote: post #292

aeontech wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a heads up that your domain (ghostworks.io) seems to have an expired SSL cert... (not relevant to your post, but figured you might like to know)

Ah! I knew I was forgetting something: much like that dude living in a cave in Lost, I have to SSH into that server and HUP nginx every ~80 days, as the user that does the certificate renewal isn't the same user that runs nginx. One day I'll overengineer something to solve this, but for the meantime it's "ssh statichost -- sudo kill -s HUP 947" every so often. Thanks for reminding me, much appreciated!

If you want to under-engineer it instead, maybe this could just be a cron job? :)

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

#294

Post by nikrumen » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 11:33 AM UTC

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…

Seems like we got rolled into the same wave, just received the same email about our account. we have not had a single dispute, so clearly just an automated decision.

wrote back to the support asking to reconsider, really hoping for a quick answer!

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

#295

Post by mgkimsal » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 12:02 PM UTC

aquark wrote: post #226

mgkimsal wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would 'paid' support help? Like pay, say... $150 up front, which is refunded (partial or all) depending on the outcome (error on their end, you get refunded?) It runs the risk of turning 'support' in to a profit center, I support.

While not ideal, I think this is a great option. Microsoft (used to?) offer this for developer support and I remember using it maybe 15 years ago where it was a couple of hundred bucks to open a ticket but you got quick access to a real expert and good escalation. If the issue turned out to be their problem the ticket was refunded. For something business critical like this it is a way of signaling to the company that…

Exactly re: who won't pay. If I'm losing hundreds or thousands, I'll pay $150 just to get a real person's attention - most scammers won't. And yeah, it was MS I was initially thinking of, but haven't been in that world for a long time, so no idea if it's still an option.

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

#296

Post by cascom » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #202

cascom wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I “hide my identity” daily when I make transactions, it’s called cash, guess that’s a red flag.

Aren’t cash businesses well known as money laundering opportunities? Cash transactions above a specific dollar value literally generate reports to the government for investigation. So, I think, yes, cash transactions tend to generate suspicion among anti-money laundering efforts.

So any business that accepts cash generates suspicion? I think not.

The reporting you are referring to only relates to bank transactions. In the US, When a business deposits their cash receipts, the bank generates a report. There is no obligation on the business (e.g.a car dealership that sells a car for $100k in cash has no incremental reporting burden)

More importantly - because x can be used in the commission of y crime, but the vast majority of the use of x is in perfectly normal/legal use, one should not cast suspicion on the use of x or reverse the burden of proof on for using x.

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

#297

Post by mhdhn » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

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.

So, contrary to your email to your customer directly stating that this has been completely and fully and finally reviewed, there's this secret way you won't tell anyone (except your friends here on HN)? Yeah, this is working great.

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

#298

Post by lordlic » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #73

lordlic wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would "society" care whether company A makes money instead of company B? This kind of thing is only remotely concerning to, like, VCs and tech workers hoping to strike it rich in the startup game.

That's a weird take. Society wants stability. Having large companies companies use a random number generator to determine whether they will arbitrarily blacklist (and thereby try to destroy) smaller companies isn't leading to stability. Yes, society doesn't break down. Just as it doesn't break down if 1% of people were murdered each year. But society won't accept 1% being murdered. And once it's public enough, they'l…

I think you're overstating the importance of small companies to the vast majority of people. If Amazon comes along and annihilates all the small bookstores by undercutting their prices, people will just get their books from Amazon. That happened; that's a fact. It doesn't really matter to anyone except the bookstore owners who are now annoyed that they can't make profits anymore. It has nothing to do with "stability."

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

#299

Post by dwild » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

morei wrote: post #282

dwild wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One particularly frustrating aspect of fraud prevention is that fraudsters are better than the rest of us at getting human support staff to do what they want. They have way more practice, and they learn techniques that work from other fraudsters. Then put a flag on that account. Repetitive issues will make it clear what's happening. Fraudster also doesn't have the same needs as most customers, they don't need to ke…

It's never that simple. You're implicitly assuming that a fraudster wants the account long term, which is rarely true. And identity is a VERY complex area, and nothing like as simple as "plenty of ways to verify identities". Particularly noting that fraud is often carried out by leveraging many partial opportunities: I use the (false/stolen) identity from over there to carry out of the fraud over here.

> You're implicitly assuming that a fraudster wants the account long term, which is rarely true.

Wait what?

Here my comment:

> Fraudster also doesn't have the same needs as most customers, they don't need to keep the same account...

How does I assume fraudster wants the account? I'm arguing the reverse, that they don't want it, thus give more credibility over anyone doing effort to get his account back. I don't understands that part, feel free to clarify it.

> And identity is a VERY complex area, and nothing like as simple as "plenty of ways to verify identities".

I was arguing that opening up customer service for theses instances won't be a huge risk if you keep a flag on the account as they fraudster don't need the account long term (as you seems to agree).

Doing others verification is to reduce that risk further, risk that I already consider minimal. No one said that it would be 100% effective, nothing is perfect, sure some will be able to bypass, but as I said, they don't need to.

> Particularly noting that fraud is often carried out by leveraging many partial opportunities: I use the (false/stolen) identity from over there to carry out of the fraud over here.

Yup, thus why getting more proof of the user identity will allow to confirm he is actually who he is claiming to be. Here in Canada we can do that at Canada Post office. It's not something Stripe ask for, thus if someone with a flagged account ask to get it back, doing a local verification will most probably be harder for him.

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

#300

Post by diebeforei485 » Tue, Sep 21, 2021, 12:23 AM UTC

LurkingPenguin wrote: post #288

diebeforei485 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm referring to people who are not US citizens, living in other countries (Canada is a popular one). As long as you get your foot in the door and pay the bills on time, your credit history only grows -- and it is extremely unusual for accounts in good standing to be closed. In theory they can close your account at any time, yes. In practice, this rarely happens, because it's common for people to move around the worl…

I've worked in fintech (lending specifically) and your claim that "there is a (very) large number of people who do this" is simply not true. To get access to the half decent rewards credit cards in the US will at a minimum require you to have an ITIN. To obtain an ITIN, you need to submit an application to the IRS and provide a bunch of documentation related to your identity and foreign status. This documentation nee…

> If you jump through the hoops to get an ITIN

You make this sound way more complicated than it actually is to get an ITIN. There are very few hoops to jump through. Having an account with a US-based stock broker is usually sufficient, there are even companies that will handle the entire application for you for a fee.

> financial institutions usually have a database of private mailbox addresses. Technically these are called CMRAs

They get this list from the USPS, and anyone can use the USPS website to see if an address is on the CMRA list or not.

> The American credit cards that offer attractive rewards have the highest requirements in terms of credit score. If you have no credit history, you will not be approved for these.

Like I said above, once you get your foot in the door (if you have zero history, there are companies that will give you secured cards, against a deposit, that help you build history), your credit history only grows. You don't need "years" of credit history to get a good rewards card, it's pretty much two years.

> The average non-resident foreign national isn't spending enough every year on their credit cards to gain any meaningful benefit from a crappy American rewards credit card, or to spend years building up a credit history to get a better card.

The average non-resident foreign national probably buys more stuff online delivered from the US than you think. Two years of spending roughly $800/month on average would do it (this is not as much as it seems, because it includes all international travel spend -- and Canadians who are getting US cards are in the demographic that visits the US frequently).