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Stripe is wrongly suspending accounts

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Re: Stripe is wrongly suspending accounts

#111

Post by JokerDan »

wernercd wrote: post #96
rapind wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admirable, but neither of these are light lifts. Most startups are potentially better off just gambling they won't be in the %0.1 that get shut down due to big company shenanigans.

Any company that doesn't take steps that basically amount to insurance - and insurance is "just in case shit happens" - deserves the pain when the unthinkable happens. With backups - onsite, offsite, security, code reviews, pen testing, separate environments for testing, etc... all things that take time and aren't "light lifts". If you skip and don't cover your bases? You're going to fall and you'll deserve the broke…

This is a terrible attitude to have, some startups are cobbled together by 1 or 2 people and get off the ground, yet you are expecting them to have a team of at least 12 and additional retainer resource of lawyers and similar otherwise "they deserve to fail"?

In the real world, many businesses aren't created in the Silicon Valley by established founders and friends with VC funds, who can afford the time and cost to have all this.

Edit: To clarify, I am not saying that the things suggested are unimportant or not vital to an established business.. But that the bottom line for a brand new business with very few people involved is to survive and be stable enough to have the change of introduce backing on/off site, distaster recovery plans, paying for pen testing, security consultants, dedicated QA, etc.

Re: Stripe is wrongly suspending accounts

#112

Post by MarkPNeyer »

n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #10

At this point, I don’t know how any founder on HN doesn’t make their business… 1) Multi-cloud and… 2) Multi-payment processor These stories are horrifying. These cloud and payment processors simply do not care. They print money and provide no human support. Any venture that I make in the future will be cloud-agnostic containers on several cloud providers with at least two payment processors handling an even share of…

This is the best argument for bitcoin.

Even Democratic “rule of law” places like Canada can seize your funds for engaging in “politically incorrect” behavior.

Re: Stripe is wrongly suspending accounts

#113

Post by danpalmer »

chevman wrote: post #86
danpalmer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or rather, get a contract with your cloud provider and payment processor that clearly lays out the terms under which they will and won't suspend you. My previous company had a business contract with GCP and so wouldn't be cut off for, for example, a dodgy employee account tied to the business in some way. It's amazing how many people put their email and credit card in a form, pay sticker price for a service, and have…

This x 1000! Do kids these days not realize you can negotiate anything and everything with your vendors/suppliers/partners? Yes, most SaaS companies LOVE it when you sign up for one of their standard plans, using THEIR standard T&C's, and standard payments. But, DID YOU KNOW, if something is critical to your business, you can negotiate directly with pretty much every business on the face of the planet, and if your sp…

They might like you being on their basic contract and high sticker price, but you know what they love even more? Having a person they can do sales calls with. It's amazing how much you can get out of companies just by, you know, talking to them.

Re: Stripe is wrongly suspending accounts

#114

Post by the__alchemist »

danpalmer wrote: post #61
n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #10

At this point, I don’t know how any founder on HN doesn’t make their business… 1) Multi-cloud and… 2) Multi-payment processor These stories are horrifying. These cloud and payment processors simply do not care. They print money and provide no human support. Any venture that I make in the future will be cloud-agnostic containers on several cloud providers with at least two payment processors handling an even share of…

Or rather, get a contract with your cloud provider and payment processor that clearly lays out the terms under which they will and won't suspend you. My previous company had a business contract with GCP and so wouldn't be cut off for, for example, a dodgy employee account tied to the business in some way. It's amazing how many people put their email and credit card in a form, pay sticker price for a service, and have…

How big would a business have to be for this to work with a company like Stripe?

Re: Stripe is wrongly suspending accounts

#115

Post by dang »

bicijay wrote: post #7

Monthly HN Stripe customer support thread

Yes - more often, in fact. Here are a few of the recent ones:

Stripe account suffered a card test - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33688298 - Nov 2022 (33 comments)

Ask HN: Stripe holding funds for 120 days for no reason - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33299222 - Oct 2022 (114 comments)

Don’t use Stripe. I am trying to save you from my mistake - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33254485 - Oct 2022 (21 comments)

Ask HN: Why do people come to HN for Stripe resolutions? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33140798 - Oct 2022 (108 comments)

Ask HN: Have you noticed an increase in the number of Stripe Disputes lately? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33123756 - Oct 2022 (16 comments)

Ask HN: Can I avoid being nuked by Stripe? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32856237 - Sept 2022 (31 comments)

Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32854528 - Sept 2022 (679 comments)

---

I think we have to start treating this as a MOT (major ongoing topic) and do something about all these follow-ups [1]. I've delayed making this call because of the core principle that we moderate HN less when YC or a YC startup is part of a story [2]. But less does not mean not at all. At some point we have to remember the other core principles of HN moderation too, such as that repetition is bad for curiosity [3].

I don't mean that these incidents aren't real—and obviously they are super important to the users who are personally affected. But from an HN point of view, the question is "is this story new/different enough to support a substantially different discussion", and here the answer is clearly no.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Re: Stripe is wrongly suspending accounts

#116

Post by testbjjl »

n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #10

At this point, I don’t know how any founder on HN doesn’t make their business… 1) Multi-cloud and… 2) Multi-payment processor These stories are horrifying. These cloud and payment processors simply do not care. They print money and provide no human support. Any venture that I make in the future will be cloud-agnostic containers on several cloud providers with at least two payment processors handling an even share of…

> Any venture that I make in the future will be cloud-agnostic containers on several cloud providers with at least two payment processors handling an even share of the load.

Are you running any businesses this way now? What were the challenges?

Re: Stripe is wrongly suspending accounts

#117

Post by Brian_K_White »

smca_ wrote: post #30

Can you email me (smca@stripe.com) with more detail? I'll look into this. We don’t typically comment in detail on individual cases, but we do think it’s important for onlookers to know that we take every single case like this seriously. It looks like what happened here was an edge case involving SEPA payments that resulted in a dispute rate that’s far in excess of what’s generally permitted by financial partners. Whe…

I see no valid excuses here. "we process millions of transactions so we can't provide proper service" no, just like every other buisiness that wants to scale to collecting money from millions of users while only paying tens of employees, profit margin and founder pay is no fundamental excusable reason for doing a bad job at your job.

Re: Stripe is wrongly suspending accounts

#118

Post by dividuum »

dibt wrote: post #29
rapind wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admirable, but neither of these are light lifts. Most startups are potentially better off just gambling they won't be in the %0.1 that get shut down due to big company shenanigans.

Why? Can’t you have a dormant or lightly used gumroad account integrated into your site/app. It’s not trivial, but could be worth it. Most frameworks have these services already integrated.

A dormant account that suddenly gets a large influx of new users sounds like a great way to get auto-banned by some stupid automated process as well, just when you most need them to work :-}

Re: Stripe is wrongly suspending accounts

#119

Post by elorant »

danpalmer wrote: post #61
n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #10

At this point, I don’t know how any founder on HN doesn’t make their business… 1) Multi-cloud and… 2) Multi-payment processor These stories are horrifying. These cloud and payment processors simply do not care. They print money and provide no human support. Any venture that I make in the future will be cloud-agnostic containers on several cloud providers with at least two payment processors handling an even share of…

Or rather, get a contract with your cloud provider and payment processor that clearly lays out the terms under which they will and won't suspend you. My previous company had a business contract with GCP and so wouldn't be cut off for, for example, a dodgy employee account tied to the business in some way. It's amazing how many people put their email and credit card in a form, pay sticker price for a service, and have…

So how do you get Stripe to send you a signed contract?

Re: Stripe is wrongly suspending accounts

#120

Post by Step888 »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #25
bicijay wrote: post #7

Monthly HN Stripe customer support thread

Maybe this is a good place to ask the question: 1. Why is stripe a seemingly preferred payment processor for HN crowd? 2. Is there no ( edit: real ) competition or is the competition similarly bad ( or somehow worse )? edit: Instead of replying individually, I decided to edit this section. Thank you everyone for the background(s). It does answer a lot of the questions I had. I perused their site and I can absolutely…

Stripe is a ycombinator company
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