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Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled

status.stripe.com

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Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled

#181

Post by DoughnutHole »

bcgraham wrote: post #172
rich_sasha wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like with a number of the high-growth startups, the client isn't really the client. The real client is the VC who writes cheques and provides validation in increasing valuations. The "regular clients" are a raw material, to be converted into the service provided to VC. Clearly, in the early days, you desperately need "regular clients" to prove yourself to the "VC clients". But eventually you earned your stri…

Isn’t it right and proper for management to serve ownership?

The issue isn't about what's "right and proper" - it's a risky decision to do business with a company with this business model. Even if it's not "wrong" it's better value for a business to work with other businesses that treat them as a valued customer and not as replaceable fodder to fund an unsustainable valuation.

If Stripe want to sacrifice customer experience to chase a higher valuation that's their prerogative. But their current investors better hope they can cut and run before the core business substantially declines.

Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled

#182

Post by RHSeeger »

bcgraham wrote: post #172
rich_sasha wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like with a number of the high-growth startups, the client isn't really the client. The real client is the VC who writes cheques and provides validation in increasing valuations. The "regular clients" are a raw material, to be converted into the service provided to VC. Clearly, in the early days, you desperately need "regular clients" to prove yourself to the "VC clients". But eventually you earned your stri…

Isn’t it right and proper for management to serve ownership?

In much the same way that the cashier at McDonalds does what the manager instructs them too, yes. But if the goal of the manager is to get what they want at the expense of the customer, then the restaurant should fail. The same holds true with other businesses; the management serves the ownership, but the ownership should want the business to make the customers happy.

Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled

#183

Post by bfuller »

bcgraham wrote: post #172
rich_sasha wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like with a number of the high-growth startups, the client isn't really the client. The real client is the VC who writes cheques and provides validation in increasing valuations. The "regular clients" are a raw material, to be converted into the service provided to VC. Clearly, in the early days, you desperately need "regular clients" to prove yourself to the "VC clients". But eventually you earned your stri…

Isn’t it right and proper for management to serve ownership?

In a corporate structure, yes I would say so. Whether that is the best organizational method is another debate for another thread.

Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled

#184

Post by etiennebausson »

seb1204 wrote: post #153
lotsofpulp wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all problems require software engineers. Just having someone to filter the appropriate problem to the appropriate person is sufficient. For example, > but also slashed our corporate card limits with no explanation and refused to restore them despite our bank writing letters supporting our position. Even a response stating “we do not have the capacity to resolve your issue” is acceptable. Getting black holed or wa…

While I agree with your comment I'm not sure how I would feel receiving such a message as a paying customer.

Would you feel better being passed around for hours, with the same result? If they can't solve the issue, I would rather know it early and move on.

Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled

#185

Post by mtlynch »

thiscatis wrote: post #39
edwinwee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the issues here—could you email me at edwin@stripe.com?

We did that last time you offered and never heard back.

I've had the same experience with Edwin. When I published an article critical of Stripe that reached the front page of HN,[0] he was very helpful and set up a direct phone call for us to talk. Edwin said many times on the call that if I ever ran into a situation where I seemed to be getting the runaround from Stripe support, I could contact him to get things unstuck.

A month later, I ran into an issue where the Stripe API contradicted the API documentation. I contacted support, and support told me that it's intended behavior for the API to violate its own documentation. I emailed Edwin since that seemed like the exact scenario he volunteered to help with, and he didn't respond. I followed up a week later, and he didn't respond.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22936818

Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled

#186

Post by wswope »

edwinwee wrote: post #79
AussieWog93 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Stripe being unavailable for even a single user is very concerning for us And yet when my website's card payments were abruptly disabled because some opaque ML algorithm decided one of my transactions was fraudulent (in spite of the customer's own insistence that it was genuine), you wouldn't even respond to my emails. If you want a no-bullshit payment processor that actually gives a fuck about their customers, try…

Hm, we respond to emails, so I wonder what broke here. If you're still interested in narrowing down what happened to that transaction, could you email me at edwin@stripe.com?

> we respond to emails

Edwin, I’ve seen dozens of claims of Stripe simply ignoring complaints to support@stripe.com, a few in this very thread.

You even fess up to dropping one personally in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32558671

This is totally par for the course for Stripe - how on earth can you say that quote in good faith?

Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled

#187

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #90
GingerMidas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From @koopajah on discord: "We don't really drop nines if one specific feature is having issues". Pretty convenient payment processing is just a "feature" of a payment infrastructure SaaS

In a OKR culture, the way to make your KR good is to add lots of useless and very simple microservices, which are always up, so the overall metric is 100%.

If your KRs are the uptimes of your simple microservices, you're not in an OKR culture.

Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled

#189

Post by moneywoes »

upupandup wrote: post #80

Ever since patio11 pushed that dubious Stripe Atlas program that resulted in far more headache than worth (turns out Delaware is the crappiest state to incorporate) my trust in Stripe going downhill. I think what really did it was that it took somebody a while back to post on HN about issues with Stripe regarding tax that jepordized his business to get the situation fixed. I don't know but lately it seems like so muc…

Is Wyoming better in that respect?

Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled

#190

Post by papito »

bcgraham wrote: post #172
rich_sasha wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like with a number of the high-growth startups, the client isn't really the client. The real client is the VC who writes cheques and provides validation in increasing valuations. The "regular clients" are a raw material, to be converted into the service provided to VC. Clearly, in the early days, you desperately need "regular clients" to prove yourself to the "VC clients". But eventually you earned your stri…

Isn’t it right and proper for management to serve ownership?

No, the right and proper management is to grow a business and make it sustainable and profitable long-term.

Your description is exactly how Capitalism goes late stage. Use the profits from the committed work and effort of employees to "buy back" stocks, depriving the company of reinvestments and growth. Jack up the share price, therefore increasing the lauded "shareholder value". Keep going until only a husk of the company is left, and peace out with walkaway money.

This is all great, for those with platinum parachutes and those that know what's going on. These are vulture capitalists, but they infiltrate a company first and then eat away at it from the inside.

This is how America lost GE and Boeing. They served "ownership" very well however.

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