TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business • Hacker News Board

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#371

Post by toss1 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #289

toss1 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in a high-margin business, and even if the funds may eventually be returned, having funds not suddenly held by surprise can create real problems. These create real distractions, extra entirely unprofitable work that is only to secure what is already due to you. This is not acceptable from a critical infrastructure vendor. That anyone is willing to reveal just how obtuse they are by attempting to justify it is as…

I was specifically responding to the question of whether or not "if you can't tolerate a loss of 3k, isn't your business practically doomed?" To which the answer is "It depends on the business." These things also don't happen in isolation; most small businesses will be able to survive $3k frozen for a quarter on a good day, but even well-run small businesses have bad days.

Yup! Good days and bad days (weeks/months) — in the good times, all kinds of bad stuff can happen without much impact, and in the bad ones, small things can become real problems, even existential problems.

This says NOTHING about the quality of the business.

Notice that both Tesla and SpaceX are extremely good businesses yet were within weeks of bankruptcy at several points in their history — a bad event at the wrong moment, even though very small percentage-wise, could have tipped them over the edge and they'd be history.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#372

Post by awinter-py » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

> used their twisted tos to steal three thousand

> you cannot call stripe ... the robots respond

solid problem statement on what next gen tos tools need to solve and also great alliteration in here

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#373

Post by slugiscool99 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

rtlfe wrote: post #230

patio11 wrote: post #177

(I work for Stripe, and since many of my colleagues are currently sleeping, taking the liberty of saying this on their behalf.) We are looking into things. As someone who ran businesses for a long time myself, it would be very alarming to me if customers felt they were being ignored while repeatedly talking to people who work for us. If that ever happens, please bring in literally anyone at Stripe, inclusive of other…

> Our email addresses are often available through a quick search of HN Your customer service strategy is really "go to a small internet forum that only some startup nerds know about and find my email address"?

Customers shouldn't have to bother random employees to get support on critical issues. In general I think Stripe does a pretty good job with support compared to other big tech firms - the inability to reach humans is problem endemic throughout the industry.

It's a shame because a good customer support interaction can create a serious evangelist (hard to quantify but extremely valuable). Maybe Stripe knows this because they put a lot of effort into appeasing the HN community (many developers/entrepreneurs who make processor purchasing decisions). I wish they'd apply this attitude to all their customers.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#374

Post by Huppie » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

stef25 wrote: post #121

pythonic_hell wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checkout Adyen. They’re practically the same.

Have you compared the backends you get to use as a customer? I'd be surprised if Adyen even comes close to Stripe. Mollie for one is complete garbage.

Imho Adyen is surprisingly good. You should definitely check out their documentation.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#375

Post by KingOfCoders » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

snovv_crash wrote: post #364

KingOfCoders wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment should make every Stripe customer run. You've build up an incredible amount of kudos with your comments and blog posts over the last decade+ here and are willing to burn it for a corporation in a moment? Earning trust takes a long time, losing trust only takes the blink of an eye.

The guy tried to use a cellphone shop account to sell a used van via credit card. If I was Stripe I'd be holding the money until the chargeback period was over too.

They should not accept the payment and then keep the money. Why not reject it in the first place (too large of an amount)? $3000 reasons.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#376

Post by Tryk » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

shepardrtc wrote: post #282

civilized wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate process improvement is not an excuse for treating people badly. An individual human who treats people badly is not allowed to say "well I deal with a lot of people and I need algorithms and sometimes my algorithms don't work so I'm doing my best to improve them". Corporations should not get a pass because they need cheap processes that "scale" to maintain their profit margins. This is the perpetual moral ha…

I think this negativity is uncalled for. They said that they do their best, sometimes there are mistakes on their end that they try to fix, and sometimes the person complaining is lying or leaving out details that would explain the situation. If you've ever dealt with people, you would know that they often "forget" things or downplay things that would make them look bad.

That's an incredibly charitable interpretation in favour of Stripe. The aggrieved party has been emailing their support repeatedly only when this gained traction on both Reddit and Hackernews are they actually replying. How is this acceptable?

I don't see how you can assume bad faith on the user. Have you ever dealt with corporations? If so, you would know that they often lie and downplay things that make them look bad.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#377

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #320

sph wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a roundabout non-answer that doesn't explain why chat and phone support were/are greyed out. Are you just trying to say "we're so short staffed, there's no one to answer your messages, let alone your calls?"

What he is saying is that in the instance of a fraud concern, they don’t have people who can talk about it available 24/7.

They don't have it 24/7. That's part of the answer.

But that kind of phrasing leaves a big gap.

Do they offer it during some hours? Which hours? Or do they offer it never?

There's a big difference between "call and chat are only extended beyond business hours for certain issues" and "call and chat are only ever for certain issues".

The response here could mean either.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#378

Post by Tryk » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #329

axus wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the obviously correct behavior by Stripe to suspend that transaction, without interrupting others? Clearly they are able to identify transactions on a case-by-case basis.

I read their account. They only complain of Stripe holding "the" money, from the car. Did they say Stripe locked their account or did any other restrictions? https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/wa1zob/dont_... I read a few of their comments their complain seems to be about the $3000 and needing to wait 120 days to get it. They also say you can't call, but at least for me I'm able to call Stripe here: http…

I don't see any phone number there.

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#379

Post by Tryk » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #212

baggachipz wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if the company had some way, any way at all, to reach an actual human being, this wouldn't be a constantly repeated problem on HN and elsewhere.

As I have observed in other contexts ( https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1463749947858165761 ), many people who say "Ugh, I cannot reach a real human" have in fact spoken to several humans, repeatedly and at length, and are imprecisely stating their desire to speak to a person who would agree with their view of the facts and swiftly enact the resolution that they prefer. We offer (human-powered, somewhat obviously?)…

So in your first post you state:

>We don't comment publicly on individual customers. This is an important part of customer privacy and we're serious about it.

But then you heavily imply that the user ("Many people who say...") is a liar? Bad look.

What does "human-powered support" even mean? Is this weasel speak for a chatbot or do you mean actual people replying to support claims?

Re: TIFU by using Stripe as a payment processor for my small business

#380

Post by Khoth » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #361

patio11 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I have observed in other contexts ( https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1463749947858165761 ), many people who say "Ugh, I cannot reach a real human" have in fact spoken to several humans, repeatedly and at length, and are imprecisely stating their desire to speak to a person who would agree with their view of the facts and swiftly enact the resolution that they prefer. We offer (human-powered, somewhat obviously?)…

I’m not a Stripe customer, but I’ve often ended calls with other companies’ human tech support thinking “wow, I wish I could talk to a human.” Not because they didn’t take my side, but because I might as well have been talking to a chatbot. Many companies’ tier 1 support can’t go off script, can’t offer creative solutions that are even slightly off the rails, can’t make exceptions, can’t apply human reason or good ju…

Yeah, I'm also not a stripe customer, but it's not unusual for me to email a company, and get back a canned response to a tangentially related question I didn't ask. If I then reply and try to clarify what I meant, I get back exactly the same canned response.

I don't know whether it's a chatbot spitting out replies based on keyword matching, or whether it's a human with a "responses per hour" performance target which doesn't give them time to read the emails they're replying to, but either way it's very different from the "talking to a human" experience I'm used to from daily life.

(And it's not a case of a correct process coming to a result I don't enjoy, except in a very narrow sense. "I understand your request and the answer is no" would be an improvement over what I often get)