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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]

#81

Post by unsupp0rted »

jmacd wrote: post #70

I used to work at one of the big customer service platform vendors. We had some really, really, useful ranking capabilities that would prioritize certain customers based on the data held in a CRM. It was a bit of a pet project of mine. The idea was to calculate weights for customer importance (this can be account size, potential future opportunity size, social media following, tenure, etc) and severity of the problem…

A person with low HN Karma and no obvious social media presence can do a lot of damage to Stripe’s reputation on HN. Or at least a dozen such people in succession can (which is exactly what we got here in recent years).

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

#82

Post by dylan604 »

csmpltn wrote: post #38

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

in what jurisdiction would you file that police report? if you are not in the same town as their offices, where are the local police going to go to "investigate"?

this is clearly a matter across state lines, so it's an FBI issue. at least get your LEA correct when making non-sense posts like this. it's the least you could do. I don't even know if FBI is the correct agency either though, so there's that bit of info from some rando on the interwebs

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

#83

Post by phphphphp »

jmacd wrote: post #70

I used to work at one of the big customer service platform vendors. We had some really, really, useful ranking capabilities that would prioritize certain customers based on the data held in a CRM. It was a bit of a pet project of mine. The idea was to calculate weights for customer importance (this can be account size, potential future opportunity size, social media following, tenure, etc) and severity of the problem…

That’s quite common functionality nowadays but generally if you’re dealing with valuable enterprise relationships that would benefit from tickets ranking higher, you have points of contact available to the client (whether that’s an account manager or similar) outside of impersonal tickets.

I’m sure if you’re a valuable enough stripe client, they’ll have account managers. The problem for Stripe is that we see big numbers ($400k) and they see small numbers ($4k) so our perception of which clients are worth dedicating resources to is unrealistic.

Stripe could do a better job here but I’d be shocked if any big valuable clients have an experience like this, because if someone is driving $100k/year of revenue for Stripe, they’ll be able to get someone on the phone who knows their name and business.

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

#84

Post by jetrink »

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'd be ok with this if it were a tradeoff that I was choosing to make. Stripe withholding $400k can end a business. Google locking me out of my account can upend my life. I'd like to be able to pay the premium required to ensure that if an algorithm flags my account, I'm not going to be spending days banging my head against a wall trying to talk to a person who can straighten it out.

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

#85

Post by hn_user2 »

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…

I can't see Stripe giving front line employees the ability to resolve Risk Management issues.

From the Risk Management employee's perspective, nobody gets in trouble for saying "no". Saying "no", or outright rejecting an account is the safe move for job security. And so, support tickets into these departments languish for absurd amount of times (months) at many companies.

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

#86

Post by Matt_Cutts »

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…

This is a pretty intriguing contrarian view. I recall fielding many such inquiries during my Google days.

Of course, ideally every company (and organization) would offer fantastic customer service in every situation. In a world where that doesn't always happen, having an additional safety valve can be helpful for customers and companies alike.

If something is eye-catching enough that a newspaper would report on it, or it would get traction on HN or social media, that's worth the time to dig deeper and investigate what happened. Again, it's not the optimal way to triage issues, but it's better than ignoring outside feedback entirely.

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

#87

Post by jimnotgym »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #56
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Small claims court is pretty good if it’s available to you and most disputes probably fit within the limits. These courts deal with corporate malfeasance quite a bit so they’ve likely seen it before. They’ll often penalize the offending company with 2x+ damages and if the company still won’t pay you can get a bailiff to come with you to go impounding assets. They use fire sale prices to offset the debt so it costs th…

In the UK you couldn't claim $400k through small-claims, it is limited to £10k. Is it that high in the US?

You also can't get 2x damages, or a fast process!

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

#88

Post by fillskills »

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…

Reading between the lines, it looks like: 0. Stripe for some legal reason cannot explain in detail why some transaction is 'flagged' 1. The information Stripe asked for was not enough to reach a decision. 2. Stripe team members dont know how or what to communicate when they dont have a clear decision. 3. Customer is stuck in limbo.

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

#89

Post by smca »

Evan, thanks for taking the time to write this up. I helped resolve your particular issue on NYE and I’m acutely aware of how painful it’s been.

I broadly agree with a lot of your statements. The lack of clear communication and the repetitive requests for information during the review process isn’t good. We’re working on striking the right balance between giving good users relevant information without giving bad actors a roadmap to defraud Stripe. And we need clear channels to escalate when users need to. While I’m happy your issue was resolved, the process isn’t where it should be yet.

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

#90

Post by thebiglebrewski »

Not surprised to hear about this at all. Stripe's customer support seems completely powerless most of the time to do anything about anything complicated at all until you start yelling at them, a huge change from 4 - 5 years ago.

Makes me sad to resort to that but I just don't know what to do anymore. Stripe, can you build a better escalation system if anyone there is listening?

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