Stripe Atlas is nothing but a bad marriage
1–10 of 50 posts
Re: Stripe Atlas is nothing but a bad marriage
#2The Stripe Christmas Surprise: destroying your competitor's holiday season earnings by issuing a well-placed chargeback.
Re: Stripe Atlas is nothing but a bad marriage
#3The initial analogy made me cringe, and to be honest, the rest of the post didn't change that impression too much.
Reading past the prose and paeans to loyalty, a couple points stick out to me:
> "we discovered that the specific charges flagged as fraudulent were not fraudulent charges" "where fulfillment was lagging heavily during the transition which led to some dissatisfied customers who opted to dispute charges"
Fulfillment lagging heavily is a fancy of way of saying people paid for orders, never got what they ordered, and so assumed it was a fraud.
> Despite understanding that our Stripe Atlas account was used across a number of businesses, and that the seemingly fraudulent/chargeback activity took place in a relatively short span of time through a single eCommerce store (that was no longer operational)
TBH, the actual percentages Stripe details in later emails would be alarming to me. 23% of charges disputed and 44% of volume are pretty red flags!
Re: Stripe Atlas is nothing but a bad marriage
#46.5% chargeback rate.
This entire blog post reads like other posts of its type from people who don't understand credit card processing or how it all works.
"Shortly after sending the above information we discovered that the specific charges flagged as fraudulent were not fraudulent charges. They were, in fact, due to chargebacks related to a recently acquired eCommerce store where fulfillment was lagging heavily during the transition which led to some dissatisfied customers who opted to dispute charges."
No, the transactions weren't fraudulent. However, selling something and not delivering is grounds for a chargeback and would be labeled as fraud, and to any reasonable person, would be considered fraud.
"Somehow we moved from an issue of fraudulent activity to whether or not we’re allowed to sell specific products."
Yes, because with such a high chargeback rate, they are going to reevaluate your entire business. It's called Know Your Customer (KYC), and it's critical.
But seriously, 6.5% chargeback rate. Even when I was still working in an industry know to be high risk, I never had a rate that high.
"Stripe is quick to put all blame and responsibility on us by claiming that it is not their responsibility to prevent fraud."
Because in the end, yes, that's where the fault lies. Don't believe me? Go to a bank and get your own merchant account and see what happens when you just let whatever you want go through your system. Just because it's on a computer doesn't change the fact that you are responsible for the fraud you are swiping through your system.
tl;dr: a legit 6.5% chargeback rate.
Re: Stripe Atlas is nothing but a bad marriage
#5The Stripe Christmas Surprise: destroying your competitor's holiday season earnings by issuing a well-placed chargeback.
In all seriousness do they have any way to detect sabotage of this sort?
Re: Stripe Atlas is nothing but a bad marriage
#66.5% chargeback rate. This entire blog post reads like other posts of its type from people who don't understand credit card processing or how it all works. "Shortly after sending the above information we discovered that the specific charges flagged as fraudulent were not fraudulent charges. They were, in fact, due to chargebacks related to a recently acquired eCommerce store where fulfillment was lagging heavily duri…
I would count myself in the category of people who don't know exactly how this all works, but this email[0] makes it sound even worse by the end:
> We calculate the dispute rate a number of ways, but the two most common are:
> 1. The percentage of charges on your account that have been disputed (you are currently 23.74%)
> 2. The percentage of volume on your account that has been disputed (you are currently 44.82%)
[0]: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*8f0gZoASFf20_-lM.
Re: Stripe Atlas is nothing but a bad marriage
#7I can sympathize because it was just one business unit that he had apparently recently acquired that was responsible for this and the rest of his businesses were ok. The biggest lessons are to be aware of what you are acquiring and the issues they are having, make sure it's very clear to customers how they can contact YOU to get a refund and finally, it's probably a good idea to have separate accounts for different businesses on Stripe.
Re: Stripe Atlas is nothing but a bad marriage
#86.5% chargeback rate. This entire blog post reads like other posts of its type from people who don't understand credit card processing or how it all works. "Shortly after sending the above information we discovered that the specific charges flagged as fraudulent were not fraudulent charges. They were, in fact, due to chargebacks related to a recently acquired eCommerce store where fulfillment was lagging heavily duri…
Actually a 44% chargeback rate by volume!
It only takes a little bit of reading between the lines to see the author bought a site that sold fraudulent gear, didn’t realise this for a bit and then shut it down.
If stripe hadn’t frozen payouts they would be stuck holding the bag for 44 percent of the total charges in the account.
The new account thing does sound beuracratic but I guess it restarts the KYC process.
Re: Stripe Atlas is nothing but a bad marriage
#96.5% chargeback rate. This entire blog post reads like other posts of its type from people who don't understand credit card processing or how it all works. "Shortly after sending the above information we discovered that the specific charges flagged as fraudulent were not fraudulent charges. They were, in fact, due to chargebacks related to a recently acquired eCommerce store where fulfillment was lagging heavily duri…
I would count myself in the category of people who don't know exactly how this all works, but this email[0] makes it sound even worse by the end: > We calculate the dispute rate a number of ways, but the two most common are: > 1. The percentage of charges on your account that have been disputed (you are currently 23.74%) > 2. The percentage of volume on your account that has been disputed (you are currently 44.82%) […
And this is over the lifetime of the account!
Re: Stripe Atlas is nothing but a bad marriage
#106.5% chargeback rate. This entire blog post reads like other posts of its type from people who don't understand credit card processing or how it all works. "Shortly after sending the above information we discovered that the specific charges flagged as fraudulent were not fraudulent charges. They were, in fact, due to chargebacks related to a recently acquired eCommerce store where fulfillment was lagging heavily duri…
Actually a 44% chargeback rate by volume! It only takes a little bit of reading between the lines to see the author bought a site that sold fraudulent gear, didn’t realise this for a bit and then shut it down. If stripe hadn’t frozen payouts they would be stuck holding the bag for 44 percent of the total charges in the account. The new account thing does sound beuracratic but I guess it restarts the KYC process.
> the author bought a site that sold fraudulent gear, didn’t realise this for a bit and then shut it down.
I don’t think that’s the case. It looks like they bought a flipping or drop ship site and they botched the transition process; orders weren’t getting fulfilled and customers were rightfully pissed about it, hence the chargebacks.
Stripe has a lot of rough edges once you have to talk to a person due to outlier activity, but this could’ve been mitigated by isolating businesses into their own Stripe accounts, as well as better handling the business acquisition that took place.