Maybe if the company had some way, any way at all, to reach an actual human being, this wouldn't be a constantly repeated problem on HN and elsewhere.
We offer (human-powered, somewhat obviously?) support via a variety of methods 24/7; time for us to reply to email is generally a few minutes. Could we do this better? Yes, and I hope we continue doing it better; if anyone ever has an interaction where we don't meet the bar please flag to us.
I don't know whether it's a chatbot spitting out replies based on keyword matching, or whether it's a human with a "responses per hour" performance target which doesn't give them time to read the emails they're replying to, but either way it's very different from the "talking to a human" experience I'm used to from daily life.
(And it's not a case of a correct process coming to a result I don't enjoy, except in a very narrow sense. "I understand your request and the answer is no" would be an improvement over what I often get)
Then, when the account didn't auto-renew because they didn't have any card on file, their canned response switched to "create a new Platinum account" (with much worse benefits).
I requested that this be the same grandfathered type of Platinum account that I lost.
Their canned response was that I should create a new Platinum account.
I said okay, but I want the same benefits I lost.
Their canned response was that I should create a new Platinum account.
I created a new Platinum account. It had much worse benefits.
Approximately one week later, I was permanently banned from Tinder for violating community standards without explanation (after having been a nice member of the community for the past year on Platinum and continuing to be one).
Wow, one reply in and we're already seeing open contempt for this type of troublesome customer. What nerve, expecting a payment processor to promptly process payments and make funds accessible to the account holder.
This reply is going to look monumentally bad if the customer ends up being right about how they were treated.
And will you say the opposite when the opposite is true? Other comments mention facts about how the OP tried to do something outside of normal and the response is expected for "abnormal" behavior on an account.
Anger against companies is one thing... but will you defend them when it turns out the company is in the right or is this only a one sided comment?
The statement that he never talked to a human could be true at the point in time when he first made the claim in his reddit post.
While I understand you can't comment on the specifics of this case, can you speak generally about whether or not disabling the phone/chat support buttons is a part of some standard process?
Sometimes, a financial institution might only be able, due to staffing or other considerations, to deal with you asynchronously in writing, perhaps from e.g. a group of professionals who are not as numerous as front-line user operations.
Are you just trying to say "we're so short staffed, there's no one to answer your messages, let alone your calls?"
But that kind of phrasing leaves a big gap.
Do they offer it during some hours? Which hours? Or do they offer it never?
There's a big difference between "call and chat are only extended beyond business hours for certain issues" and "call and chat are only ever for certain issues".
The response here could mean either.
The small company I was working for got card tested (scammers use hundreds of stolen cards to see if they work). I called customer support and talked with a human on a Friday night at 8pm for 15 minutes about our options. 2-3 days later, I chatted with someone from the fraud team.
I was surprised by the high touch service even though didn't have a lot of volume (new account w/ less than $10k of transactions).
You've build up an incredible amount of kudos with your comments and blog posts over the last decade+ here and are willing to burn it for a corporation in a moment? Earning trust takes a long time, losing trust only takes the blink of an eye.
If it was just bad communication about what this specific business uses the card for, it seems like that should be resolvable without waiting out the chargeback period.
Using a merchant account for a purpose which you haven't disclosed to the processor -- like a cell phone store selling a truck -- is a violation of the merchant agreement, and is often grounds for account closure.
1. Is selling trucks against the terms in general?
2. This is a cell phone store selling a cell phone store truck. It's part of the business, not something unrelated.
If they had thought of it, they probably would have made trucks or no trucks a part of the processing agreement up front. They thought it was a reasonable use, and it might have even been a reasonable use! So why can't this be resolved any sooner or with better communication?
Probably not, but I can't rule it out. It's certainly an unusual thing to accept a credit card payment for, and the fact that vehicles are titled property may complicate matters.
> 2. This is a cell phone store selling a cell phone store truck. It's part of the business, not something unrelated.
No, it isn't. The business of a cell phone store is, generally speaking, going to be selling cell phones and cell phone accessories, and its merchant account will have been obtained with the understanding that it would only be used for charges related to those products. It isn't in the business of selling cash registers or furniture or trucks, even if it may happen to possess those things as a business; if it wants to sell those things, it needs to accept payment through some other means.
> its merchant account will have been obtained with the understanding
> if it wants to sell those things, it needs to accept payment through some other means
So it's not part of the general business, but it is the business doing the sale, and such a thing was not part of the merchant account negotiation.
...I don't see a single thing you actually disagree with me over?
> time for us to reply to email is generally a few minutes
These two assertions are conflicting. A few minutes is not nearly enough time for a human to understand and address a support request. So like most companies, it sounds like Stripe is actually running automated support behind a fleshy humanesque interface. Don't delude yourselves into thinking that this counts as "human-powered" support.
I've also wasted hours of my life on hold with customer service "people" who, in the best case, take 5 minutes to hear my situation, 15 minutes to check into it, 5 more minutes to apparently not do the thing they said they were going to do, and 0 seconds to forget about all these details after hanging up, meaning I had to go through the same pattern all again the next call. Even in the cases where I've directed reps to look at previous tickets for history, half the time they still can't find it.
I'm sure that there are many people that use support instead of clicking around to the right option on the website, even though that seems abhorrent waste of time to anyone with half a clue. But companies optimizing for this are doing a disservice to everyone that is only using higher touch methods because they're trying to solve uncommon situations.
I can believe that "modern" support only takes a few minutes per the request, because each individual request is itself just a cog in the larger machine. When I spend an hour on the phone, bounced back and forth between 3-4 departments, how long was each of those conversations? Like so many things these days, the problem is with the overall constructive behavior rather than the myopic metrics that have been over optimized.
And don't get me started on those useless freeform voice prompts. Don't make the customer distill their problem down into a curt description, because once again, they're likely calling with a weird problem. Just give me the numeric options that mirror your business structure and I'll pick the most appropriate one, thank you.
Many, many, many people do not do that. Ask any retail business what the #1 and #2 calls are and the answer is always #1: "Are you open right now?" and #2: "What are your hours?". I suspect a big chunk of Stripe's email requests are similarly trivial - "where can I see my $whatever report", "can I take amex?", "how much will I pay for a $.95 transaction", etc. that a competent support person can answer in their sleep. Now if we're getting into complicated technical issues, I'm sure those should be taking more time.
I share your disdain for those "just say what your issue is", although the trick to that is usually to say "cancel" and get immediately transferred to someone who will be expected to keep your business.
>We don't comment publicly on individual customers. This is an important part of customer privacy and we're serious about it.
But then you heavily imply that the user ("Many people who say...") is a liar? Bad look.
What does "human-powered support" even mean? Is this weasel speak for a chatbot or do you mean actual people replying to support claims?