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Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

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Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#91

Post by lucas_adlp »

tnuc wrote: post #82

>Obviously we also have tracking numbers to prove that literally every succeeded payment from account 1 have received their products, and we have submitted this to Stripe as well. ------- So does this mean that any of your customers complained that they have not received what they paid for?

No, there's tracking numbers for all orders in both accounts.

We've received 1 dispute in roughly 700 payments, which was just a mistake on the customers end.

Generally, all of our customers are quite happy with our products.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#92

Post by jacquesm »

lucas_adlp wrote: post #66
Nathanael_M wrote: post #14

Out of curiosity, can you be more specific about what you sell? Consumer electronics like vapes or consumer electronics like Alibaba hoverboards or consumer electronics like a quality, entry level set of computer speakers? Stripe seems to be pretty sensitive towards certain industries and I'd like to see if this holds true here.

I cannot be super specific due to the nature of business strategy. If I share accurate info about what and how we sell things, It's very easy for opportunists and competitors to undertake us in this specific project while our processing solution is down temporarily. What I will say though, is that we're not speaking vapes or anything borderline, more like kitchen and household appliances, and so on.

If you ask a community for help you can't expect them to play with half a deck behind your back and 'trust me' when your account is a brand new one. That is simply not how this works. Trust is a two way street, you don't trust HN to know what it is you are selling but you do expect help in solving your problem. Those two don't match, especially not because you use multiple Stripe accounts and have issues with both, that alone is a pretty big red flag. A kitchen and household appliances company that is above board would have zero problems naming their website, nor would they be classified as 'high risk' by Stripe.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#93

Post by kronks »

junon wrote: post #87
lucas_adlp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot be super specific due to the nature of business strategy. If I share accurate info about what and how we sell things, It's very easy for opportunists and competitors to undertake us in this specific project while our processing solution is down temporarily. What I will say though, is that we're not speaking vapes or anything borderline, more like kitchen and household appliances, and so on.

> It's very easy for opportunists and competitors to undertake us This is nonsense, sorry. It really sounds like you're selling something Stripe would understandably want nothing to do with.

[dead]

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#94

Post by sccxy »

lucas_adlp wrote: post #66
Nathanael_M wrote: post #14

Out of curiosity, can you be more specific about what you sell? Consumer electronics like vapes or consumer electronics like Alibaba hoverboards or consumer electronics like a quality, entry level set of computer speakers? Stripe seems to be pretty sensitive towards certain industries and I'd like to see if this holds true here.

I cannot be super specific due to the nature of business strategy. If I share accurate info about what and how we sell things, It's very easy for opportunists and competitors to undertake us in this specific project while our processing solution is down temporarily. What I will say though, is that we're not speaking vapes or anything borderline, more like kitchen and household appliances, and so on.

> I cannot be super specific due to the nature of business strategy.

It says all. You are most likely a scammer or criminal.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#95

Post by jacquesm »

rippercushions wrote: post #89
jacquesm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how you count a loss. Your loss is the product you bought (not sold) and the time and effort spent on sending it, as well as possible marketing expense to get it sold. You don't recognize the revenue until the money is in the bank, especially not if you have a dispute with your payment service provider otherwise you are creating yet another problem for yourself, the taxman will want his due even though you…

They were paid, Stripe has just frozen the funds and apparently intends to refund the lot.

No, Stripe was paid. Really, the basics here are pretty simple: until your IPSP has released the funds to you you have not been paid. The fact that Stripe intends to refund is a pretty strong bit of evidence that the company has not been paid yet.

One thing that people that use services like Stripe really ought to do is to make sure they understand exactly what the position is that they maneuver themselves into, it looks like a lot of this is driven by wishful thinking rather than understanding.

Legally speaking Stripe has the option to refund a customer during the hold-back period at their discretion. Technically you are not supposed to send any physical goods until you have received the payment. If you do so that is at your own risk.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#96

Post by bb88 »

simfree wrote: post #5
boeingUH60 wrote: post #2

Here we go again...seems a Hacker News thread is the only valid way of getting a customer response from Stripe.

It's the only way to get support from Stripe, their founders are HN frequenters and the support is script readers outside of that.

So they rake in the dough and provide the cheapest customer service possible. That seems to be the most important lesson on this.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#97

Post by jerryjappinen »

lucas_adlp wrote: post #70
f1shy wrote: post #62

I must be stupid... but how a refunding of 150k makes a loss of 250k? I would assume the shipped goods are less than 150k (gain margin). That plus shipping is the loss. Shipping, assuming 150, you sold about 1000 items, which at 5EUR typical shipping ist 5k. Worst case, even with interest and all that you want... who do you come to 250k? I do not want to defend Stripe (I hate all that kind of companies), but there ar…

We've sent out products to all the customers that have paid. Stripe is now "considering" refunding all these customers, while holding 150k of our generated revenue. Due to the products being bought and shipped, (and not even factoring in marketing costs) this easily equates to a total net loss of 250k for our business.

Let's say you had $100k in the bank before you started this.

You buy the product and ship it, costing you $75k. Your balance is now at $25k.

You expect revenue of $150k from customers. This would take your balance to $175k with net profit of $75k.

But Stripe refunds the customers, and the revenue never comes. Your net loss (excluding labor, marketing etc.) is now either $75k (the money that is no longer in your account) or $150k (expected balance vs. the actual balance).

It doesn't make sense to take the sum of those two. Your expectation was that the incoming revenue would cover the procurement and shipping.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#98

Post by bushbaba »

mamidon wrote: post #44

This is the Nth horror story I've seen about stripe. It's the new Google. Good docs and a sane technical API make my life as a dev easier. But I'd rather use a payments vendor that I can trust not to deep 6 my company a year later. Any recommendations? Ideally they still have good docs and a sane API.

As with all enterprise software buying, a key criteria is can I get a human on the phone to resolve the issue quickly-ish.

Microsoft and Amazon get this, with differing strategies. Google and Stripe seem to not get it.

Sure it doesn’t scale for the long tail, but it’s a necessity for any large enterprise account. Heck call it “stripe premium support” and charge an additional fee.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#99

Post by perryizgr8 »

frx wrote: post #79

I've never used Stripe before so wanted to ask a clarification question. Their docs [1] say that the payout schedule is 7-14 days after the payment. What prevents companies from taking out their money every week (or 2 weeks)? For OP, is 250k euros weekly income? If so, it shouldn't bother them? If not, then why didn't they take out their money before this happened? [1] https://stripe.com/docs/payouts

> For OP, is 250k euros weekly income? If so, it shouldn't bother them?

Why not? 250k is 250k.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#100

Post by devwastaken »

Corps and lawyers are a hand in hand relationship. You need to have a lawyer you can trust whom knows your business before you need them. Certainly you're not the only one, but likely when other corps have a problem it starts with a legal letterhead.
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