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

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

#161

Post by kcartlidge »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #43

Lots of posts here along the lines of "it's not good when you need to resort to social media shaming to get customer support", but I'll take the contrarian view, or at least explain why this dynamic exists. The past 20 years has seen an explosion in Internet services, but a fundamental (often unspoken) quality of these services is that they must keep individualized customer support costs very low in order to be profi…

> I wish there were a better alternative, but I really am at a loss to think what that could be.

(This is a general comment; not directed at Stripe with whom I personally have had no dealings needing support.)

It's simple. If you can't provide useful customer service, then you can't provide a service at all. Similarly if you can't scale professionally, then in reality you can't (and shouldn't) scale at all.

Tech scales, and customer bases scale, but the real world doesn't scale with it. Professionals with morals, and standards, and pride in what they do, should self-limit their business to what they can realistically handle. And that includes the greedy behemoths across all of tech. If they truly cared about their customers they would accept that there is a limit to how many they can provide quality support for, and artificially restrict their own growth until they've ironed out enough issues that they can release the tap and scale a little bit more.

Of course financial imperatives beat both professionalism and pride in how the company operates, so that never happens.

There's no technical fix. There's no financial fix. There's probably no legal fix either. It needs an attitude fix.

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

#162

Post by csmpltn »

dylan604 wrote: post #159
csmpltn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I think the point is that there is no indication of a crime." Inexplicably being denied access to your own funds without being told what's going on or when the issue will be resolved could be an indication of a crime. I'm not saying it is a clear indication, but I'm not denying the possibility either. There can be any number of hypothetical reasons for the situation being the way it is, and you can't exclude ones…

Calling the police is totally an emotional response. You made a business contract with a company. In that contract, they stipulate that under certain circumstances they will hold your money. What is a problem is the company is completely full of shit in how they handle these situations. They are "protecting themselves" from your account potentially being some sort of fraud. This is all automated with zero to little h…

> "Calling the police is totally an emotional response."

We're going around in circles, but all I'll say is that you could say that about anything. And yet people sometimes end up in prison for stealing candy.

If people won't file reports - all deterrence is lost, and there won't be any incentive for the other side to change. If the mechanism exists, why not use it?

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

#163

Post by moralestapia »

looping__lui wrote: post #28
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We had a great experience w/ Fastspring: https://fastspring.com/ It has been a few years though since we sold the company. Super easy to set up, super reliable. Never had any issues w/ them.

Funny.

As soon as I read your comment I went there, I clicked on "I'd like to speak with someone" on their chat popup and have been waiting for that all morning, i.e. they don't seem to care much.

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

#164

Post by cj »

FredPret wrote: post #129
cj wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laser cut wooden signs. She has a big warehouse in florida with commercial grade laser cutting machines (they started on a Glowforge!) The products are all custom, e.g. your family's last name laser cut onto wood.

I want one, care to share a link?

Hesitant to link directly to her store here, but she's on this page!

https://www.etsy.com/search?explicit=1&q=last+name+sign&ref=...

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

#165

Post by ethbr0 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #142
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frontline support is oftentimes outsourced to firms like Arise Virtual Solutions [1] and workers typically have very little authority to escalate or fix more complex issues. Social media people usually have channels to marketing and other teams and are explicitly instructed to escalate the "trending" cases [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/meet-the-customer-service...

Well, that's the explanation, and yeah, most people here knew it already. But every thing with that is wrong. That part in particular "workers typically have very little authority to escalate or fix more complex issues" is a plain and straight refusal to solve any problem the company may cause.

What fascinates me is that companies obsessed with KPIs don't seem to independently count unfixed issues.

Firewalling customer support behind another company or division is okay, but at least make sure you have a parallel feedback mechanism to know how they're doing!

Social media support seems like the shitty version of this, but it's not rocket science to be able to regularly independently audit a random subset of issues by your CSR contractor. Internal audits have been standard practice in similar healthcare scenarios for decades.

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

#166

Post by ornornor »

jlokier wrote: post #99
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…

After 5 days of trying to get my bank account at Revolut unblocked so I could pay my rent with the cash locked up in it, having chatted with maybe 5 representatives, waited for hours each time (their only official contact channel was in-app chat and you had to wait hours for a response), got told "since you are not replying I'm closing this chat" a couple of times in the middle of the night while I was asleep having…

Revolut is a terrible company with an insane CEO exploiting its workers[0][1][2].

There are better alternatives like TransferWise or N26.

[0]: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/revolut-employment-coronavir...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280131

[2]: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/revolut-trade-unions-labour-...

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

#167

Post by ethbr0 »

richardw wrote: post #127
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…

The company I’ve spent the last 5 years at (just resigned to emigrate) has a rule. If you come across an unhappy customer and don’t do anything, you should be fired. 10k employees, insurance, banking. Nobody moaned because we understand the reasons for it. I embraced it and have escalated many calls. In a world of indifference, that’s a solid stake in the ground.

A well-known home improvement retailer has a similar rule: you take the time to help anyone with an issue resolve it, or directly hand them off to another employee who can help. No pointing and then ignoring. Or email forwarding and then ignoring.

Granted, everyone is busy and it isn't always followed, but as a guiding organizational foundation one can do a lot worse.

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

#168

Post by cj »

redeux wrote: post #158
cj wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laser cut wooden signs. She has a big warehouse in florida with commercial grade laser cutting machines (they started on a Glowforge!) The products are all custom, e.g. your family's last name laser cut onto wood.

I’d love some info on how she grew to that size on Etsy. My partner sells some things on Etsy and has had moderate success but nowhere on that level. Did she use Etsy ads, off platform marketing, or some kind of listing optimization for Etsy search to drive that kind of growth?

From my understanding it's mostly organic, ranking well in Etsy search. I think she does paid ads to boost + supplement, but organic Etsy search is the primary growth channel. Which is also difficult and frustrating because you basically have to get really good at guessing what Etsy's algorithms are, which they change frequently (in other words, SEO but for Etsy). I don't think there's a magic bullet. A lot of trial and error

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

#169

Post by ethbr0 »

criddell wrote: post #104
jimnotgym wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK you couldn't claim $400k through small-claims, it is limited to £10k. Is it that high in the US? You also can't get 2x damages, or a fast process!

Small claims is definitely less than $400k. In Texas the limit is $20k. It probably doesn't really matter though. Your contact with Stripe probably requires arbitration but that isn't necessarily a bad thing either. Check out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31567673

Do you still technically have a contract with Stripe after they've suspended access to your funds?

I'd assume yes, but it seems weird to have a contract still in force with a company who refuses to do business with you...

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

#170

Post by heliodor »

jcollins1991 wrote: post #20

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 aft…

My guess is that they're measured in replies per hour instead of in resolutions per month.

From my past experiences, it's clear they don't even bother to understand what I wrote. Reading comprehension is zero, which seems to indicate a strong disincentive to actually comprehending and helping.

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