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

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

#401
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it matter if it's one-sided? Reading the complaints and the seqience of events give me perspective on whether something like that could happen to me as a platform user. In the real world, I am not going to get Patio11 to respond as he's doing here. I'd get a CSR rep working off a script. So I don't really care what the CEO's POV is.

The one-sidedeness is that the poster could be lying, and Stripe isn't allowed to call them out

Yes but they have the ability to shut down accounts with no grace period or recourse.

A rare case where one-sidedness goes both ways. Except I'm guessing a business owner will lose more sleep over an account termination than Stripe execs will because somebody criticized their service.

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

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Wow, one reply in and we're already seeing open contempt for this type of troublesome customer. What nerve, expecting a payment processor to promptly process payments and make funds accessible to the account holder. This reply is going to look monumentally bad if the…

The Reddit thread shows that OP has interacted with Stripe through Twitter DMs at a minimum.

Yes, this happened in the thread, after other people suggested it when he asked for help connecting with a human. So if the purpose of your comment is to support the idea that, many people who say "Ugh, I cannot reach a real human" have in fact spoken to several humans, repeatedly and at length, then you do not have enough information to support that here.

The statement that he never talked to a human could be true at the point in time when he first made the claim in his reddit post.

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

#403
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it matter if it's one-sided? Reading the complaints and the seqience of events give me perspective on whether something like that could happen to me as a platform user. In the real world, I am not going to get Patio11 to respond as he's doing here. I'd get a CSR rep working off a script. So I don't really care what the CEO's POV is.

Patio11 is one of the most responsive public internet users out there. On twitter, he’s not the absolute most responsive, but he has a standing invitation for anyone to contact him about nearly anything on his website, and he takes it very seriously[0]. I know multiple people at Stripe who have been asked to look into things he’s found out about, and he follows up. I won’t claim that he’s perfect about this, but I st…

Unless Patio's email address appears in the customer support section of the website, how responsive he is is immaterial. He's posting on HN, not in their ticket management software.

It is not really different from Elon Musk responding to a tweet about Tesla service, but not actually lifting a finger to escalate the ticket.

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

#405
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the OP/your alternative? Oh Paypal? Look up the horror stories there. Or directly work with a legacy provider like FirstData? They will also freeze your account and won't even accept you if you just have just $3k of sales. Isn't it interesting that credit card processors really like to give crappy customer support and enjoy freezing accounts? Is it because they just attract misanthropic people? If only a carin…

> What's the OP/your alternative? Reach out to local credit unions or even smallish bank. They usually are middleman to firstdata, chase paymentech etc. But you get a dedicated account rep at cost of nominal monthly fee. Rates usually are competitive often lower than what stripe and paypal offers.

Implement it all yourself and have the UI be awful is not a good solution. Stripe takes about 1 day to set up. Getting a meeting with an interested bank or credit union could easily take 1 month.

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

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that can be said of any transaction via a card. When ever I've receieved a chargeback (iirc its only happened twice in all my years, but I've been lucky) my payment provider has offered me the ability to dispute the charge back which will send the evidence that the transaction was legitimate back to the bank requesting the chargeback. At which point you would give the documentation showing that that it was a as-i…

It's a large transaction (by most people's day-to-day standards) with usually a random person who you have no business or other relationship with, who takes the car and drives off, hopefully to never be seen or heard from again. A private seller doesn't want to be dealing with credit card chargeback disputes weeks after the fact to get the money they thought they already had. A used car dealership is better positione…

But my inital question was Why would stripe deem a used vehicle sale as a huge liability enough to flag the transaction. Not the seller having reservations about using the card system as a means of payment for the sale.

The person having the issue with stripe clearly initally thought accepting payment via card was fine, the purchaser hasn't issued a chargeback as far as we can tell, the transaction itself was flagged by stripe.

EDIT: just to be clear. or atleast try to be more clear. I'm not against Stripe "holding" on to the cash for a while, it was an abnormal transaction on the account for an item not normally sold by the seller (as they used Stripe as a back up method as their primary provider was down).

I was just asking the question why would a used vehicle sale be deemed as a huge liability for a company selling their old company van to process via the card network (not your avg joe selling a car from home who might not want the hassle - cash is king for as-is sales at the end of the day) because the fact it was a used vehicle was the reason the person I was replying to stated as the prob cause.

EDIT2: Allow me to word it like this. If the company wished to sell off old networking gear and/or servers "as-is" because they were no longer needed. The size of the transaction and the items sold would be unusual for the business to be selling which may cause the transaction to be flagged for further inspection/validation/hold on the funds just to be on the safe side (Thats fine, I get that, they were doing transactions outside their normal operations and tripped some safeguards).

But I just don't see why the item(s) themselves (the network gear/servers) alone would be such a liability to justify the hold, servers and network gear get sold as-is online all the time, so why would a used vehicle be any different? The person I initally replied to was saying that because "a used car seems extremely likely to cause a chargeback". I just don't get the "extremely likely to cause a chargeback" part.

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

#407

The OP later clarified that it wasn't a normal transaction. They sold a "cheap company van" using their stripe business account. That seems like a huge liability, since a used car seems extremely likely to cause a chargeback. I don't think dealerships would accept a credit card payment (other than deposit) for this reason. https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/wa1zob/dont_...

And one of the comments below that one explains exactly why this is a problem: "When you sign up for your Stripe account, you had to state what business you were using it for. If you're doing business with your Stripe account that is not related to what you sign up for, then there are reasons why Stripe is now holding your money." It's listed in Stripe's terms and conditions on Prohibited Items: "Use of Stripe produc…

Makes sense why this would raise a red flag, but it does not explain why Stripe supposedly had extremely shitty customer service where he can't get talk to a person and get this resolved in less than a week or two (let alone 120 days that is actually arbitrarily indefinite).

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

#408
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it matter if it's one-sided? Reading the complaints and the seqience of events give me perspective on whether something like that could happen to me as a platform user. In the real world, I am not going to get Patio11 to respond as he's doing here. I'd get a CSR rep working off a script. So I don't really care what the CEO's POV is.

The one-sidedeness is that the poster could be lying, and Stripe isn't allowed to call them out

They choose not to call out lying. That could be the right choice! Of course if they do call it out they could be sued for slander/libel, but that isn't the same as "not allowed".

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

#409

This "rant" is in general, and not related to OPs case I would strongly recommend to not rely on stripe, their service level has become a joke. I get it, they have a nice API, their system is technically nice in many ways, and they are (or atleast were ~5 years ago) way easier to deal with for developers than the "old" players on the market. but they are kinda like google, their support is pretty much non existent wh…

Yeah be that as it may - it's still the easiest option that actually works.

And honestly I feel like Stripe actually responds to support tickets that are related to the integrations side in like half an hour.

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

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: Stripe publicly emphasized the possibility that their customer might be a dirty rotten liar. I feel it is only fair to point out that Stripe might be a dirty rotten liar, too.

From elsewhere in this page: > I used Stripe for about a year to run a small cell phone store in Denver, CO area. [1] > We sold a cheap van in the company name. [2] Yeah, that explains how they arrived in Stripe jail. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32261868#32264335 [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/wa1zob/comme...

Should’ve used Zelle or cash. At least with your bank, you can apply regulatory pressures. With Stripe, you have little recourse.
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