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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

#131

Post by jacquesm »

jerryjappinen wrote: post #97
lucas_adlp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 accou…

Even that isn't right: if the original balance was $100k the loss can never be larger than that. You still have 25K in the bank so the loss is $75k, any other interpretation should not be labelled a loss, at best they are misguided expectations.

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

#132

Post by 4ggr0 »

caitb wrote: post #130
4ggr0 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice that you're looking into it, but it always irks me a bit when seeing that companies only really react when people complain online about it (and the complaint receives traction). I had a request for my buildings management which they declined for over a year, stating that they wouldn't do it and I should solve it myself. After a year I wrote them a 3 star review on Google stating "Good people and no big issues, e…

We were in touch with OP over email before this post was made. We know that confirming we review cases posted here provides an incentive for bad actors to post. We wish that weren’t the case–but we do pay attention to both internal case reviews and to any public complaints where users are having a bad day (or, in some cases, profess to be having a bad day).

Well yeah, OP mentioned that he was in contact, but that your solution of freezing their funds for that pretty long time frame was really weird to them. They tried to prove with tracking numbers, which apparently didn't work.

You now promise to look into it, why was that not possible before this post was created?

> We know that confirming we review cases posted here provides an incentive for bad actors to post.

That could be. Going through the comments in this thread I can read lots of complaints about Stripe Support. Maybe a significant part of the problem is internal instead of the mentioned bad actors.

But, I'll give Stripe the benefit of the doubt, that this new account which complains about an issue without wanting to go into detail about what they're selling is maybe not telling the whole truth. This still doesn't negate the fact that there have been a lot of posts about Stripe on here which were suddenly resolved after posting them.

And of course this is not meant against you personally, but towards Stripe as a business.

EDIT: See OPs response...

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

#133

Post by qaq »

jacquesm wrote: post #127
qaq wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.chase.com/business/payments/online

They'll just connect you with Stripe, authorize.net, braintree or some other IPSP. Really, I don't see what this contributes to the discussion, I would assume that if the OP was able to sign up for their own merchant account they would have done so. To process six figure sums on someone else's merchant account is usually for a reason other than convenience because the fees are high enough that you will want to cut ou…

Your merchant account can be with your bank and you just use authoriz.net as a gateway. Fees might be a bit higher than stripe but in case of problems you can talk to a human and resolve your problems.

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

#136

Post by nucatus »

I see this is the first and only post you have on HN. Since you shared with us the problem you have with Stripe, would you be so kind to share the address of your webstore so that we can make an idea about the stuff you are selling.

It is becoming hilariously unpolite to see all these complains revealing only half of the story.

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

#137

Post by jacquesm »

lucas_adlp wrote: post #59
mcgin wrote: post #6

Can we please do something about hacker news being used for customer support? It's getting tiresome to see these appearing on a regular basis

I'm also not fond of using HN for this sort of thing, but for a non-bootstrapped business, 250k isn't peanuts. As much as this is a request for acutal support from Stripe, I also do hope that readers who are in a business of taking online payments will become fully aware of the risk of using Stripe, since I weren't (and now I'm in a situation of possibly losing 250k).

> I'm also not fond of using HN for this sort of thing

Then don't.

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

#138

Post by foepys »

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

It seems like it's a potential "profit" of 44,000 € before taxes for that sale. 44,000 € is not even 20% of a guaranteed loss of 250,000 €, which is definitely outside "shouldn't bother" them.

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

#139

Post by jacquesm »

qaq wrote: post #133
jacquesm wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll just connect you with Stripe, authorize.net, braintree or some other IPSP. Really, I don't see what this contributes to the discussion, I would assume that if the OP was able to sign up for their own merchant account they would have done so. To process six figure sums on someone else's merchant account is usually for a reason other than convenience because the fees are high enough that you will want to cut ou…

Your merchant account can be with your bank and you just use authoriz.net as a gateway. Fees might be a bit higher than stripe but in case of problems you can talk to a human and resolve your problems.

I've been in that position for many, many years and not a single time has my bank been useful to me. The gateway people usually are able to help out, depending on what the issue is. And this across a multitude of banks.

And yes, it's a better solution than Stripe, assuming you are not a high risk merchant, in which case banks won't touch you.

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

#140

Post by jacquesm »

nucatus wrote: post #136

I see this is the first and only post you have on HN. Since you shared with us the problem you have with Stripe, would you be so kind to share the address of your webstore so that we can make an idea about the stuff you are selling. It is becoming hilariously unpolite to see all these complains revealing only half of the story.

One thing they left out - in fact lied about - is that they were already in contact with Stripe support over this.
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