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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]

#201

Post by maeil »

rmsaksida wrote: post #197
maeil wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just had a look, looks like you need to first get a physical Wise card in order to get a virtual one (not the case for Revolut), and it's only available in a rather limited number of countries.

https://wise.com/help/articles/5O9VNQR4wt3iXwV0Dmm6zB/how-do...

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

#202

Post by anakaine »

mint2 wrote: post #62
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, this has been a thing for a while. As a T-Mobile customer, at one point, it eventually took me to put a request via Twitter to get the matter resolved in 20 minutes as opposed to previously spending hours on the phone with tech support ( with no results to show for it ). It is, quite frankly, infuriating; especially for a telecom. edit: I genuinely do not get why it took Twitter referral in my case either ( it…

The reason it take a Twitter referral is that the phone reps usually are “subcontractors” that aren’t allowed to do anything. There’s a good chance they have to meet absurd metrics in order not to get fired. This linked article explains why in many cases a companies phone support can’t do much and is also mistreated. https://www.propublica.org/article/meet-the-customer-service...

Clearly one of those metrics isn't low wait times. Another is certainly not 99.9% case resolution or escalation.

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

#203

Post by refurb »

maeil wrote: post #201
rmsaksida wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Just had a look, looks like you need to first get a physical Wise card in order to get a virtual one (not the case for Revolut), and it's only available in a rather limited number of countries. https://wise.com/help/articles/5O9VNQR4wt3iXwV0Dmm6zB/how-do...

Depends on the country you’re account is in. I got virtual cards before ever ordering the physical card.

But keep in mind it’s a bank debit card (charge immediately comes off your balance), not a credit card.

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

#204

Post by csomar »

jaredsohn wrote: post #119
james_pm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter Blue Plus - boosts your @ messages sent to verified companies to shame them more effectively.

Based on what you replied to, I thought you were going to say that Twitter Blue Plus allows you to suppress posts written about your company

Elon musk was tweeting the other day about a premium option to "nuke" the tweets you dislike. The nuke will be delivered with a SpaceX rocket.

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

#205

Post by whoosh3 »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #13
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…

Sadly, this has been a thing for a while. As a T-Mobile customer, at one point, it eventually took me to put a request via Twitter to get the matter resolved in 20 minutes as opposed to previously spending hours on the phone with tech support ( with no results to show for it ). It is, quite frankly, infuriating; especially for a telecom. edit: I genuinely do not get why it took Twitter referral in my case either ( it…

I share your frustration with T-Mobile. Now, even the Twitter reps are outsourced.

The basic chat reps TForce. If you @TForce on Twitter it's usually quick and easy. IIRC, those reps are domestic.

Porting numbers is a little complex but doable by regular reps.

Source: Used to do tech support at T-Mobile.

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

#206

Post by bob_theslob646 »

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.

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

May you share a source for where you heard this information?

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

#207

Post by puntofisso »

What scares me is that there's very little in terms of user rights, and where entire businesses depend on it, things might get very bad very quickly.

It's not just Stripe by the way: I had my own issue with PayPal (luckily, not very serious as I only had $8 in the account): https://puntofisso.medium.com/paypal-closed-my-account-with-.... And, famously here in the UK, Richard Davey had the same with a high street bank, HSBC: https://medium.com/@photonstorm/hsbc-is-killing-my-business-....

Most of these incidents are caused by entirely misplaced anti-fraud regulation, which is based on assumptions that come from a different era in which transaction were mostly national, mostly predictable, mostly referring to a set of easy-to-understand products and services.

I wonder if what we need is to advocate for new policies and regulations with our respective national legislators.

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

#208

Post by rchaud »

> It took a random Stripe employee to get an email from @dang and post on HN in order to get this issue resolved.

Most Stripe stories I've seen on HN seem like customer support requests rather than links. Perhaps they should acquire Hacker News and position it as a premium support channel, where you can reach actual employees instead of dealing with the sphinx-like inscrutability of rank and file CSR responses.

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

#209

Post by kcartlidge »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #194
kcartlidge wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 beh…

You're right in it not being a realistic solution. It's a shame, but I'm not naive.

Your main comment though is about requiring 100% fixes before scaling. I specifically said "until they've ironed out *enough* issues that they can release the tap and scale a little bit more" which is not the same thing, so I'm not actually advocating what is implied. I suspect I'm closer to what you yourself are saying in that argument than perhaps I made clear (sorry).

With that said, I see all this as part of a larger problem. The examples of YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook come to mind. They are terrible at moderation, and the reason is that the default approach is to automate these aspects due to the scale involved.

And I think that's wrong for the same reason as my original comment - if you cannot moderate at scale you shouldn't scale. The annoying thing is that they can moderate at scale, but to do that they would need to employ more humans. Which they won't do.

An awful lot of what is wrong in tech is down to the willingness to scale purely by automation and not with humans, consequences be damned.

Again, though, I'm not naive about the chances of it ever being otherwise.

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

#210

Post by zackmorris »

chihuahua wrote: post #157
zackmorris wrote: post #94

I wish there was an online proxy service that acted as a mediator between consumers and vendors. Instead of signing up with Stripe, PayPal, Google, etc directly, we'd sign up with the proxy and pay a small fee (maybe 1/4%) to handle any disputes. That way if/when grievances get ignored, the proxy could do things like withhold payment from the other customers until the situation gets resolved. Ideally, no payment woul…

And what happens when this proxy gets hit with the inevitable torrent of fraud attempts? Either it pretends there is no fraud and gets wiped out. Or it attempts to detect fraud, and responds by freezing accounts etc. Sometimes there are false positives. Now we're back to square 1.

I guess I have a blind spot around subterfuge, so I honestly don't really know all of the ways that fraud could occur.

But I think stuff like materiality comes into play. If 99% of customers are honest but 1% cheat, then even a high amount of fraud from bad players may not affect the bottom line much. The fee would probably be something like 3-4 times expenses to make up for losses like that.

Also the proxy would be in addition to the vendor's fraud checks.

In this scenario, maybe the $400k vendor freeze happens towards the end of the month, and the proxy stops its monthly payment from the other customers until it's resolved. So the ticket gets top priority at the vendor and they either release the funds or give the proxy evidence of fraud.

The big risk there might be getting tied up in court so all payments freeze. So maybe the proxy would withhold a percentage instead of the whole. There's probably math for managing that risk. Writing this out, it feels like people have been down this road, so there's probably a term for this whole evolution, maybe escrow or something.

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