Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved] • Hacker News Board

Re: Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved]

#11

Post by ghoomketu » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

> Thanks to @dang for getting a Stripe employee to respond and he was finally able to resolve the issue for me.

I think it's time to add another HN tab called Complaints where we can post complaints for the common culprits like Google, Stripe, Pinboard, etc. It sounds backwards but the amount of people HN has helped over years it must add to millions of dollars to priceless things like getting back your email and photos.

Big kudos to dang and HN for standing up for the average person and being this helpful!

Re: Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved]

#12

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

moralestapia wrote: post #3

eeemmmooo wrote: post #2

Nov 28: Cyber Monday my business had a sale that spiked our revenue on that day. I believe this is what kicked off this whole thing. I believe that Stripe has automated systems in place to put accounts into review when something like this happens. I have no problem with that, and understand there are anti money laundering laws that they need to abide by. Nov. 29: I received an email from Stripe that 6 of our accounts…

As is the case with this kind of threads, it's quite embarrassing (for Stripe) that HN is their customer support outlet. Just as HN is great for showing up stuff and building brand awareness, the opposite is true as well; for me, at least, every time I see issues like this it erodes my perception of Stripe and makes me a bit averse of using their services.

And the alternative is??

I'm not suggesting there are no alternatives to Stripe, but I am suggesting I'd be doubtful to think that there are other companies that don't also have painful customer service snafus.

Re: Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved]

#13

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

DevX101 wrote: post #5

I'm glad your issues were sorted, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that you need to make a social media post to get a customer service issue resolved. This isn't just stripe. I see this with many other companies on social media. I don't post on Twitter, and I'd rather not put my account details for some service I use in a public forum. It's starting to seem like for too many companies, resolving public complaints…

Sadly, this has been a thing for a while. As a T-Mobile customer, at one point, it eventually took me to put a request via Twitter to get the matter resolved in 20 minutes as opposed to previously spending hours on the phone with tech support ( with no results to show for it ). It is, quite frankly, infuriating; especially for a telecom.

edit: I genuinely do not get why it took Twitter referral in my case either ( it was a technical matter of moving one phone number from carrier to another, but do they have their 'A team' for social media only?). Well, did. No idea what Twitter looks like now.

Re: Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved]

#14

Post by sovietmudkipz » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

Emotionally speaking (and assuming $400k is a significantly higher sales target than normal), what was it like to see the business success before you realized there was a lock on your accounts? What was it like after realizing the locks?

Re: Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved]

#15

Post by xhkkffbf » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

eeemmmooo wrote: post #2

Nov 28: Cyber Monday my business had a sale that spiked our revenue on that day. I believe this is what kicked off this whole thing. I believe that Stripe has automated systems in place to put accounts into review when something like this happens. I have no problem with that, and understand there are anti money laundering laws that they need to abide by. Nov. 29: I received an email from Stripe that 6 of our accounts…

That was a waste of many people's time. I feel a bit sorry for the customer support reps who just spun their wheels in the mud and couldn't come up with a resolution. It's clearly a broken system they're working within. (And it goes without saying that I feel very sorry for the customers on the receiving end of this stonewalling.)

Re: Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved]

#16

Post by stijnveken » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

throwawayapples wrote: post #10

Are there any real alternatives to Stripe? Obviously Adyen if you're in EU, PayPal/Braintree, etc, but Stripe is really the big kahuna. What about building your own with Authorize.net? Are there any old-school gateways like that left out there that are still independent? (can one do payments in the 10-100$ USD range on the blockchain? What if you don't want to go through an exchange?)

The is also Mollie [0] if you're in Europe. It's more comparable to Stripe than Adyen if you're just accepting payments in my experience.

[0] https://mollie.com

Re: Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved]

#17

Post by droopyEyelids » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

ghoomketu wrote: post #11

> Thanks to @dang for getting a Stripe employee to respond and he was finally able to resolve the issue for me. I think it's time to add another HN tab called Complaints where we can post complaints for the common culprits like Google, Stripe, Pinboard, etc. It sounds backwards but the amount of people HN has helped over years it must add to millions of dollars to priceless things like getting back your email and pho…

Have we ever seen a complaint for Pinboard?

Re: Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved]

#18

Post by miohtama » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

lol768 wrote: post #9

> But, there is a balance between automation and manual review. When someone like me gets caught up in an automated system there needs to be better ways of letting support help that person. This keeps happening, again and again. It's not just Stripe, Google is a huge offender when it comes to automated decision-making and next-to-no human support when it inevitably goes wrong. GDPR explicitly requires that companies…

In the case of finance, anti-money laundering laws triump GDPR.

If you as a financial institution suspect money laundering by your client i.e. a spike in transaction volume, you as a financial institution have an unlimited time to not to reply, can freeze the assets and cannot be held responsible for any inconvenience. Even suspecting money laundering is enough, you do not need to have an evidence. In fact it is opposite and it is a criminal offensive to tip off anyone about AML issues. The law is very one sided.

https://www.mondaq.com/cyprus/privacy-protection/1008074/gdp...

Re: Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved]

#19

Post by tpxl » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

throwawayapples wrote: post #10

Are there any real alternatives to Stripe? Obviously Adyen if you're in EU, PayPal/Braintree, etc, but Stripe is really the big kahuna. What about building your own with Authorize.net? Are there any old-school gateways like that left out there that are still independent? (can one do payments in the 10-100$ USD range on the blockchain? What if you don't want to go through an exchange?)

> What if you don't want to go through an exchange?

You don't need an exchange to take payments, but you will need to trade the currency into fiat at one point, either through an exchange or an OTC trade.

Re: Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved]

#20

Post by jcollins1991 » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

I'd really love to get more insight into the Dec 30 -> Jan 3 time frame, since that's where everything meaningful happened... From the outside it's hard to tell WHY the lower level employees are completely incapable of driving a resolution, whether they're underpaid and apathetic, or if management has crippled them from making any decisions on their own. It's amazing that they don't have better processes in place after seeing HN escalation posts for years on end.