Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers • Hacker News Board

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#161

Post by KomoD » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 11:47 AM UTC

lucas_adlp wrote: post #66

Nathanael_M wrote: post #14

Out of curiosity, can you be more specific about what you sell? Consumer electronics like vapes or consumer electronics like Alibaba hoverboards or consumer electronics like a quality, entry level set of computer speakers? Stripe seems to be pretty sensitive towards certain industries and I'd like to see if this holds true here.

I cannot be super specific due to the nature of business strategy. If I share accurate info about what and how we sell things, It's very easy for opportunists and competitors to undertake us in this specific project while our processing solution is down temporarily. What I will say though, is that we're not speaking vapes or anything borderline, more like kitchen and household appliances, and so on.

> I cannot be super specific due to the nature of business strategy.

This is such a lie

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#162

Post by iLoveOncall » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 12:02 PM UTC

mamidon wrote: post #147

iLoveOncall wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is heavy confirmation bias. You look at the 2-3 bad stories posted on HN every month but ignore the hundreds of thousands of companies using Stripe that don't have any issue.

The issue isn't that stripe occasionally messes up. It's that apparently you can't get a human on the phone empowered to fix things. Having your company destroyed because an automated system flagged it is an unacceptable risk. With AWS, I can pay for a support contact and be confident my company won't blow up. Stripe? Google? Not so sure

This is the exact same case of confirmation bias.

You've read 5 stories saying it's hard to contact support at Stripe, and chose to ignore the fact that hundreds of thousands have NOT raised this problem.

On top of that, if you follow the development of those stories, it usually becomes apparent that the account was restricted for a very good reason.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#163

Post by iLoveOncall » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 12:07 PM UTC

wolongong942 wrote: post #154

iLoveOncall wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is heavy confirmation bias. You look at the 2-3 bad stories posted on HN every month but ignore the hundreds of thousands of companies using Stripe that don't have any issue.

When the bad story is somebody losing an amount equal to your life savings the 100s of success stories don't seem as important.

150K is only 0.00003% of the 350 billions that Stripe processed in 2020 (it's probably a lot more for 2022, like a trillion).

Those stories are always one-sided. It's very easy to believe that those 150K are indeed fraudulent, especially when the OP is so elusive.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#164

Post by danzig13 » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 12:07 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #75

lucas_adlp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've sent out products to all the customers that have paid. Stripe is now "considering" refunding all these customers, while holding 150k of our generated revenue. Due to the products being bought and shipped, (and not even factoring in marketing costs) this easily equates to a total net loss of 250k for our business.

That's not how you count a loss. Your loss is the product you bought (not sold) and the time and effort spent on sending it, as well as possible marketing expense to get it sold. You don't recognize the revenue until the money is in the bank, especially not if you have a dispute with your payment service provider otherwise you are creating yet another problem for yourself, the taxman will want his due even though you…

Agree that I have no idea how this person is calculating their loss at 100k over their revenue. However, generally as in GAAP, you would recognize revenue on shipment or when a service is rendered because that would be the period in which the revenue was accrued. For example, most companies that sell on terms like NET 30 will invoice AND recognize revenue on shipment; they would not wait until payment is received on the invoice. That is why there are [contra asset]/expense accounts relating to bad debt.

Waiting until funds hit your bank account is cash basis accounting and even in that case, I am not sure how having a third party like Stripe holding the money affects things.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#165

Post by danaris » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #131

jerryjappinen wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you had $100k in the bank before you started this. You buy the product and ship it, costing you $75k. Your balance is now at $25k. You expect revenue of $150k from customers. This would take your balance to $175k with net profit of $75k. But Stripe refunds the customers, and the revenue never comes. Your net loss (excluding labor, marketing etc.) is now either $75k (the money that is no longer in your accou…

Even that isn't right: if the original balance was $100k the loss can never be larger than that. You still have 25K in the bank so the loss is $75k, any other interpretation should not be labelled a loss, at best they are misguided expectations.

The 150k is a "loss" in the same way that the movie industry "lost" $500 million (or whatever it is that they claimed) to piracy: revenue that they think they should have gotten, but didn't.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#166

Post by dismantlethesun » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 1:16 PM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #162

mamidon wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't that stripe occasionally messes up. It's that apparently you can't get a human on the phone empowered to fix things. Having your company destroyed because an automated system flagged it is an unacceptable risk. With AWS, I can pay for a support contact and be confident my company won't blow up. Stripe? Google? Not so sure

This is the exact same case of confirmation bias. You've read 5 stories saying it's hard to contact support at Stripe, and chose to ignore the fact that hundreds of thousands have NOT raised this problem. On top of that, if you follow the development of those stories, it usually becomes apparent that the account was restricted for a very good reason.

In fraud and account closure cases, pretty much all businesses are hard to contact.

Its frustrating. While I understand, businesses do not want to give hints to scammers, there should be some way for a person to get details. For small businesses, being given the silent treatment while their livelihoods are at stake feels like bullying.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#167

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 1:17 PM UTC

danaris wrote: post #165

jacquesm wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even that isn't right: if the original balance was $100k the loss can never be larger than that. You still have 25K in the bank so the loss is $75k, any other interpretation should not be labelled a loss, at best they are misguided expectations.

The 150k is a "loss" in the same way that the movie industry "lost" $500 million (or whatever it is that they claimed) to piracy: revenue that they think they should have gotten, but didn't.

Precisely.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#168

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 1:18 PM UTC

danzig13 wrote: post #164

jacquesm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how you count a loss. Your loss is the product you bought (not sold) and the time and effort spent on sending it, as well as possible marketing expense to get it sold. You don't recognize the revenue until the money is in the bank, especially not if you have a dispute with your payment service provider otherwise you are creating yet another problem for yourself, the taxman will want his due even though you…

Agree that I have no idea how this person is calculating their loss at 100k over their revenue. However, generally as in GAAP, you would recognize revenue on shipment or when a service is rendered because that would be the period in which the revenue was accrued. For example, most companies that sell on terms like NET 30 will invoice AND recognize revenue on shipment; they would not wait until payment is received on…

Yes, you can do this. But in the case of the OP recognizing the revenue prior to receiving the payment makes them liable for the taxes on that revenue and that probably isn't a very clever thing to do.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#169

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 1:24 PM UTC

omeid2 wrote: post #160

jacquesm wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to all of the information the OP has given they are in this case. If you have evidence to the contrary I'm all open to it but it does not apply here unless you have information that contradicts the OP in a believable way. Also: note that Stripe has all kinds of technical countermeasures in place to detect money laundering and other terms violations and it may well be that everything looks totally above boar…

The evidence in the services that Stripe provide, they do not handle taxes for you. They act as a payment gateway provider with some software add-ons.

Yes, so? That doens't mean that Stripe isn't the merchant of record. All that matters is whose name shows up on the credit card statement. If that's Stripe - as it usually is because it is their merchant account - then that's Stripe. Bring your own merchant account and it will be your name that shows up. Stripe can be IPSP and PGP depending on the circumstances and the story the OP told here strongly indicates that they are using Stripe as an IPSP.

The difference between a payment service provider and a payment gateway is substantial, in the first case you likely won't ever see the customers card details other than what is required for shipping, in the second you will have all of the data including CVV and expiry and you will have to deal with the associated overhead.

Re: Stripe is about to refund €147k worth of payments to my all of my customers

#170

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 1:28 PM UTC

dx034 wrote: post #157

jacquesm wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but evil old school bank likely would not process 'card not present' transactions at all.

Of course they do. Their APIs are just way worse and documentation can be really bad as you have to connect to decades-old systems. But once it's up and running they will honor their agreement.

I've had a front row seat to many occasions where they did not honor their agreement. Really, e-commerce is so much easier nowadays mainly because you no longer have to deal with banks for the basics. Other than creating your bank account (which, at the moment can take anywhere from three to six months depending on which bank you choose where I live).