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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]

#31

Post by honoraryfly »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #17
ghoomketu wrote: post #11

> Thanks to @dang for getting a Stripe employee to respond and he was finally able to resolve the issue for me. I think it's time to add another HN tab called Complaints where we can post complaints for the common culprits like Google, Stripe, Pinboard, etc. It sounds backwards but the amount of people HN has helped over years it must add to millions of dollars to priceless things like getting back your email and pho…

Have we ever seen a complaint for Pinboard?

Yes, often. It's yet another HN-celebrated startup that turned into a neglected pile of crap:

Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (Dec '22 edition)? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34062802

Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (November '22 edition) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33398395

Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (August '22 edition)? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32580491

etc.

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

#32

Post by bornfreddy »

throwawayapples wrote: post #10

Are there any real alternatives to Stripe? Obviously Adyen if you're in EU, PayPal/Braintree, etc, but Stripe is really the big kahuna. What about building your own with Authorize.net? Are there any old-school gateways like that left out there that are still independent? (can one do payments in the 10-100$ USD range on the blockchain? What if you don't want to go through an exchange?)

> (can one do payments in the 10-100$ USD range on the blockchain? What if you don't want to go through an exchange?)

Yes, there are quite a few of them. For smaller sums KYC is usually not needed. No exchange needed either - as a customer you just send crypto to the payment address they give you, and as a merchant you receive your funds (minus some fee) in either fiat or crypto. No exchange needed in either case. As a merchant you obviously need to do KYC regardless of the amount received.

I know of Bitpay and ForumPay, but there are others too.

EDIT: depending on the currency the blockchain fees can be very low (or very high), so it pays to do your homework.

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

#33

Post by ryandrake »

I guess the question I'm left with is: Are you going to continue using Stripe? Because if so, then it looks like nobody learned anything and the business has little reason to change, having not even lost the unfairly-treated customer over it.

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

#34

Post by eeemmmooo »

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…

Yeah I agree. There wasn't much more information for me to provide there that would be helpful. I pretty much had the same conversation the whole time. I explained the issue. They reached out (supposedly) to the review team who just told them it's under review. They asked me to upload the same invoices again. Then said they'll let me know. It just seemed like no one in that chain was able to actually do anything.

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

#35

Post by tsukikage »

djbebs wrote: post #4
eeemmmooo wrote: post #2

Nov 28: Cyber Monday my business had a sale that spiked our revenue on that day. I believe this is what kicked off this whole thing. I believe that Stripe has automated systems in place to put accounts into review when something like this happens. I have no problem with that, and understand there are anti money laundering laws that they need to abide by. Nov. 29: I received an email from Stripe that 6 of our accounts…

Will you be moving away from stripe after this?

Where could they move to that is any better? HN has regular posts like these for all the major payment processors.

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

#36

Post by looping__lui »

sdwr wrote: post #25
honoraryfly wrote: post #6

Did they give any explanation of exactly why they had temporarily stolen your $400,000? That's what would worry me the most after it's been resolved, just how arbitrary and opaque and uncommunicative their whole process is. I wonder how many other people they've screwed over with this terrible approach to customer service. We'll probably never know, it's not something they're likely to be transparent about. I'm very…

I'm guessing the risk on Stripe's side is that OP (or someone else!) is using a bunch of stolen credit cards to make purchases. If there are a lot of chargebacks, Stripe's on the hook for that.

High-risk businesses have like 14 day payout period, no? So what’s the risk?

I think like 5+ years back chargebacks and credit card fraud was like 0.5% or less for us…

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

#37

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

d883kd8 wrote: post #26
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…

There's this other thing where instead of posting your Complaint to HN you can file your Complaint in a court of law, it's kind of like an analog version of Zendesk that every company has to use.

And it takes a thousand times as long and infinitely more money than posting a complaint online.

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

#39

Post by intrasight »

throwawayapples wrote: post #10

Are there any real alternatives to Stripe? Obviously Adyen if you're in EU, PayPal/Braintree, etc, but Stripe is really the big kahuna. What about building your own with Authorize.net? Are there any old-school gateways like that left out there that are still independent? (can one do payments in the 10-100$ USD range on the blockchain? What if you don't want to go through an exchange?)

I've been using Authorize.net for years. Can't imaging using some service that can hold my money hostage. While Authorize.net is "old-school", it is flexible and you are in control. Remind me again why people use Stripe?

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

#40

Post by auggierose »

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, but until there is a law against it or customers vote with their feet, seems to be a valid business strategy.

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