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Stripe Is the New PayPal

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#251

Post by codexon »

dangrossman wrote: post #247
codexon wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sti…

And unfortunately it is encouraging poor behavior from customers to be able to get things for free.

I think everyone can agree that maybe with a 20% chargeback rate, there is something wrong with the business but 1-2% seems possible for a legitimate business.

As a credit card user, I don't think it is their job to dictate which businesses are worthy of operating or not.

As long as I get my money back when I do a chargeback, then they did their job.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#252

Post by hamburglar »

holdenc wrote: post #155

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.

It's actually quite a bit lower than 100K. My company does about $20K/mo with PayPal and we have an assigned account rep who we contact directly for support. I don't think they've ever sent us a Christmas card, though. Maybe that's the difference between $20K and $100K. :)

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#253

Post by jeffmould »

o0-0o wrote: post #233
gknoy wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really good point. Having something where you can see that what you asked is at least in the system, and Nth in queue, helps a lot when dealing with the opacity of tech support.

This would require a meaningful and physical support presence, for certain. It would also enable users to really prove support times. These are costs and risks for Stripe respectively. I doubt they implement this.

Yes and no. Theoretically you could implement an online ticketing system and have one or two people going through the tickets with minimal support. Plus, they are already have the expense of having someone constantly monitoring IRC, Twitter, HN, and any other public forum so implementing a basic ticketing system within the dashboard should be minimal. As for proving support times I think that would actually benefit Stripe greatly. It is easy for me to send a support request to Stripe right now and get on HN in 5 minutes complaining I haven't received a response in hours or even days. Sadly, we live in a "now" society that when we don't get an answer in seconds we assume we are being ignored. I am not saying this is happening in every case, but IMO, proving support times can have a direct impact on reducing the negative PR around support such as posts like this one.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#255

Post by smmorneau »

huhtenberg wrote: post #215
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.

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…

+1 for a similar experience. We switched over from Balanced, who always had excellent customer service, when they shut down. It took a month for them to fulfill our simple request so that we could complete the migration process, and this was only after our CTO whined loudly over IRC to get a response, despite me sending emails to their support every few days.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#256

Post by awfullyjohn »

mrkurt wrote: post #245
Kalium wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think thats true. I work at a startup that's recently raised our series B, and I use our customer service all the time. I always get excellent response times, and I'm treated just like every other user of our product. Our CEO spends a ton of time ensuring that operations and customer happiness are priorities. If it's a focus of the company, it's definitely possible.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#257

Post by nacs »

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…

> I don't know if this is a clever PR strategy to contain and direct fallout to a private medium

Well to be fair, they pretty much have to go to a private medium to talk to their customers, especially in a financial setting.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#258

Post by ebspelman »

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.

Where do you think the refund for a chargeback comes from? With a 3rd-party aggregator like Stripe, it comes directly out of the merchant's Stripe account (i.e. Stripe's aggregated account with Chase Paymentech). If the merchant has already withdrawn all of their money from their Stripe account, then Stripe is left holding the bag.

Accounts with 1-2% chargeback rate are incredibly costly. Stripe is potentially having to pay 1-2% of that account's entire processing volume in losses.

Chargebacks don't magically get paid. Somebody is left holding the bill.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#259

Post by vonklaus »

natemc wrote: post #176

Stripe is a Ycombinator company. I got downvoted when I told the CEO of Stripe my troubles with Stripe, he said to email but then never responded creating the public perception that they care, when they don't. You will just find downvoting brigades of people on HN when it comes to any YC backed company. Which is probably why this will be my last post on HN. You can't get anything truthful on here if YC has backed the…

> Which is probably why this will be my last post on HN

It is pretty great that the CEO comes on HN and handles support. That is a skip-level meeting. Usually support requests are handled at the bottom of the heirarchy pyramid, not the top. Yes people openly support and defend YC companies, this community is only possible because of YC, and is comprised of many employees, founders and peers of these companies.

If you don't like being disagreed with though, you can pick up your ball and go home. I suspect that you will get a lot more value from this community than the one time you couldn't get a CEO to directly address your problems.

Re: Stripe Is the New PayPal

#260

Post by ebspelman »

Danski0 wrote: post #207
mattfrommars wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1-2% chargeback rate is the exact opposite of 'no risk.'

This is why people will eventually end up hating Stripe just as much as PayPal. There is a huge disconnect between consumer expectations and the realities that a 3rd-party aggregator like Stripe faces.

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