421–430 of 461 posts
(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…
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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.
They aren't "keeping the money," it is in escrow until the dispute period ends.
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A paper-titled transaction seems like it should have one of the lowest chargeback risks. A copy of the purchase and sale specifying "as-is", plus signed title should be pretty clear cut evidence against a chargeback. It's also not terribly surprising that someone who develops familiarity with one tool will then apply that tool to new situations. The main problem here is the ever-growing financial censorship regime /…
Why should Stripe take on the cost of investigating / handling a potential chargeback, even though it might be likely to be resolved in the business (and Stripe's) favor? When it comes to chargebacks it's not just customer experience (reputation damage due to fraud) and liquidity risks that Stripes or other payment providers are protecting themselves against - but also the actual support cost of handling each chargeb…
OP’s post was deleted, can anyone share what they wrote?
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>>>but $3300 is a pretty ordinary amount for any retailer. Really? There are entire classes of retailers where that would be a truly exceptional event. I don't know if that's true of the OP (post removed), but if their average transaction is $27 or something this would rightly trigger alarm bells. If they are in fact being stonewalled on support that's pretty inexcusable though.
It honestly seems like it would have been fine if they had been like "you tripped our fraud detection, and because the payment was made with a CC money will be held in escrow until the dispute period ends. There's no point in providing documentation because customer can still issue a chargeback."
1. Customer of retailer buys something with stolen cc, retailer is none the wiser, although Stripe has sophisticated techniques that suggest it might be fraud. Probably looks like a very ordinary transaction. e.g. person filling up gas tank with stolen card.
2. Accomplice of retailer buys something with "stolen" cc, retailer in on it. Probably looks like unusual transaction. e.g. person buying 10 laptops, reselling for cash, waiting until retailer gets money from Stripe, does a chargeback, retailer disappears, they split all the cash.
If it's the first case, sure, tell the retailer. If it's the second (or it could be the second, which I think is what might be the case here), you probably maintain radio silence while you investigate.
Edit: also, by all the documentation the OP wants to provide, it sounds like they understand why it could look like the second. If it's the first they should understand there's nothing they can provide that would suggest it's not a stolen card - it has very little to do with them.
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So how can you possibly say "The transaction would also cost less energy than it did through Stripe" if you have no idea how much energy a traditional transaction takes?
The linked page includes the energy cost of a Google search. I made an informed guess that operations done infrequently and deliberately written in extremely power-inefficient ways cost at least that much.
How could you possibly compare the two?
At best, you're making a guess (I wouldn't exactly call it "informed") based on some randomly sourced data on a blog, which uses another blog for its source, which uses a third blog.
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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.
Is selling a van universally against the terms of service? Especially a cellphone shop van? If it was just bad communication about what this specific business uses the card for, it seems like that should be resolvable without waiting out the chargeback period.
Using a merchant account for a purpose which you haven't disclosed to the processor -- like a cell phone store selling a truck -- is a violation of the merchant agreement, and is often grounds for account closure.
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> We offer (human-powered, somewhat obviously?) support via a variety of methods 24/7 > time for us to reply to email is generally a few minutes These two assertions are conflicting. A few minutes is not nearly enough time for a human to understand and address a support request. So like most companies, it sounds like Stripe is actually running automated support behind a fleshy humanesque interface. Don't delude yours…
Have you ever worked in a support role? A few minutes is plenty for >95% of support requests. Those last few percent can certainly be a doozy though.
I've also wasted hours of my life on hold with customer service "people" who, in the best case, take 5 minutes to hear my situation, 15 minutes to check into it, 5 more minutes to apparently not do the thing they said they were going to do, and 0 seconds to forget about all these details after hanging up, meaning I had to go through the same pattern all again the next call. Even in the cases where I've directed reps to look at previous tickets for history, half the time they still can't find it.
I'm sure that there are many people that use support instead of clicking around to the right option on the website, even though that seems abhorrent waste of time to anyone with half a clue. But companies optimizing for this are doing a disservice to everyone that is only using higher touch methods because they're trying to solve uncommon situations.
I can believe that "modern" support only takes a few minutes per the request, because each individual request is itself just a cog in the larger machine. When I spend an hour on the phone, bounced back and forth between 3-4 departments, how long was each of those conversations? Like so many things these days, the problem is with the overall constructive behavior rather than the myopic metrics that have been over optimized.
And don't get me started on those useless freeform voice prompts. Don't make the customer distill their problem down into a curt description, because once again, they're likely calling with a weird problem. Just give me the numeric options that mirror your business structure and I'll pick the most appropriate one, thank you.
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Did you really go and stalk this person's profile to show it's OK for them to lose their money? > > Why is my Internet connection through xfinity wifi HOTSPOT is now filtered by Open DNS? Is this your proof of them being sketchy? Shame on you. I hope never to do business with you.
If you access Ebay through an VPN from another country all your auctions will get canceled and your account will get locked. That's why I included this post.
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Have you ever worked in a support role? A few minutes is plenty for >95% of support requests. Those last few percent can certainly be a doozy though.
Tech support, a long time ago, in which the quick calls were extremely rare. Diagnosing a problem on the customers end or on our end, each took a lot of time. I've also wasted hours of my life on hold with customer service "people" who, in the best case, take 5 minutes to hear my situation, 15 minutes to check into it, 5 more minutes to apparently not do the thing they said they were going to do, and 0 seconds to for…
Many, many, many people do not do that. Ask any retail business what the #1 and #2 calls are and the answer is always #1: "Are you open right now?" and #2: "What are your hours?". I suspect a big chunk of Stripe's email requests are similarly trivial - "where can I see my $whatever report", "can I take amex?", "how much will I pay for a $.95 transaction", etc. that a competent support person can answer in their sleep. Now if we're getting into complicated technical issues, I'm sure those should be taking more time.
I share your disdain for those "just say what your issue is", although the trick to that is usually to say "cancel" and get immediately transferred to someone who will be expected to keep your business.