Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved] • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by neilv » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

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…

If this extortion practice isn't a common curse of Etsy stores with her scale of revenue, I wonder whether it might actually be a competitor (who gets the sales and customers whenever her store is down).

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

#92

Post by fortituded0002 » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

> I told the contacts at Stripe that I would do a write up about what happened from my point of view to help them understand what happened to me. I figured it would be good to do that write up publicly to help both Stripe and potential Stripe customers understand what happened and how it was resolved.

Sucks that you had to get to this point, but thank you for taking the time to do this and being rational about it. Being able to review what went sideways is invaluable for big companies and complex processes on their end. Having customer input can really help push things in the right direction for everyone (including existing and future customers).

(FYI: not affiliated with Stripe. Just glad to see people pushing things forward in a way that is not only productive but can have positive impact on people.)

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

#93

Post by yamtaddle » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

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?)

There are alternatives, but you will find support horror stories about all of them. Unless they're very new, maybe. Certainly PayPal/Braintree is no refuge from this sort of madness.

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

#94

Post by zackmorris » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:01 PM UTC

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 would ever get withheld. The proxy would maintain its own support database and build workflows for the most common disputes. So something like this situation would no longer happen, because they'd have the solution on file from any previous customers who went through it. Kind of like Stack Overflow for disputes, except internal so that customers don't have to deal with it. Vendors could even get access to the database to have better internal controls and avoid the snafus that lead to bad press like this.

Otherwise I just worry that every insanely great web company will inevitably turn into the next monopoly and we'll never get free of resorting to HN and lawyers.

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

#95

Post by johnhaddock » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:02 PM UTC

smca wrote: post #89

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 acto…

John here from Stripe (I lead our Risk product area). As OP noted, we try to spot unexpected spikes in processing volume, which are often associated with risky activity. In this case, that was in error — we were too fast to act and (much) too slow to unwind. In particular, we erred in not taking congruent action across OP’s related accounts. We’re working on a fix for this. I’m following up with OP to make sure we fully digest this one, so that it doesn’t happen again.

Since I came onboard in Sept, the team has made a lot of progress (e.g., mistaken actions like this one are down by 75%), but we have a lot more planned to further improve. We’re always on the look out for additional examples of mistaken action - please email me at jhaddock@stripe.com so I can take a look.

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

#96

Post by eole666 » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:02 PM UTC

haliskerbas wrote: post #50

eole666 wrote: post #30

Stripe seems really expensive with poor support... Apparently they take more than 1.4% of your earning. For $400K, it's more than 11 200$. With that money you could hire a developer for a month or two and make him/her create a payment platform adapted to your needs and under your control.

I'm not sure who would be willing to build a PCI, AML, KYC, compliant payment service that can accept credit and debit cards from most countries, for $11k USD.

Well you're right, if you create it from scratch. I was rather thinking about creating a simple payment handling module centralizing your bank's own pro platform and other things like paypal, apple pay ... etc

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

#97

Post by james_pm » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

cjbgkagh wrote: post #47

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…

Someday it’ll be cheaper to suppress negative views on social media than to address them. Until then I’ll enjoy the good times that come with being able to shame big companies in public.

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

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

#98

Post by TheCapn » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #48

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…

Making the post is not enough, you also have to get it to the front page of Reddit or HN

Yep. I had an issue with Apex Legends and after the support channel failed me I attempted to engage with Respawn users on Reddit/Twitter when my post got 5 upvotes. Ignored on all accounts.

It feels criminal to have some automated system remove your access to a paid application with no recourse, but that's modern Customer Service it seems.

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

#99

Post by jlokier » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

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 sent a query hours before, and uploaded requested photos of documents, cards and id... I took someone's advice and posted to their Facebook chat.

The account was unblocked within 20 minutes.

Their social media person miraculously had the ability to ask someone to fix the problem, who miraculously got in touch within a few minutes and pressed the miraculous "fix problem" button in Revolut, which a series of "customer support" agents somehow couldn't do for most of a week.

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

#100

Post by butlerm » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

Trias11 wrote: post #46

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…

Customer support is a liability and every large company will allocate absolutely minimal possible resources to any liability. This of course can backfire via social media into negative reputation and some repeated bad behaviors can landslide into class action. But large companies are willing to accept such risk and will continue such pattern.

$400,000 in withheld funds is not the sort of thing you should just place on the back burner and ignore while your client fumes. It is business malpractice, the sort of thing you could get sued over and be penalized heavily for, if not merely lose your customers and blacken your reputation everywhere. Businesses that do not resolve problems like this in less than twenty four hours deserve to go out of business.