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Stripe CEO here. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm taking a look at what happened here. OP (disappointeddev), if you could drop me an email, that'd be great: patrick@stripe.com.
It's weird to find out this way, as I was procrastinating on HN instead of researching.
Someone else posted last night (I'm on my phone or I would search for the post) about Stripe support. Looking at their Twitter stream it appears they are having a very difficult time managing their support infrastructure and do not have a trouble ticket system. I love Stripe's API and have helped several clients integrate it, but as the developer-friendly, anti-PayPal processor they were once known for, this developm…
Hm. Critical support failures right in time for Balanced Payment's going under... :/
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No MRC (monthly reoccurring charge) on a service does not make it free, you're still paying for the service in a pay-per-use context.
Yep but you're getting a little hung up on definitions and missing the larger point. Ie by proving that it's not a freemium model you're not really negating the central point which is that the barrier to entry is substantially lower (non existent) than with any/other competing services thus drawing in exponentially more users than similar services resulting in a disproportionate strain on their customer support vs ot…
Honestly, right or wrong - I've seen very few 'startups' really grok effective customer service (I realize I'm over generalizing). Yes, a good Knowledge Base/FAQ and ticketing/email system is important - but you need a phone number, you need a call center probably too (even if its only 2-5 people answering the phone) - you need more than email and ticketing - most technology is complex enough that you need a person to talk to over the phone to hold your customers hands - IMO - this is even doubled for anything that need to integrate with your systems or has a device on your premises, but is also applicable to a complex web service - I strongly believe it drives long term customer retention and eases on boarding.
I'll point out as to why I believe this - outside of the technology hubs, the folks with money are not the 'internet native' generation, they're older and less comfortable with technology then we are.
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off topic but can you link me the business/company you are involved in?
It was a SaaS subscription with mostly companies as customers. We didn't brake any ToS, Stripe refered to a high chargeback rate (1-2%) and that was it. Something about SaaS being high risk and getting close to 2% chargeback could loose Stripe their contracts with MC/VISA. In reality no fucking risk as we had a 100% refund policy, no questions asked, no time limit.
If you really were getting 2% of your payments reversed despite a 100% refund guarantee, there's really something wrong with that business that needed fixing. Perhaps uninentional, but people were being misled in some way, or claiming that refund was too difficult, or contacting you and getting a prompt response too hard. I run several SaaS businesses, with $MM total revenue, and had 3 chargebacks total last year adding up to less than $500.
Stripe CEO here. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm taking a look at what happened here. OP (disappointeddev), if you could drop me an email, that'd be great: patrick@stripe.com.
The service your provide is excellent, I adore the way Stripe does things in general, but your tech support absolutely positively blows.
We've been using Stripe for year and a half now and we had to contact support several times (6-7 ?). Every single time I would hear NOTHING back for few days, then I will log onto your IRC channel and start, basically, bitching. Lo and behold, not a minute later I get a private IRC message asking for an account ID and then I get a reply from the support in another 5 minutes. Invariably, it will start with a cry story how the support is unusually overloaded now.
This is absolutely unacceptable. In one case we had issues with two-factor authentication not working, and you'd think it warrants a more-or-less timely response, but, no, it still required the IRC trick to wrestle a reply from your support.
Please fix this.
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Our overall support response times are actually substantially faster than, say, 3 months ago. Part of it is, I think, because we're growing quickly -- even for the same problematic case percentage, there are going to be more in absolute number. (And, as Stripe becomes more prominent, the cases that happen will themselves get more attention.) In addition, the cases that get public attention generally aren't clear-cut.…
For what it is worth, just my two-cents, but I think even having a customer-facing ticketing system (doesn't necessarily have to be public facing) would help quell some of the unrest. At least for myself, I don't mind a delay in support, but when a request is sent in and it seems to disappear into a black hole it can be frustrating. If there was a way to incorporate support into the dashboard so that users could open…
Stripe CEO here. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm taking a look at what happened here. OP (disappointeddev), if you could drop me an email, that'd be great: patrick@stripe.com.
Patrick, since you are here - The service your provide is excellent, I adore the way Stripe does things in general, but your tech support absolutely positively blows . We've been using Stripe for year and a half now and we had to contact support several times (6-7 ?). Every single time I would hear NOTHING back for few days, then I will log onto your IRC channel and start, basically, bitching. Lo and behold, not a mi…
Thing is, as a developer I spent a year trying to convince them to switch from their current payment gateway to Stripe. This particular client has been in business for a long time, and does $300K+ per month in sales. They have over 25,000 satisfied customers and zero BBB or other complaints.
Needless to say, Stripe has given our company a black eye.
I use the MinFraud service from MaxMind to try to avoid unauthorized transactions. Using Braintree, I first do an Authorization, if that goes through, I send details to MinFraud. If that passes a threshold, then I submit the payment for settlement. If not, I void the transaction. This process has helped to avoid all kinds of scammers using my website to try to validate stolen credit card details.
It's worth noting: if you do 100K+ monthly via PayPal, you get a VIP support team for all business issues, and a Christmas card with their faces printed on the front. No kidding.
I have a feeling that PayPal may be able to rebuild the trust it lost in hacker minds.