Hacker News Reader

  mainly talking about coding in PERL. It's a little sus.

This line stood out to me because I've seen it before. There's someone (or a group of someones) who repeatedly posts this same rant about Stripe on both Reddit and HN, slightly modifying the claimed business. For example, one iteration was a cell phone store in Denver that had their funds held after using their Stripe account to sell a used vehicle:

Four months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32261868

The Reddit post linked to by ^^: https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/wa230m/tifu_by_using_...

60 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33254485

Note how the following paragraph appears word-for-word the same in all three posts (select, ctrl+c, ctrl+f to verify):

  If you do a little bit of research about this topic,
  [...]
  mainly talking about coding in PERL. It's a little sus.

That is indeed weird. Maybe someone asked ChatGPT to write a Stripe rant here to troll HN.

I'm not going to say the writing here is bad, but in most examples I've seen, ChatGPT is quite a bit more polished.

That said, the rant seems pretty clear. But I have no clue as to how truthful.

For fun, I've asked OpenGPT-3 and ChatGPT to write a few rants like this. They both tend to produce much shorter, much more abstract rants without fixating on details (like lack of customer support) excessively.

For example: > I can't believe XXXXX is holding my payments for at least 120 days for KYC checks. I'm a merchant whose money is frozen and I can't access it. This is totally unacceptable and they shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. How am I supposed to run my business when I can't access my funds? If they don't change their policy soon, I'm going to have to find another payment processor. XXXXX is taking advantage of merchants and needs to be held accountable. #XXXXXSucks #PaymentProcessorAbuse

GPT-3 in particular likes to put stop sequences (things you would expect at the end of text, like hashtags) after their rants, and no matter how much I try to remove them, it will put more and still produce a short rant.

(I work at Stripe) As jmillikin points out below, this particular complaint has been repeatedly posted about Stripe on both Reddit and HN, with slight modifications to the claimed business.

Publicly represented facts are not always reliable. As a rule, we won’t comment on specific user cases for privacy reasons. However, as a trend, we’ve seen an uptick in HN posts requesting we release funds held.

We review every case posted here and, since summer, have confirmed in almost every case that the activity was fraudulent.

We know that confirming we're looking into cases here provides more incentive for bad actors to post. We wish that weren’t the case, but we do pay attention to both internal case reviews and to public forums where users post about having a bad day (or, in some cases, profess to be having a bad day).

We do not hold any user funds for any reason other than fraud prevention.

We do not own Reddit (or other) accounts that are used to downvote users genuinely looking for help.

We do show up on Hacker News, Twitter, Reddit, or via email to help good actors who need better help and post there as a means of last resort.

The above does not absolve us of any responsibility. We can make mistakes, and those can be acutely painful to legitimate users. But we do endeavour to help those that need help.

> We do not hold any user funds for any reason other than fraud prevention.

Ah yes, the things we do for "fraud prevention". I get that regulations might have Stripe's hands tied, but to say that the users posting their frustrations with frozen payouts are almost always fraudulent is a straight up lie. They might have triggered "fraud prevention" flags imposed by regulations on your system, but the majority are not fraudulent themselves (including me, who's had payouts frozen multiple times by both Stripe and Shopify, which I assume uses Stripe as a backend). We keep getting flagged and then "ok'd" by you guys almost twice each year. It's incredibly frustrating.

It's not just this complaint or similar ones, though. What recourse does a merchant have if you freeze funds and don't provide a reason or don't immediately put them in touch with a human? Stripe generally appears to misrepresent itself as a payment gateway when in fact it takes on merchants and bundles their payments as its own. Then you apparently sever connection with any merchant that might raise a flag with the bank, without giving a clear reason. This isn't "unfortunate" other than in the sense that it's unfortunate someone would be stupid enough to hinge their business on the mistaken belief that your company actually processed credit card payments.

I'm not affiliated with stripe nor have I've ever used their services for payments. I did work for another payment providers before however.

> It's not just this complaint or similar ones, though. What recourse does a merchant have if you freeze funds and don't provide a reason or don't immediately put them in touch with a human?

The reason seems to have been provided, which is fraud suspicion. Stripe can't be expected to unfreeze the suspect money until this suspicion is cleared, which might take anything from hours to months, depending on the case. What kind of recourse do you think the payment providers can provide in this scenario?

why does it take months though?

in these situations the payment provider absolutely has the upper hand, and they abuse it in the name of safety. the same way Amazon treats their merchants like shit, because there is an endless queue of fools to try to "start a business"

it's the same security theater that is done at airports. there are always suspicious things. false positive rate be damned.

if there's a suspicion, that the card used may have been "stolen" then freeze it, call the end user. it takes a few days at most, right? banks do this all the time, usually these are cleared in minutes.

if the bank cannot reach the user, ask the merchant to ask the user to call the bank.

these are clear and trivial steps to do. yet instead there's "investigation" by the useless middleman.

the duration was heavily dependent on outside factors for the payment provider I've worked for.

Usually, the police had been notified if it was a very long time, which the customer can't be told as they could be involved in the crime. It really depends on the case so there is very little value our discussion here can provide.

Also, Banks have kept accounts frozen for months too if their holders are suspected of fraud.

The customer can be involved. At this point why not just shoot everyone? The payment processor can be involved too! The police are on in it, obviously.

I mean, we're almost beyond the civil asset forfeiture guilty-until-proven-innocent level.

It's plain and simple corporate bullying. Because they can. Yes, I know it's a hard problem. Yes, if it were easy there were endless cheap knockoff payment processors. Yes, criminals are constantly outsmarting the good guys. Yes, I know it's in the ToS, etc. Yes, I know we don't live in a just world.

These still not make it right. It's yet again a fucking tax on the small shops.

Does it take months when there is no fraud?

The issue as I understand it with Stripe is that Stripe takes on the chargeback and fraud risk on behalf of the merchant, but as a result will seize funds preemptively to any flag that might potentially be raised by their partner banks. In other words they are incentivized to look for fraud where there is none.

Then they send an automated email saying they suspect fraud, without details.

The recourse they should provide is a way for the merchant to clear their name of a specific accusation, by both providing details of the transaction(s) in doubt and allowing the merchant to show whatever documentation is necessary. But they don't want to go through that because again, there is no actual fraud call in some of these cases from a bank, they're just automatically flagged as a potential risk for Stripe. So they just put the merchant on endless hold and steal their money.

> I did work for another payment provider

Username checks out.

Given this story from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34021944 it's easy to believe these stories about companies having awful support departments that can only be contacted via social media side-channels.

Can you post anything public to confirm Stripe's department isn't like that?

You don't need to backchannel your requests to reach a human at Stripe. If you reach out over chat, email, or by requesting a callback, you reach a human 100% of the time.

When you introduce elements of risk (fraudulent actors who might try to game our processes) or situations outside of the control of Stripe (high rate of chargebacks from your customers) it can change things. Those situations typically end up on HN or on Twitter. We respect that users can/will try all available channels to have a decision reversed and so we respond to or read every complaint.

This isn't just marketing speak. If you have a Stripe account, you can navigate to support.stripe.com/contact right now and speak to someone. Chat is near instantaneous (which has been an almighty task by the teams involved), email takes a little longer, and, if you request a call it takes three minutes (as of this moment in time). If you're a developer, we also staff a Discord channel for more technical questions.

It's an incredibly complex system to provide support at scale to all Stripe users 365 24x7. We support millions of businesses and all types of integrations.

As someone who ran a business on Stripe before I joined Stripe, I would feel much more comfortable trying to get through to someone here than at other larger orgs.

You can find similar stories about literally all online payment processors, including Paypal, Stripe, & all the "legacy" ones too (like First Data). Is it possible this isn't some nefarious conspiracy to steal money, but rather a reality of dealing with payments online given the regulatory environment it operates in?

Also this is the biggest season for sales and tech companies in general are dealing with navigating an extremely volatile macro economic environment - companies are planning for doing more with less staff and Q4 is likely pushing the limits for the customer support of many companies.

It is frustrating having your money on hold and there is a meaningful business impact that can have, but if you have tens of thousands of dollars tied up in Stripe (or any other payment processor), may I suggest expanding your other credit facilities such as lines of credit and loans, to allow you to navigate these sorts of situations, especially during Q4.

Pretty sure those other processors at least have phone numbers you can call.

PayPal does. And they have indeed helped me when my account was frozen.

But does anybody actually answer? In my experience a large number of companies with numbers just put you in a waiting queue that never ends. Might as well have some system to request a call, which is exactly what Stripe does.

So does Stripe. I've talked to Stripe humans over the phone for multiple accounts probably dozens of times.

Sometimes even, I send an email and they respond by phone.

> may I suggest expanding your other credit facilities such as lines of credit and loans, to allow you to navigate these sorts of situations, especially during Q4.

The story state of credit card payments forces this solution. Card payments are not your money, it's a statement of intention that someone wants to receive your product, try it out, and then pay for it only when they have found it completely satisfactory.

Your processor cannot simply launder that to hard cash and be on the hook when a large wave of chargebacks comes crushing in.

Surely there should be a way to do consumer protection better and more granular, with an actual dispute resolution system.

Fine, but can you forward the interest payments to Stripe? No?

Not sure what you mean with "You can find"? I'm not the one making the claims?

> reality of dealing with payments online given the regulatory environment it operates in?

In my book not having a phone number and not attempting to answer and resolve the issue isn't "dealing with it". That would be not dealing with something.

I was curious and looked at some.

2C2P 02-026-3000

Adyen - no phone

Alipay +65 68307260

Amazon Pay - no phone

Apple Pay - no phone

Atos +33 1 73 26 00 00

Authorize.Net 1-888-323-4289

BHIM 1800-120-1740

BitPay 1-404-907-2055

bKash 16247

BPAY +61 130 036 8098

https://pastebin.com/Kmb6Ju1K

I couldn't think of an automated way of obtaining the numbers. Maybe someone else (you lol) has some idea or is willing to do a few lines of data entry.

Most of those are sales numbers not support.

I think at least some of them but to say "most" one would have to do the work.

How many calls before the sales department would take legal action against me? Would they talk with support first?

Oh, here we go again. The hazy macro-economic environment strains the capital efficiency of tech as they learn-anew why traditional businesses aren't quite as efficient as they are. The world is complex, and hard to navigate, and hard to encode into the sterility of a computer program, and jeeze I guess things like customer support and humans and special edge cases may actually matter when it comes to building a sustainable business.

You don't keep legitimate customers by subjecting them to erroneous fraud mitigation. That's the end of the story. Stripe can figure it out, or they can die. "Stripe cuts 14% of its workforce, CEO says they ‘overhired for the world we’re in’" Stripe handled an estimated $350B in payments annually (as of 2020) with around 8,000 employees. JP Morgan Chase handles somewhere around $2T, with around 250,000 employees. They didn't overhire. They never had enough people in the first place. They certainly don't now. It's going to get worse, and it may not get better.

Stripe is a low interest rate environment corporation, with $2.3B in venture funding, which will not exist in 10 years. You give a great piece of advice: diversity your payment processing.

>"... diversify your payment processing."?<

Not sure if it's by the same person, but this looks suspiciously similar to this post on Reddit from 5 months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/wa230m/tifu_by_using_....

Almost a perfect match. Nice find. Googling some of the phrases leads to tens of other near-similar posts.

Is this some anti-Stripe targetting?

I do wonder if this then actually also delegitimizes the post back then or if it's just someone building a fake case on top of some existing case.

If so, it’s amazingly effective considering the discourse that follows. Frightening times indeed…

"It is one thing to say this is a red flag, fine... I hear you... no problem. a transaction multiple times the size... sure. I get it."

Isn't this the story that turned out they had sold a company van using stripe, which was against the TOS?

Not defending Stripe here, but DO NOT HAVE A SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE! Have 2-3 payment processors hooked to a common abstraction layer, split transactions between them. If one fails, switch to others while you try to sort it out. Unfortunately, "computer says no" has become the harsh reality when dealing with any kind of corporate entities, so you need to be ready. It sucks, but that's the world we live in.

doesn't your common abstraction layer become your single point of failure in this situation? The only robust economical way to do that is too use a third party multiplatform abstraction service, especially given the complexity of maintaining functional billing across multiple payment processors, you're kinda screwed if you try to implement this in house for a small business (either losing revenue to bugs or losing money to in house implementation time/costs)

Not if it's an open source self-hosted abstraction layer, or built directly into the framework, like Laravel Cashier or Lago Billing.

Well, you can always fix your abstraction layer if it breaks. This is not true if you use a closed-source solution.

So, are there any open-source solutions available?

The abstraction layer has no vested interest in shutting you down for reasons related to your transaction flow, fraud, etc.

It's expensive to build 2-3 integrations for every service you rely on though. And losing 1/3 of your money can still be detrimental to your business.

Not necessarily: https://primer.io/

Isn't primer then the single point of failure?

I know nothing about the product, but I would be surprised if some federation service had the same financial liabilities (just offering software) as a payments processing company underwriting transactions.

Precisely. If it fails, it's possible to replace its integration by manually adding one or more of the payment processors directly; but it never holds your money itself, unlike PayPal or Stripe.

Losing 1/3 of your money is better than losing all of your money.

I think https://www.bits.bi also will offer this.

Yes indeed, every integration costs:

- kyc onboarding, getting and processing the docs and forms never goes smooth, can take 2 to 10 business days.

- integrating the gateway, 3k setup fee on average, plus dev cost for mapping the servers, doing the front end and the tests

- sometimes, due to being labeled a high risk sector industry, only trusted visa traffic, or an allocation thereof

And indeed, losing 30 percent would be the end, we operate with a 4 to 12 percent net margin, thanks goodness credit card payments are only 10 percent or so.

I am a total crypto sceptic, and the crypto psps are immature, but they are causing the least hassle.

I agree with this. Last week out of a sudden we had an increase in rejected payments from Stripe so we simply switched to Verifone for which we already had an integration. The switch is manual however so we're currently automating it.

We have 3 credit card processors and every freaking rule is always in their favor.

They have a downtime for visa, lasting 3 weeks? Nothing you can do, the gateway still charge you one quid per failed TX.

The worst was a single chargeback collapsed a MID and the processor refuses or claims they will not honor the settlement.Something like 20k usd for a months business.

All due to them miscoding and the chargeback exposing their miscoding practices.

Is there any recourse for this?

Any fintech news outlet where they can be named and shamed?

> Again, Stripe gives no manner to remedy this. There is NO ONE you can call. NO ONE you can talk to.

Sure they do: it's called their general counsel. I would recommend you could have had an attorney reach out in writing by day 15 (30 if you are generous) if you legitimately could not get in contact through any other means - including writing your own written letter. At $50,000 in funds locked up, you likely have enough to afford representation in resolving this matter (less than $500.)

With a quick Google search:

> 6. Contact and complaints. You can contact SPC at https://stripe.com/contact or by mail to Stripe Payments Company, 354 Oyster Point Boulevard, South San Francisco, California, 94080. SPC may provide you with information and notifications in relation to the SPC Services via your Stripe Dashboard.

If resources are an issue, I entered this prompt into ChatGPT: "Write a letter to Stripe Payments Company demanding release of my $50,000 in legitimate sales proceeds from my dress-selling business."

I received any number of useful letters that would be applicable to resolving this situation. This HN post is more lengthly than the demand letter that would have resolved this.

You can request a call on the Stripe support site. The average wait time is three minutes: https://support.stripe.com/questions/contact-stripe-support.

Whatever the backstory of this particular incident is... It's clear that Stripe, Paypal, et al need to be regulated like a bank. Period.

If it looks like duck...

PayPal is a bank in the EU. Seems to work fine. Same needs to happen everywhere.

It's not. It is an electronic money institution, which is far from a bank, it can only keep customer funds and process payments.

I don’t know the difference, but it does say that on the tin: https://www.paypal.com/lu/webapps/mpp/about

> PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A. is a credit institution (or bank) authorised and supervised by Luxembourg’s financial regulator, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (or CSSF). CSSF’s registered office: 283, route d’Arlon, L-1150 Luxembourg.

A bank can lend out deposits, ie. client money, ie. someone else's money. A normal regulated entity, like say an exchange, cannot.

Can't comment re PayPal specifically.

That is a very selective and borderline illegal description they are using. A bank is a credit institution, but now every ci is a bank.

Paypal and revolut are 100% not banks, they are financial institutions or emis, They can manage your money but not lend out anything and they have to hold the assets at 3rd party banks.

All global corporations need to be regulated. I heard a number of cases, when people could not reach FB support, they just ignore everyone. Did you know? It took Stripe 10 years to do it and 7 years for Robinhood. What do you think it is? 24×7 phone and chat support!

Facebook support has an interesting feature: you have to be logged in to access it, and if they have decided that your support request is ‘closed’ then in my experience the option to contact them again is disabled.

Why would Stripe need to be regulated "like a bank"? It's a payment processor.

It handles money. You're not supposed to keep money IN it, not for very long anyway. It's a path, not a destination.

Paypal is different. They are b2c and heavily advertise their wallet service. They have crypto and ways to earn interest off of it. They upsell insurance and credit cards.

How are they comparable?!

A large company I was working for transfered all money out from Paypal every night. I would never leave money with Paypal or Stripe.

It's a typical setup, PayPal even have the automated daily bank withdrawal for merchants. What you probably fail to mention or notice that the company transferred the money once they clear the mandatory hold window.

Exact width of the window may be adjusted case by case and depends on the stuff you sell — e.g. if it's digital goods with immediate delivery it may be shorter, if it's physical goods it may be certain amount of days after delivery verified by tracking number. In my case I was working for a company that provided proxy auction participation support, PayPal forced 30d non-negotiable hold on all our transactions.

So, you may transfer it every night, but it's safe to assume that 25-100% of your monthly revenue going through PayPal is sitting there at all times.

Even if you withdraw it, they can still come after you to get ‘their’ money back. PayPal (in the UK at least) requires a direct debit authorisation to be able to withdraw funds to a bank account. Part of that agreement is that they can also take money from your bank account if they decide to.

My experience with this is that I sold an iMac on eBay, then a week later PayPal informed me that the person who paid in fact has stolen someone else’s login, and so they sent a debt collection agency after me to make me refund the money, even though I no longer had the iMac.

Try emailing Patrick: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28524141

There definitely needs to be more regulation of fraud holds.

It's a bit weird how OP talks about owning a UK business but uses US-centric terminology like EIN and talks about USD. The weird "PERL" rant sounds fishy. And Stripe does offer phone support, you just have to request it and they'll call back soon after.

About the talking about USD that's not so weird. USD has been pretty unstable compared to some currencies but is still the currency many of us do business in. For me it's easier to calculate in USD even thought I exchange them ASAP. Also UK businesses are very common too.

Most small business I've found don't accept credit/debit cards for large transactions and instead want direct (cash) bank transfers because they fear the money going missing or getting a chargeback. This has its only issues as its slow and not very customer friendly.

If only there was some kind of virtual cash that could be sent from one party to another almost instantly without an intermediary

Also (at least in the UK & EU) bank transfers are free whereas Stripe fees are around 3%.

>If only there was some kind of virtual cash that could be sent from one party to another almost instantly without an intermediary

If only such a system wasn't ripe with fraud, get rich quick schemes, and the same general predatory behaviors found in our systems with intermediaries yet lacking the ability for the common user to have some ability to recover when things go wrong.

Alas, such a thing does not exist. ;P

Those problems exist with physical cash.

Why should I care that other people engage in fraud with the same currency that I'm using for a legal transaction? Why should I care that other people engage in get rich quick schemes with the same currency that I'm using for a legal transaction?

Legal cash is not the thing being discussed here, you don't need to shift the goalposts. ;P

The problem is the intermediaries often add no value or help facilitate the fraud or refuse to help get the money back.

I lost £150,000 to a fraudulent account the bank knew about https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/dec/14/i-lost-150000-...

Bank transfer scammers steal £700,000 a day from UK victims https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/may/28/bank-transfer-...

The EU are working on something like this, it's like USDC but backed and exchanged by the European Central Bank.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...

A surveillance coin that bureaucrats can seize without a trial or due process!

The EU may not be the first to make this.

Irrelevant but EU has SEPA Instant Payments which basically resolves GPs issues with bank transfers.

Unfortunatelly, this is not really true.

You bear all the risk as the merchant, the customers can simply reverse a transaction, repeatedly, without providing a reason, for up to couple months.

My customers are not going to pay in Bitcoin.

Did you ask them?

My customers usually even ask to pay in crypto. It's surprisingly complicated for people in less fortunate countries to move higher amounts of money without an endless cycle of hoops, fees and waiting.

> want direct (cash) bank transfers ... This has its only issues as its slow and not very customer friendly.

Actually, there are issues that raise red flags when a business only accepts bank transfers:

      (a) It raises a GIGANTIC red flag as to why a business was unable to get a merchant account with a card processor.  Pretty much any business can get a merchant account with a bit of paperwork (generally not much more paperwork than for opening a bank account).  So if a business is refused a merchant account everywhere (including PayPal) then, well .....

      (b) At least in Europe, credit card holders gain SIGNIFICANT protection under law. Basically as long as your transaction is over a minimum amount (normally small, e.g. £100/€100), then the card issuer (i.e. bank) is *automatically* equally liable in the event something goes wrong (i.e.  goods or services are faulty, are not delivered as promised, are not as advertised or if the trader or retailer goes out of business).  This legal protection applies even if the amount you paid on your card was a mere deposit instead of the full amount. (Generally the only caveat here is that you need to pay the merchant directly on their merchant account, not via a pooling intermediary such as Paypal).

So actually for most consumers paying for high-value items on credit card is the Right Thing (TM) to do.

In the UK at least try and get building work done or buy a new car with a credit card and see how far you get...

Credit cards work great for small transactions for both consumers and businesses, but risks get high for the business (espcially small businesses) for larger transactions.

I am working with people from eastern Europe and west Asia. If they pay me in PayPal it's like 50:50 that the money is frozen for a month or two as fraud protection. Always resolving. 'Normal banking' often is no option at all.

I really wish there was a near instant payment method without heavy overregulation so I could do normal business with people from not so fortunate countries.

Don't use US American payment providers if you can avoid it.

It's a national sport over there to figure out new ways of getting people's money, whether it's peculiar made-up fees, or like in your case plain robbery under the ironical guise of crime prevention.

You're rightly miffed at faceless tech, though I sincerely believe the issue will get sorted out, and then you leave Stripe. Good luck.

You're right about the phone number "...Note: We do not have an inbound support phone number at the moment. Request a phone call to connect with Stripe Support by phone..."

In case you missed it, a callback can be requested.

https://support.stripe.com/questions/contact-stripe-support

https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/responding

This is the problem with so many companies these days in terms of not being able to get hold of anyone and just getting thrown into a loop of bot replies and semi-relevant faq pages.

I run a small business in UK and have had a few issues in the past where I've been unable to get any sort of resolution through regular channels and I've actually contacted my local MP and asked them to help intervene or at least reach a person in authority who could own the problem.

I may not agree with his actual political party but as a local MP he is good with small businesses and uses the clout of his office and name. Obviously YMMV on this depending on your MP but desperate times etc.

Collect it all and go to court. I can't see how they have a chance. Document losses their incompetence caused you and request these too.

IANAL ofc...

Yes, it's CLEAR you are not a lawyer.

They consented when they signed up. Read the terms. They have NO liability.

Are you a lawyer? Did you ever talk to one about an issue you had? You'd be amazed how much wiggle room for action a good lawyer can find on an issue that seems cut and dry at first.

That does not absolve them from abiding to applicable law.

The contract IS the "applicable law".

“I consent that Stripe can hold my money for ever and ever without recourse or any way to connect with them. Every once in a while an account may simply be taken over as sacrifice to the gods and it may very well be my account”

I'm not a lawyer of course, but I don't think it's as simple as saying you signed it. You could give up your right to any form of holidays or accept to offer your first born in case of default on a contract but those clauses would be unenforceable when presented to a judge.

What exactly do you think a signature on a contract means?

It's a serious question. In you layman's view, what do you THINK signing something means?

Not every contract term is enforceable. And every contract has an implied obligation of good faith and fair dealing.

I’m not saying this is a sure winner: I don’t know the case law well enough to have an opinion. But I don’t think it’s capitalization-level obvious. And really the goal would be to get the attention of a human at Stripe who can just fix it.

The fact something is in a contract doesn't make it legal or enforceable.

Yes. It DOES.

In fact there is case law that confirms that.

That's what consent IS.

yeah.

the service that got traction because paypal fucking sucks is now rapidly becoming just as bad

From the documentation side it still kicks paypals ass all over the floor.

Will definitely be collating the few stories of this I've seen though. We have a couple of large clients considering moving from PP to stripe, and while slow and somewhat useless, they could always talk to a human account manager at PP..

It’s sad that you regard your large clients as slow and useless ;)

Have you consulted a lawyer?

I don't know what you can do except make noise here. I hope it works out.

>...we start getting attention we get payments of $3300 and more.

Thinking of others that may encounter this issue, I wonder if it's possible to spread orders between separate payment processors based on order $ value.

Processor #1: low average order value

Processor #2: high average order value

That way each processor handles orders within 1 standard deviation of the 30 day average (or however you might calculate it). I've never handled inventory for ecommerce. Just wondering.

If that's not possible, should ecommerce sites only ever have a min - max per unit value that isn't too large? e.g. $10 - $100 unit values, with avg $50 orders. Not $10 - $1000 unit values, with avg $50 orders.

I don’t see how those price bands would work for a fashion company. Charging more once you’ve been noticed is the whole business plan.

Obviously not easy - but how quickly do you think you can get on another payment processing platform? If you're desperate, is it possible to jump to Braintree or Square or Shopify or something in the immediate future?

Are there no real banks in USA provide API to process payments?

Several banks here in Switzerland offers an alternative. Some with a third party, some even using their own gateways.

Not sure about other countries, the only downside is they have setup fees and don't usually accept low volume.

Low volume is really what make PayPal and later Stripe so approachable.

Just curious, is there a real alternative that:

1. Has customer service

2. Doesn’t charge high fees

I feel like those two things are mutually exclusive, the high fees can be thought of as an insurance policy to ensure good cs. The lower fee options are like those fly by night insurance companies.

Everyone wants a fantastic experience without paying for it, turns out cs is very expensive, and even if stripe offered a paid support option, then we’d have people here complaining about being forced to pay to get their money back… no you took a discount service and now are being charged for premium.

1) I don't think the OP wants CS, they just want to get their damn money instead of having it held with no end in sight. Are there other contexts where someone can punt their obligations for 120 days (plus indefinite extensions) and not take heat about it?

2) On the back of my credit card there is an 800 number that I can call 24/7 and reach a human and get my problems sorted out. That's for my piddly 5 and 10 dollar transactions. For my checking account I can not only reach someone on the phone, I can go to a branch and sit across a desk from a bank officer in person, again with relatively piddly balances on account. OP has 10's of thousands on hold if the story is accurate: that seems to be deserving of at least as much attention.

3) I'm not a seller but on the buying side, it's also a huge hassle that I have to frequently jump through hoops and get some company's permission to spend my own money. The OP's story shows that the chokehold happens to sellers too. For me at least, bypassing that was a much bigger attraction of cryptocurrency than any of the cypherpunk weirdness was. (I never pursued it though). We need some kind of low-dollar payment product where the customer can choose to assume their own risk. I can understand if it doesn't extend to bigger transactions without qualifying the customer more extensively.

This sounds like theft. Maybe you should consider taking legal action.

> anyone who posts about this issue on reddit gets downvoted and teamed up against by established Reddit accounts, that I have to imagine are owned by Stripe.

You seem to be underestimating the power of fanboyism. If someone is a fanboy for a company/technology/whatever, they will defend it vehemently without even being paid for it.

> mainly talking about coding in PERL. It's a little sus.

But this now makes me want to ask you if you think those accounts are in the room with you right now.

It really depends on which subreddit you ask. I see plenty of support to people in these situations on r/entrepreneur and r/smallbusiness.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur+smallbusiness/search?q...

Developers may be biased towards Stripe because their API is among the best, and likely best-documented. (I had run into issues with the docs before, but was able to get to actual humans to resolve them. Eventually. Their first line support is just as bad as is described in any dilbertesque horror stories about outsourced support drones, giving you canned responses and having comprehension problems all the time.)

Now my theory is that Stripe will be a tad more inclined to help developers who help them build their empire via integrations and platforms and such, while actual merchants are a dime a dozen (in their eyes). I also have a perception that they have become way more MBA-aggressive in the recent years.

Does anyone know of a good abstraction layer that could allow me to use different payment gateways (Stripe, GoCardless, Authorize.net, 2Checkout, etc.)?

Recently heard of Lago Billing, which is great because it is self-hostable, but only supports Stripe and GoCardless. Chargebee sounds good, but expensive and a single point of failure itself. Primer.io looks like it is only for large enterprises.

When you're unjustly bullied by any "big co.", especially with significant money involved, don't waste any time:

escalate to —Arbitration—, if possible; —Court—, alternatively.

edit: https://www.google.com/search?q=stripe+arbitration+provision

What's the name of the fashion brand? I mean I'm no Stripe fan either, but how we supposed to know your not actually running a money laundering op? Or a Stripe negative advertising campaign ... or whatever. There is zero verifiable in your post.

Depending on where you are based, you can contact your financial ombudsman and make a formal complaint

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/

Skepticism is violence, folks!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34049130

I'm not a fan of HN becoming the Oprah show that the clueless internet turns to in hopes of godlike intervention to resolve customer service issues with faceless tech companies. But then again, I'm not above upvoting anything that hurts Stripe.

[edit] my main point here wasn't about Stripe, shitheads though they may be, it was that it's unhealthy to cultivate either (A) an external image that we can intervene (re: "I challenge anyone here to connect me to a human being at Stripe"), or (B) some kinda internal savior complex that would go along with that.

> But then again, I'm not above upvoting anything that hurts Stripe.

Why? What did they do to you?

Nothing. I've never been foolish enough to use them or direct a small business client towards using them. If I had been, based on this and a vast array of other similar complaints on this board and based on their business model that bundles transactions and balances merchant risk for gateways, I suppose that would be my own fault. But I do find them to be scummy as fuck, so I'm fine with them being taken down among the tech savvy - that is, people reading this board who may be in a position to recommend against clients using them as a processor.

I was curious to learn how you came to your stance and it seems to be entirely fueled by these fake reports and complaints.

I mean, I'm pretty sure they are giving some people unintentionally a bad time once in a while but I don't have evidence that they are "scummy". And really we shouldn't just swallow whatever people write here.

Like the current submission seems to be turning out to be fake (see other comments).

This submission does strike me as highly questionable (especially with the reddit references and the "challenge" to HN, as I pointed out). Which is exactly why HN shouldn't be the everyman's savior in resolving contractual issues with tech firms.

But my bias against Stripe is not based on internet gripes. I've guided clients through and written custom APIs to connect with at least half a dozen payment processors since early days (when it was direct to gateway). As such I've heard horror stories about many of them, and have a relatively good grasp of their respective business models as pertain to KYC, banking relationships, reserve holdings and how they deal with chargebacks. Many of the new wave engage in what I'd call shady practices or dark patterns geared toward screwing small business, but Stripe has the worst model and the worst reputation of anything I've seen since the dude who ran Liberty Reserve went into hiding. I don't think it's a stretch to call them scummy. Hell, my own barber and my massage therapist both got screwed by them.

Stripe ceo is active here and kinda gets carte blanche often, not sure why exactly this is, probably many people here invested in it one way or another.

I have no dog in this one, but stripe certainly should not get away scott free.

Even with the most shitty PSPs and processors, I get answers to my emails within hours, within minutes on Skype and phone calls whenever I want, and thats still slow for my taste.

Locking funds without costomer service or account managers? Wth?

I have psps smaller and bigger than stripe and none of them would dare to not habe 247 support.

At least my psps tell me to the face they will not pay out. Makes me sleep that little bit better.

Whatever the law or reason, there has to be a minimal correspondence.

Lets not give anyone the benefit of the doubt when there is more than one story like this.

I am from the finance sector and I guarantee that what is happening here is neither right nor professional, assuming the op story is truthful.

Get on parallel economy and others and take all your business and run away!

Yes unfortunately, Most of the FINTECH lack human touch.

The best option for you is to open case with EU competition commissionaire.

OP is in the UK, would they still be able to do this?

They are pretty responsive and I believe these things are happening in EU as well.

You're a business. Any reason why you didn't sue them?

Cost? It just happened and they’re still mourning for the loss?

A demand letter that will be processed by a human and probably resolve the issue is practically free.

The fact that this is flagged is pure evidence that the PR shills have infested HN.

It's flagged because it's a fake, spam story (as evidenced by other comments). But even if it weren't, there are obvious tells that it's not real.

You can easily and quickly reach Stripe support. They don't really do robot responses; their support has worsened in recent years but talking to humans there is not difficult.

Furthermore, you have utter nonsense like this:

> Stripe is taking advantage of a lack of regulation in this space to steal small merchant's large transactions. They see a big, outlier transaction and lick their chops, hiding behind KYC and "Fraud prevention" To hold your money indefinitely.

1. There is a TON of regulation in the space. That is why transactions get flagged in the first place.

2. Stripe cannot legally TOUCH that money. It's frozen, but it's absolutely not Stripe's, and that specifically is why I flagged the post.

3. The idea that Stripe "licks its chops" at a 3k usd transaction is so idiotic it deserves its own spot on the farm.

Really, how do you fall for this? I remember years ago, this hope that the current generations are growing up on technology and won't fall for the nigerian prince scams like grandma does.

why would you get Perl mixed into this rant? great programming lang

Report this at escammer.com

Considering you are posting this on HN, and you crated a new account to do this suggest you should have known about HN for quite some time.

The quickest way to get Stripe support is by posting on HN. You should have done that first.

I mean, come on, you've all been through this already, how could you fall for a reissue of PayPal?

I assumed that support and transparency were selling points of Stripe. If not, why bother? Just go with a good old local bank.

uhm, I assumed the ease or start and use were the the selling points

Why StripE and not Stripe?

Relevant, see my "Stripe’s opportunity: Reinventing Customer Service" from a while ago. [0]

[0]: https://medium.com/@simon/stripes-opportunity-reinventing-cu...

Don't Use Stripe