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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]

#191

Post by moloch-hai »

gamblor956 wrote: post #143
cj wrote: post #78

This reminds me of an issue my sister is having with Etsy. She runs an Etsy store with $1-2 million in annual sales, and her store keeps getting taken down by Etsy's automated copyright infringement system -- which keeps getting triggered by someone submitting fraudulent copyright claims and then immediately asking her to pay $5k/month in exchange for the person to stop submitting the infringement claims (in other wo…

That is extortion. Your sister should contact the FBI, as it is unlikely that she is the scammers' only target, and this crime likely crosses state (or international) borders.

If it crosses international borders (probably) the FBI is stopped.

Actually the amounts cited are well below the FBI's interest threshold in any case.

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

#192

Post by moloch-hai »

auggierose wrote: post #40

It seems to me Stripe et al. use social media as a filter: If somebody posts their complaints here in the open, it is much more likely not to be their fault / due to shady stuff, but instead probably Stripe's fault. If instead you contact them through normal channels, then they don't have this filter, and will need to spend much more resources on cases where Stripe got it right in the first place. I don't like it, bu…

Main problem is that companies not guilty of cutting off communication and, in effect, stealing from customers, get no favorable publicity.

When these happen, we should see posts from people using competitors saying, "we have problems at Z with frequency X that get resolved in time Y".

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

#193

Post by gamblor956 »

moloch-hai wrote: post #191
gamblor956 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is extortion. Your sister should contact the FBI, as it is unlikely that she is the scammers' only target, and this crime likely crosses state (or international) borders.

If it crosses international borders (probably) the FBI is stopped. Actually the amounts cited are well below the FBI's interest threshold in any case.

No, the FBI is not precluded from investigating cross-border crimes. They just have to work with their foreign counterparts on the investigation.

And the amounts cited are not below the FBI's interest threshold; the whole point of my comment is that their are probably other victims, which makes this a larger crime than just the OP's system and probably involves sophisticated or organized criminals. This makes it exactly the kind of crime the FBI loves to investigate.

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

#194

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

kcartlidge wrote: post #161
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 scal…

Your argument basically boils down to "companies shouldn't be greedy", so I'm going to have to throw it onto the "not a realistic solution" bucket. But I also don't believe the moral lines are as clear cut as you would like to make them.

The issue is that the vast majority of users receive excellent service, at a historically extremely low cost. The problems always arise at these edge cases where legitimate human behavior is often indistinguishable from malicious behavior without further information. But if a company decides to go with the solution of "we're not going to scale unless we have 100% of all these edge cases covered", that company would long be out of business from competition who is able to offer a lower priced product with better support for 99.9% of users.

This type of problem is essentially the same as classic externality issues, and after reading some of the other responses to my comment, I think the only way this can be solved is with government intervention requiring some level of responsiveness so that there is a level playing field for all companies.

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

#195

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

randomdata wrote: post #190
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will admit I am mildly concerned I am being willfully misunderstood, which goes against the spirit of HN conversations. I would not characterize me as happy. My issue was resolved, but that issue explicitly could and should have been resolved earlier ( as it clearly could have been ) without the need to of intermediaries in the form of Twitter. And what happens to all those poor folks, who were banned from Twitter?…

> I would not characterize me as happy. It would be irrational to pay for a service you are unhappy with. Perhaps you mean you are are "unhappy" in the same way that one is "unhappy" to have a $5 BigMac over a $50 steak? Which is to say that the BigMac is good for the price, even if not the best food imaginable. > If I had 20 providers to choose from, somehow I do not think we would have this conversation. Just about…

Hmm. No, but at least now I can understand the perspective you seem to be speaking from, which partially explains the disconnect between how we perceive the world. You seem to think I talk about 'hardware support', whereas I am talking something T-Mobile is taking money for ( and that includes.. you know, connecting my call to people I call, routing text messages and data where they belong and respond to appropriate customer queries ). I would like to point out that 'moving number from one provider to the other' shouldn't even need to qualify as customer service, but onboarding, which the company should be doing everything to make sure is as seamless as possible.

I am "unhappy" because my "choice" in the matter of choosing a provider is limited to 3 major competitors in US. I provide myself with the 'support' you seem to suggest. This is explicitly not what we talked about or even a reasonable interpretation of my original complaint. I am 'unhappy', because I buy Big Mac at McDonalds, but upon purchase I am told to go that other store across the street to complete the purchase. How is that reasonable?

Are we? I am not even being difficult here. How is transferring number from one provider to another count as somehow separate 'phone support' and not just some basic initial setup?

Because when I sell Big Macs, I do not dare to tell people that pay me to go to the store across the street for self-assembly or help with Big Mac assembly. Like fuck man. I sincerely hope you are trolling me now and I am falling for it, because the alternative is that people have been actually convinced that this is an acceptable state of affairs.

edit:

I already am. That is the point. I purchased a Big Mac and not separate bun combo with an asterisk stating some assembly required. I do not understand how this is somehow not a clear concept.

edit2: In fact, I got a Big Mac with a contract that includes a phone number to call when I need McDonald's help dealing with that Big Mac.

edit3:

I feel obligated to ask now. What, exactly, is steak in this analogy?

edit4:

You actually got me riled up. Impressive.

From your perspective, should all customer inquiries be outsourced to social media to save businesses some dough?

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

#196

Post by maeil »

ornornor wrote: post #166
jlokier wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

I'd love to move away from Revolut but neither of those options seem to offer a virtual credit card which is my main use case. Online purchases in US, EUR, GBP etc without having to worry about exchange fees or supported payment methods.

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

#197

Post by rmsaksida »

maeil wrote: post #196
ornornor wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

I'd love to move away from Revolut but neither of those options seem to offer a virtual credit card which is my main use case. Online purchases in US, EUR, GBP etc without having to worry about exchange fees or supported payment methods.

Wise does offer virtual cards as well as a physical one.

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

#198

Post by randomdata »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #195
randomdata wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would not characterize me as happy. It would be irrational to pay for a service you are unhappy with. Perhaps you mean you are are "unhappy" in the same way that one is "unhappy" to have a $5 BigMac over a $50 steak? Which is to say that the BigMac is good for the price, even if not the best food imaginable. > If I had 20 providers to choose from, somehow I do not think we would have this conversation. Just about…

Hmm. No, but at least now I can understand the perspective you seem to be speaking from, which partially explains the disconnect between how we perceive the world. You seem to think I talk about 'hardware support', whereas I am talking something T-Mobile is taking money for ( and that includes.. you know, connecting my call to people I call, routing text messages and data where they belong and respond to appropriate…

> From your perspective, should all customer inquiries be outsourced to social media to save businesses some dough?

"Should" requires applying emotion and you cannot participate in a good faith discussion if you bring in emotions.

All we can discuss is what is. If what you are trying to ask is: "Do some businesses only accept inquiries by social media?" I don't know for sure, but expect it happens. I know for certain that there are businesses which do not accept phone calls. There are even more businesses that do not accept inquiries by telegraph. Do any businesses accept inquiries by telegraph?

Like I said, businesses will put the most effort into accommodating the majority of customers where they are found. If that's social media, then social media is where the most effort will be made. Indeed, it stands to reason that a business that is primarily in the business of providing internet service for pocket computers used to access social media will find most of their customers congregating on social media. Other businesses might find that the customers are most likely to come in person. A retirement community might even find that the phone is where the people are. Certainly there is no universal medium here. Each business will be different.

That doesn't mean there won't be some best effort attempts to support customers on the fringes, but there is only so much time in the day and if you lose the customers on the fringes... Oh well? You will never win them all anyway.

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

#199

Post by SpelingBeeChamp »

yamtaddle wrote: post #101
csmpltn wrote: post #38

Why not file a police report for the theft of 400k USD?

I've seen local law enforcement not bother to investigate high-five- to low-six-figures of thefts from break-ins at multiple offices over a couple-week span by a single crew whose van was caught on camera complete with license plates at more than one of the offices. The cops didn't care. This was not in one of the cities that allegedly isn't prosecuting crimes anymore, and was before any of that or the defund movemen…

> I've seen local law enforcement not bother to investigate high-five- to low-six-figures of thefts from break-ins at multiple offices over a couple-week span by a single crew whose van was caught on camera complete with license plates at more than one of the offices. The cops didn't care.

I am a reporter and I cover law enforcement & crime. Are you willing to provide more information about this?

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

#200

Post by tentacleuno »

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…

I've had experiences with Revolut, too. I only use them for their stocks feature, in which I have shares. Once they're sold, I'll move all the money over to Free trade (which is honestly way better IMO). So, that, along with having a handy backup debit card handy, should I have to max out the ATM limit on my other two cards :-)
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