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Comment by qqtt | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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."?<

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.

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?

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

> 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.

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