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Stripe Is the New PayPal

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#241

Post by ad_hominem »

pc wrote: post #191
ad_hominem wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time Patrick posted his email[1] soliciting feedback, I emailed him but never got a response. I'm sure being a CEO is a busy job, so I understand. And I'm sure he'll respond to OP. But keep in mind just because he posts his email publicly doesn't mean he's actually any more reachable for it. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9646672

Hm, I never received anything! Can you send it again? (Two of us from Stripe, myself included, have already been in contact with disappointeddev.)

I've re-sent it. I have DKIM and SPF set up for my domain so if my emails are actually being dropped you must have a very aggressive spam filter!

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#242

Post by spdustin »

Wouldn't it help in a lot of cases to have an automatic escalation system in place, via SLA rules or other triggers, to raise up the visibility of messages from people whose accounts are being shut down? Have it post to IRC, Slack, PagerDuty, etc. when an email comes in from a customer flagged as "account closing by administrative action" or whatever?

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#243

Post by codexon »

dangrossman wrote: post #214
Danski0 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is confusing, so apologies if I'm misreading. Your policies are irrelevant if you're getting chargebacks despite them. Stripe was not lying: they are mandated by Visa/MC and whatever processors they work with to keep their chargeback ratio lower than that. If large customers like you can't keep your ratio below ~1%, then they have to drop you to preserve their own business. Having a high chargeback rate is itsel…

I have trouble believing even a 2% chargeback rate would endanger Visa/MC.

It seems like they hardly spend any time investigating chargebacks and most disputes seem to be won by the buyer by default unless they have a habit of filing chargebacks.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#244

Post by skazka16 »

pc wrote: post #115

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.

How'd Stripe solve the issue if HN did not exist and OP would never emit his disappointment publicly?

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#245

Post by mrkurt »

Kalium wrote: post #236
savanaly wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>which somehow always seem to be experiencing unusually high call volumes... That's because the times you call, by the laws of probability, are exactly the times when it is most likely to be busy. The same principle leads patients to estimate the business of a doctor's waiting room higher than the doctor or staff would. There's a name for this type of phenomenon in the abstract, but it eludes me.

In practice, I think that what we're actually seeing is what happens when customer support is seen as a cost center. The company could spend more on support, or they can add a notice to the call waiting and call it a day.

I don't think it's that. It's just really hard to scale support. It doesn't matter if you shovel money at it, it's still hard. Companies that are growing very quickly will always have periods of less-than-ideal customer support.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#246

Post by tomjen3 »

pc wrote: post #186
akhatri_aus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is something that sets PayPal apart. Paypal just doesn't seem to care at all. Their customer service is appalling. That being said Patrick, you can't do this forever, the service & support ought to be well without the need of a call for attention. I think this is the 3rd or fourth one in the past 2 weeks. Is something going on at Stripe? Why are these all happening now?

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.…

I get that this is super sensitive, but I really wish you were a bit more public about these things. Stribe is basically the best thing that happened to ordinary programmers since the internet - it is the missing (technical) part of making somehing people want and selling it online, in a way where you can provide almost all of the experience.

Unfortunately with the previous (and now this) it seemed like you guys had become paypal and thus dangerous to do business with.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#247

Post by dangrossman »

codexon wrote: post #243
dangrossman wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is confusing, so apologies if I'm misreading. Your policies are irrelevant if you're getting chargebacks despite them. Stripe was not lying: they are mandated by Visa/MC and whatever processors they work with to keep their chargeback ratio lower than that. If large customers like you can't keep your ratio below ~1%, then they have to drop you to preserve their own business. Having a high chargeback rate is itsel…

I have trouble believing even a 2% chargeback rate would endanger Visa/MC. It seems like they hardly spend any time investigating chargebacks and most disputes seem to be won by the buyer by default unless they have a habit of filing chargebacks.

The reason Visa/MC so rigorously enforces those ratios has nothing to do with immediate financial danger from the reversals themselves. They bear no actual risk there.

Visa/MC work with an ever-changing mix of tens of millions of merchants that they never have direct contact with. There's a long chain of banks, ISOs, MSPs and other resellers between the card networks and the businesses that accept cards, yet they still need to provide some kind of oversight to avoid working with businesses or business models that would damage the integrity and trustworthiness of their brand with consumers.

The only way they can do that is to have policies that create incentives for the behavior they want to promote, and that prevent the behavior they want to discourage. The mandate to have a reversal ratio under 1% is one of those policies. Because it's enforced at the top, it trickles down the pyramid to every single business accepting credit cards even though they never directly interact with Visa/MC. Anyone with any kind of business that leaves customers dissatisfied, whether it's due to fraud, abuse, incompetence or ignorance, will end up being excluded from the network until they can rectify their issues despite Visa/MC never knowing they existed.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#248

Post by matthewarkin »

jes5199 wrote: post #225
sethd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name is not validated and seems useless to even collect. However both billing Address line 1 and Zip code can be validated by processors, including Stripe.

yeah, but Line 1 is considered unreliable and stripe doesn't automatically use it - they have an API to let you know if line 1 fails, but you have to cancel the transaction yourself

The issue with AVS is that it only matches numbers (so 123 Main Street and 123 Maple Street could both return true). The other issue is apartment numbers. If the address on file is 123 Main Street #123 but the customer puts #123 on line 2 in your form is that a match or not?

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#249

Post by cperciva »

damoncali wrote: post #237
Danski0 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What sort of SaaS product has a 2% chargeback rate? That's huge.

That's what I was wondering -- Tarsnap may be an unusual case, but out of over 10000 transactions I've only had one chargeback... and I won that because it was initiated by accident.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#250

Post by icpmacdo »

pen2l wrote: post #196
pc wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I never received anything! Can you send it again? (Two of us from Stripe, myself included, have already been in contact with disappointeddev.)

Not to knock on you, but I'm starting to see this is a trend. I was on the hn irc channel, and numerous people complained about the same thing. That you're always very willing and ready to offer support here on HN by saying "Sure, just email me!" but when these folks do email you, they are ignored. I don't know if this is a clever PR strategy to contain and direct fallout to a private medium so it never sees light of…

Can you link to the HN IRC channel?
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