My Stripe Tax Story • Hacker News Board

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#111

Post by anonymouse008 » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 6:48 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #98

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #82

I don't know how Stripe's dashboard looks/works, and whether it easily displays the number of invoices left in "draft" state. But when the author writes about the silent failure here, > No failed API calls (as far as I could tell). I can't help but wonder whether that "as far as I could tell" is carrying a lot more weight than it might first appear. Stripe's documentation under "Collect taxes for recurring payments"…

The goal of Stripe is to make things simple. I shouldn’t have to implement a webhook to discover that none of my invoices are actually being paid. I’d expect a notification email to be sent to the account until that is explicitly turned off.

Yeah, I saw your other comment and feel you nailed it.

Stripe needs to offer solutions 100x better than what we build, 10x as fast. That was the premise of the original product, now the “easy stuff” is glossed.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#112

Post by kixiQu » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 6:49 AM UTC

tyre wrote: post #43

dabernathy89 wrote: post #18

I'm not quite understanding the need to put them on blast here. Yes, they should have been more apologetic and they should certainly have escalated your ticket more quickly. But they made the changes you wanted seen: better documentation & better process, and reaching out to customers proactively when they see this problem.

(I work at Stripe but don’t in any way speak for the company. This purely personal.) I don’t mind them publishing this. It doesn’t feel unfair or dramatizing or in bad faith (etc.) At the end of the day we build things to try and make other humans’ lives easier; to wrap the complexities of “global financial internet infrastructure” so business owners like the OP can focus on things that are not “collecting Canadian t…

I work for a company about which people talk a lot publicly (and which I do not represent officially or speak for in any sense), and I tend to feel the same way.

Eighty times out of a hundred, it's solid signal of something.

Nineteen times out of a hundred, it's hilariously off base in a way that's good for a laugh.

It's only maybe that one percent that I wish someone had kept their rude/bad/ignorant/whatever opinion to themselves -- but the eighty percent are worth being 'put on blast' however many times, because that's how you stay focused on making things better. (And the nineteen remind you not to take it too seriously)

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#113

Post by anonymousiam » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 6:54 AM UTC

Stripe is just awful. I have no experience from the vendor side, but as a customer, I've noticed that they seem to associate a credit card number with an email address. My business credit card is associated with dozens of different email addresses, but Stripe wants to use the one associated with my most recent purchase regardless of what email I provide to them.

I get emails coming in to random (but valid) email addresses for purchases I make with vendors using Stripe. For example, I've seen Internet domain renewal charge confirmation notices going to my auto repair email address, and I've seen telecom hardware purchase confirmations going to my Jersey Mikes (sub shop) account email.

I suspect that this is another example of "you are the product."

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#114

Post by Zaheer » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 6:57 AM UTC

chrissnell wrote: post #73

aaxe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he sits down at his computer every night at home, logs into the ERP system, and reviews sales and receipts Sorry, what? How is this OK or even normalized - he should not have to check every single receipt every night. You hire people to do that, and if they cannot do it right, you hire someone else. As OP mentioned, it wasn't a gradual thing, and when you have a lot of customers, it can easily slip through. Even yo…

My dad is not next to me to reply, but your rebuttal patterns a conversation that he and I had many times over the years, when I was first getting my start in business and tried to tell him he was too old fashioned in his business methods. The bottom line is that you absolutely have to be involved in all levels of your business if you want to be successful and don’t want to be taken advantage of by the unscrupulous.…

I love this Q&A exchange:

  Q: How’d COVID impact your business?
  A: Terrible. We haven’t lost any employees, but we’ve had staff who’ve lost family members to COVID.

I was expecting him to talk about financials but this highlights what you said around his interaction with employees. Thanks for sharing.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#115

Post by anonymouse008 » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 6:58 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #109

anonymouse008 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've implemented IAP -- and it is eons better than the 8 calls it takes to do any of this in Stripe . By the time you get done writing and handling the numerous API calls, errors, checks, etc for this, you've basically built the cron without storing the card information and having to do full PCI of your own gateway, which is exactly what Stripe offers as their service, everything else is window dressing. I say this,…

I've been working in fintech since 2014, and in tech since 2004. Whether Stripe's price is worth it is subjective, but something that is absolute fact is that whatever you've built doesn't compare. I can tell you that with absolute certainty, even without having seen any of what you've built. Consider this. Consider that you don't understand why what you perceive as the added value from Stripe Billing "isn't justifie…

I appreciate you writing this out in full — and my original post asked to be educated on this…

However, I still don’t see the specifications difference in the checkouts (self hosted pages, pdfs, fraud protection) and Invoicing (reminder emails, retry payments, and end of service notifications, etc) - save the repeated nature of the subscription and if a stretch for you the subscription management / trials.

I’m saying 9/10ths of billing is covered in their 2.9 + .30 offering…

Again please tell me where my perception is off - I’d much rather learn - I just don’t see it

Also note that IAP is the infamous in app purchase from Apple — that I truly adore for the 30% because it actually does the things that are hard to do.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#116

Post by musiciangames » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 6:59 AM UTC

edwinwee wrote: post #68

asrossbach wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has used Stripe over the past 5 years for large scale e-commerce and marketplace startups Stripe has dropped the ball quite significantly over the past two or so years. Their customer support has gotten worst, their communication to customers has faltered quite a bit and they're starting to nickel and dime their customers for basic features (like support that responds within a day or two). I wouldn't g…

We send satisfation surveys after support interactions, and consistently over the past year, 8+ out of 10 businesses have rated their interactions highly. But it does sound like we did drop the ball with you, and I'd like to figure out what happened if you could forward me an example at edwin@stripe.com.

Maybe off topic, but what % of surveys are answered? We get survey requests from our main vendor. Generally the experience is not great, which I consider is systemic to the company. So replying negatively to a survey seems like it will bring down blame on the engineer who handled the case. When an engineer does a great job, it feels like I should fill out a positive survey. But then I'd expect the vendor would feel '8+ out of 10 businesses have rated their interactions highly'. So I never reply to the surveys. I do try and provide constructive suggestions on our regular calls with our vendor.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#117

Post by drevil-v2 » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:00 AM UTC

There is a massive chasm between Stripe's perceived (for a lack of a better term) awesomeness vs the actual reality.

I don't think I have ever had an actual good experience with Stripe

Here is a couple of examples

- The account manager assigned to us was absolutely horrible. Would not answer emails. Getting information out of him was like pulling water from stone. And our business is a global company with annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He couldn't care less.

- Stripe support... I have an email thread with these guys that reads like a "who's on first base" script. I still read it sometimes for a laugh and make sure I wasn't dreaming the whole thing.

Boggles the mind that Stripe is worth many tens of billions of dollars. I want to invest in their marketing partners. Those guys are doing a fantastic job.

EDIT: If anyone senior from Stripe is reading this; reply back and I might be able to provide you more details. I really want someone at Stripe to read that support email thread and tell me what they honestly think.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#118

Post by edwinwee » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:04 AM UTC

drevil-v2 wrote: post #117

There is a massive chasm between Stripe's perceived (for a lack of a better term) awesomeness vs the actual reality. I don't think I have ever had an actual good experience with Stripe Here is a couple of examples - The account manager assigned to us was absolutely horrible. Would not answer emails. Getting information out of him was like pulling water from stone. And our business is a global company with annual reve…

Not good. Can you email me those details at edwin@stripe.com and we can look into what went wrong?

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#119

Post by edwinwee » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:10 AM UTC

anonymousiam wrote: post #113

Stripe is just awful. I have no experience from the vendor side, but as a customer, I've noticed that they seem to associate a credit card number with an email address. My business credit card is associated with dozens of different email addresses, but Stripe wants to use the one associated with my most recent purchase regardless of what email I provide to them. I get emails coming in to random (but valid) email addr…

Customer email addresses are only stored within a business’s Stripe account and aren’t shared across businesses when the same credit card is used—so I’m curious to see what’s going on here. Could you forward an example purchase confirmation to me at edwin@stripe.com?

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#120

Post by jv22222 » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:10 AM UTC

chrissnell wrote: post #73

aaxe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he sits down at his computer every night at home, logs into the ERP system, and reviews sales and receipts Sorry, what? How is this OK or even normalized - he should not have to check every single receipt every night. You hire people to do that, and if they cannot do it right, you hire someone else. As OP mentioned, it wasn't a gradual thing, and when you have a lot of customers, it can easily slip through. Even yo…

My dad is not next to me to reply, but your rebuttal patterns a conversation that he and I had many times over the years, when I was first getting my start in business and tried to tell him he was too old fashioned in his business methods. The bottom line is that you absolutely have to be involved in all levels of your business if you want to be successful and don’t want to be taken advantage of by the unscrupulous.…

Your dad seems awesome, what a great role model.

> you absolutely have to be involved in all levels of your business if you want to be successful

But it does sound like your dad is a very effective delegator and has given a lot of autonomy to people in the business - a skill you definitely need to be highly sucessfull in business.

So, maybe... stay involved at all levels, then find people who are good at a role (that you trust) and give them autonomy... and the you don't have to stay in the weeds for all roles any more?

To the parent comment's point, maybe the receipt checking part could have gone that route, but there was never any one who was right for a role like that in the business?