Stripe has been pretty bad for us lately. Downtime yes, but also slashed our corporate card limits with no explanation and refused to restore them despite our bank writing letters supporting our position. We've been with them for 10 years and their customer service is atrocious on this position, which is unfortunate since historically it's been quite good. We went through the arduous process of switching our corporat…
Sorry for the issues here—could you email me at edwin@stripe.com?
Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled
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Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's pretty funny in hindsight. > If/when we switch, we'll probably just go to a bare bones payment processor that is much cheaper than Stripe with less support. Also what we're considering right about now
Even I can see the humor in it. You are right! I hate to switch off Stripe, but the premium I'm paying is theoretically for better support and developer-friendly actions. I'm not getting that right now, so... why am I paying a premium? Years ago their customer service slashed our rates because of our increased volume and even pc himself reached out to me about a technical matter (and the company was not small). Over…
When I mention the experience to friends, they joke that I have Stockholm Syndrome; to want to continue pursuing them, despite their complete disregard.
Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even I can see the humor in it. You are right! I hate to switch off Stripe, but the premium I'm paying is theoretically for better support and developer-friendly actions. I'm not getting that right now, so... why am I paying a premium? Years ago their customer service slashed our rates because of our increased volume and even pc himself reached out to me about a technical matter (and the company was not small). Over…
Who are you looking at switching to? I'm also starting to evaluate alternatives to Stripe.
Humorously enough we needed a sales tax solution, and Stripe Tax is vastly outgunned by its competitors, possibly leading to the layoffs in its department. It is a significantly inferior product to Avalara, which is the leading product in the space.
Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is complaining on HN necessary to get proper customer support?
Because otherwise you have no leverage. If you go through proper channels your request for help will sit rotting in a queue until someone decides to pick up the ticket. If you complain loudly and publicly in a popular forum, everyone’s opinion of the company will degrade the longer your cries go visibly unanswered, so it requires immediate attention. Your request gets elevated to critical.
Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled
#65By the way, Stripe responses to BBB complaints are hilarious [1]. Most of the ones I read close with an identical snippet of text dismissing the claim as "baseless", even when they admit they made a mistake. It's astonishingly inept and says a lot about the attitude toward the customer.
[1] https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/san-francisco/profile/payment-proc...
Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even I can see the humor in it. You are right! I hate to switch off Stripe, but the premium I'm paying is theoretically for better support and developer-friendly actions. I'm not getting that right now, so... why am I paying a premium? Years ago their customer service slashed our rates because of our increased volume and even pc himself reached out to me about a technical matter (and the company was not small). Over…
Anecdotally: I've been looking to get answers from Stripe, about fees-related questions that either make my proposed use viable or unviable, and I've received nothing but copied & pasted email replies, a week+ later (or not at all), which essentially ignore what I've asked. Incredibly frustrating. When I mention the experience to friends, they joke that I have Stockholm Syndrome; to want to continue pursuing them, de…
About a year later, we hit revenue targets ABC, I waited a month (just for systems to catch up) and emailed them. We had a good discussion about a rate cut and they knocked their fees down as they promised.
I emailed in 3-4 years after that and asked for a rate cut as our revenues had gone up by about 10x, and they said they could not, but provided explanations on why because of high international processing, high AMEX/Discover processing, etc. Totally cool, I understood that and appreciated the detailed email. Wasn't disappointed at all.
I tried back a year or so later when our revenues shot up but got the same message more or less, but still personalized. Again, I had to try, but also, not unhappy.
And since all of those excellent customer service responses - many of which did not go my way, which is not how I rate interactions - it's been awful. The corporate card team refuses to answer questions or even apologize for their insane limit cuts. They presumably are hiding behind bullshit KYC/AML justifications for their actions or protecting their algorithmic decisions in order to provide us zero actionable customer support with no personalization. It's embarrassing.
Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled
#67Switched to Paddle earlier this year for other reasons, glad I'm not affected by this. Paddle is not as pleasant to work with as Stripe from a dev perspective but it also handles so much more that what I need to integrate is tiny compared to Stripe.
Looks expensive, though. 5% + 50¢
For one thing Paddle is a merchant of record so it's more like "outsource your entire payment system including all the processing of different payment methods and the global tax admin". For a lot of businesses, particularly smaller ones with international sales, that is going to be an attractive option compared to services like Stripe even at this price point.
For another thing Stripe has introduced so many extras that bump up their cut now that some types of business will end up paying quite a bit more than the analogous headline rate. So even if it were an apples to apples comparison the difference on the bottom line still wouldn't be as wide as it might first appear for those merchants.
Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled
#68Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled
#69Re: Stripe down for 4 hours (and counting) for all those with Stripe Tax enabled
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks expensive, though. 5% + 50¢
It costs real money to provide real support. For those CTOs in the back: YOU NEED TO PAY REAL MONEY TO GET REAL SERVICE.
So yes, CTO's should "pay real money to get real support," but that only makes sense if the costs don't scale with every dollar of revenue.
A 5% fee is basically impossible to pay for anything that's not software (90%+) margins. Ecommerce, for example, has about 5%-10% net margins. 2%, net, extra payment processing fees is huge.