
Stripe Is the New PayPal - disappointeddev
Dear HN,<p>I am only writing this post because Stripe are not responding to my emails.<p>I started using Stripe last month and everything was going smoothly. However, this week they sent me an email saying:<p>&quot;Stripe provides a service between banks and our users. In order to provide service to our users, we are urged by our banking partners to keep an eye on all accounts that sign up for our services. We&#x27;ve noticed that you have processed charges that seem to be unauthorized--in order to make charges with credit and debit cards, the owner of the card must consent to the charge. Charges on your account do seem to lack this consent, which unfortunately means that we will no longer be able to offer service&quot;<p>This makes no sense as I have had hundreds of payments and not a single payment has been disputed. So how could it be true that the payments are unauthorised? I have sent Stripe emails explaining this and they will not respond.<p>I am very disappointed. As a member of this community I assumed Stripe would treat developers making a living online with a little more respect. I plan to write a lengthy blog post explaining this in more depth.<p><i>Update: I am currently in contact with Stripe CEO over email. He is dealing with the issue. I will keep everyone updated.</i>
======
Danski0
After using Stripe for our subscription service for over 1year with
100'000euro+ monthly transcation we got a 10day notice that they would shut us
down. Also the mail was send late on friday before a long weekend, yeah! =)

No warnings, no chance to appeal, no heads up and absolutly no possiblity to
call them. Lost around half a million euros before we could get our customers
exported to another payment processor. Thanks Stripe!

It's a great service when it works, not so great at customer service.

~~~
kawsper
Did you break their rules? Their terms say that they can cancel your
agreement, but only with a 2 months notice:

> We can terminate this agreement for any reason on two months’ notice and
> immediately in certain circumstances

Source: [https://stripe.com/gb/terms](https://stripe.com/gb/terms)

~~~
krisdol
>certain circumstances (such as where you breach this Agreement)

It concerns me, as this still gives them full power to terminate the agreement
immediately anytime they want. They never define what "certain circumstances"
are, rather, they just provide one example.

EDIT: I would just like to say that I was mistaken. See the reply to my
comment. That said, the US terms differ in an important way.

~~~
grabeh
If you click 'Complete details' just below you will be provided with a full
list of the circumstances in which they can terminate with immediate effect
(although I acknowledge that the ability to terminate simply because a card
network/issuer requests this is not particularly transparent (but
understandable)):

\- _we determine in our sole discretion that you are ineligible for the
Service because of the risk associated with your use of Stripe, including
without limitation significant credit or fraud risk, or for any other reason;_

\- _you do not comply with any of the provisions of this Agreement, or_

\- _upon request of a Card Network or a card issuer._

~~~
krisdol
I see. I was mistaken. I didn't follow the Details link. I did notice
something equally concerning on US one

On the US terms, I see the following sentence:

"We may terminate this Agreement and close your Stripe Account at any time for
any reason effective upon providing you notice in accordance with Section A.15
above". It goes on to copy what the UK agreement had, but that one didn't
include this sentence.

------
pc
Stripe CEO here. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm taking a look at
what happened here.

OP (disappointeddev), if you could drop me an email, that'd be great:
patrick@stripe.com.

~~~
jeffmould
This response alone is why I will always recommend Stripe. The support may
need support of its own, but knowing that you can get management's attention
fairly easily says a lot of great things about the company and the people
working there in my book.

~~~
GuiA
Yeah, except not every Stripe customer knows that the real place to get
support is (apparently) Hacker News, rather than Stripe support. The fact that
the official channels are non responsive but a post on HN gets an immediate
response could be construed as a red flag: the company cares more about
avoiding bad PR than about having good customer service.

~~~
pc
Well, the "support" here is just much more visible than everything else that
we do. We provide support over as many channels as possible: we employ full-
time folks in #stripe on IRC, we monitor Twitter, we send thousands of emails
every day, we're rolling out phone support, we chat with customers on IM --
and, yes, we reply on HN. Obviously nobody _should_ have to post here, but
we'll certainly respond if they do.

Fraud-related cases are particularly hard, by the way. _Thousands_ of people
try to defraud us every day. (I guess it's a consequence of being highly-
visible and easy to set up.) And so the support for those cases has to be
handled a little differently.

~~~
onetallnerd
Has anyone defrauded you with a bitcoin payment yet? I assume volume is low,
but out of that volume has there been any reports of fraud?

~~~
onetallnerd
It was a genuine question?

------
jeffmould
Someone else posted last night (I'm on my phone or I would search for the
post) about Stripe support. Looking at their Twitter stream it appears they
are having a very difficult time managing their support infrastructure and do
not have a trouble ticket system. I love Stripe's API and have helped several
clients integrate it, but as the developer-friendly, anti-PayPal processor
they were once known for, this development is very discouraging. I know
Patrick and John are active on here so hopefully they will see this and come
up with a solution.

~~~
woodhull
We've run into this as well. It's absurd that a company of their size has no
support ticketing system. There have been occasions when we've had to rely on
personal relationships with staff at Stripe to simply get an email response to
our account questions.

Engineering support is great and responsive through IRC but, stripe
engineering staff there just shrug if you ask a business question.

~~~
jeffmould
Their engineering support is incredible, and their API is well-documented and
so easy to integrate. It is hard to believe that they can't spend a little
more time focusing on customer support, especially as they continue to add new
features and countries the problem is only going to increase. At least adding
a public-facing ticketing system would pull some pressure off. I don't
necessarily mind waiting for support, it is the not knowing if you even
received my support request that can be frustrating at times, especially when
there are real dollars at stake.

~~~
jusben1369
I think one thing that is not well understood is that Stripe has a "Freemium"
model. Prior to Stripe nearly all other payment processors required a minimum
monthly fee. Stripe's lack of any minimum monthly fee is something that makes
it very attractive and undoubtedly helped partly fuel their rapid growth. It's
a great example of how you can leverage VC funding to build a business. Having
said that it must mean a staggering amount of support emails from customers in
"production". That developer doing just 1 or 3 transactions a month at $100
each still feels as strongly about getting an issue resolved as someone doing
$1 million or $10 million a month. I've always wondered what that was like to
manage.

~~~
Aloha
I'd argue the processing fees do not make it freemium.

~~~
jusben1369
Yep. But even then you don't "pay" that fee (it's deducted and you get the
net) and you don't have a set monthly fee. So there's no hard cost of setting
up and maintaining a site with them.

~~~
Aloha
No MRC (monthly reoccurring charge) on a service does not make it free, you're
still paying for the service in a pay-per-use context.

~~~
jusben1369
Yep but you're getting a little hung up on definitions and missing the larger
point. Ie by proving that it's not a freemium model you're not really negating
the central point which is that the barrier to entry is substantially lower
(non existent) than with any/other competing services thus drawing in
exponentially more users than similar services resulting in a disproportionate
strain on their customer support vs others.

~~~
Aloha
Oh, Agreed.

Honestly, right or wrong - I've seen very few 'startups' really grok effective
customer service (I realize I'm over generalizing). Yes, a good Knowledge
Base/FAQ and ticketing/email system is important - but you need a phone
number, you need a call center probably too (even if its only 2-5 people
answering the phone) - you need more than email and ticketing - most
technology is complex enough that you need a person to talk to over the phone
to hold your customers hands - IMO - this is even doubled for anything that
need to integrate with your systems or has a device on your premises, but is
also applicable to a complex web service - I strongly believe it drives long
term customer retention and eases on boarding.

I'll point out as to why I believe this - outside of the technology hubs, the
folks with money are not the 'internet native' generation, they're older and
less comfortable with technology then we are.

------
hellbanner
\-- __PSA regarding Credit Card Validation __\--

Last year I was testing Stripe integration. I tried using my own credit card
with a fake name. Surprise, it went through. I emailed Stripe support. After
half a dozen emails discussing CC authorization I learned that Stripe _does
not_ and _can not_ validate Name & Address on credit card.

Stripe told me that Credit Card companies do not disclose this data to Payment
Processors like Stripe. Thus, Stripe simply passes on the name & address to
the CC API.

Interestingly enough, Name & Address are NOT validated by major credit card
companies. You can use junk names on your name & billing address and that will
NOT stop your credit card transaction from going through.

Try for yourself next time you order something online. Makes me wonder why
they even collect the data in the first place...

 __

~~~
mason55
> _Last year I was testing Stripe integration. I tried using my own credit
> card with a fake name._

This sounds like a great way to get your account shut down.

They provide test/mock APIs for a reason.

~~~
ghshephard
I'm willing to wager that a huge number of Credit Card transactions are
submitted with names that don't match the credit card. In 10+ years and
hundreds (thousands?) of transactions, I've never submitted a credit card
transaction that matched the name on my card (which has my full name, and I
just use my first and last name in the fields) - I've never been rejected.

~~~
dangrossman
It's the "using my own credit card" that sounds like a great way to get your
account shut down, not using it with a fake name. Charging your own cards is
something payment processors don't like for a number of reasons, like the fact
that it can be used to perpetrate all kinds of frauds: giving yourself cash
advances the card issuer hasn't approved, gaming credit card reward programs,
skewing your volume and reversal metrics the processor uses to evaluate your
account risk, etc.

------
johnnyg
We've been with Stripe going on a year and a half and they've been one of the
most responsive and with it service providers I've ever worked with.

Can you tell us how long it has been since you sent the email?

There must be some level of fraud prevention in any financial platform. You
didn't give many details as to the type of charges you made or evidence past
"no one charged back" as to how you made them. This is a public platform and I
understand less than full disclosure but your narrative that:

1\. You signed up

2\. You charged people legitimately

3\. You were cut off without notice

4\. No one responded to multiple attempts over more than 1 business day

5\. You were forced to take this action

Seems unlikely to be the full and absolute time line of events.

If it is, ok, post to HN and troll them. If not, is this really the medium?
Doesn't stripe get a say on which transactions will and won't process on their
own network?

If your expectation is "everything charges all the time period" then use
bitcoin. These are credit cards. There are rules. :-)

~~~
timboslice
I think you forgot a word:

>Doesn't stripe get a some say on which transactions will and won't their own
network?

~~~
johnnyg
Sorry for the typo, updated.

------
natemc
Stripe is a Ycombinator company. I got downvoted when I told the CEO of Stripe
my troubles with Stripe, he said to email but then never responded creating
the public perception that they care, when they don't.

You will just find downvoting brigades of people on HN when it comes to any YC
backed company. Which is probably why this will be my last post on HN. You
can't get anything truthful on here if YC has backed them.

~~~
vonklaus
> Which is probably why this will be my last post on HN

It is pretty great that the CEO comes on HN and handles support. That is a
skip-level meeting. Usually support requests are handled at the bottom of the
heirarchy pyramid, not the top. Yes people openly support and defend YC
companies, this community is only possible because of YC, and is comprised of
many employees, founders and peers of these companies.

If you don't like being disagreed with though, you can pick up your ball and
go home. I suspect that you will get a lot more value from this community than
the one time you couldn't get a CEO to directly address your problems.

~~~
velik_m
CEO is not handling support, he's handling PR

------
anurag
I work at Stripe, and I'm really very sorry about this. Mind emailing me at
anurag@stripe.com with details?

~~~
hellbanner
Does the company have any plans to introduce a ticketing management system?

~~~
derpsss
Obviously, no.

------
bargl
Can we please all take a look at disapointeddev's account and use just a
little bit of salt here? Just one grain maybe?

His account was obviously activated for the purpose of submitting this post
and he has provided NO follow up comments at this time. His post has been up
for an hour.

I'm not saying anything about the validity of his claim, but we obviously need
more information. Please check back and wait for him to respond to the many
great questions already on here.

~~~
disappointeddev
As I said, I will be writing a more lengthy blog post about this. The only
reason I posted this on HN is because I want Stripe to give me attention and
solve the problem. I love Stripe's API which is why I want them to solve the
issue.

Also, I made a new account for my privacy.

~~~
bargl
Thanks for replying. I'd like it if you could link to the blog after you've
finished writing it, but if you don't want to for privacy purposes I get that.

I just see people running off in a million directions in the comments on HN
and it's nice to wait and let things play out a little before we jump on any
bandwagons, this is an event that requires a follow up to be a complete story.
So please also follow up with your experience with Stripe after coming to this
forum (through link to your blog or in the comments or an edit). I'm sure we'd
all like to get the complete story.

~~~
sdalfakj
> let things play out a little

Dude will be losing money while you get your popcorn ;)

------
minimaxir
> _So how could it be true that the payments are unauthorised?_

Stolen cards, for instance, which may be more likely to happen in some
industries than others.

While I understand the need for ambiguity with respect to your business
operations, this post is too vague to give any understanding as to why Stripe
blocked your account.

~~~
weego
The post talks about unauthorised charges. There is no way to validate the
card prior to Stripe capturing payment, so they certainly are not upset about
people using stolen cards on your own site, as you have no way of mitigating
that. The migration to Stripe that I handled a year or so ago had 5 or 6
stolen cards/people iterating card lists looking for working cards per day and
never had a complaint from Stripe.

Once you have a card you can absolutely take arbitrary amounts of money from
it, and this appears to be their suggestion. It could well be that they are
using (purposely) vague wording that confuses people about their charging
structure (in one off payments or subscriptions) which generates complaints to
banks and then Stripe have to deal with it. Or it could be a big
misunderstanding Stripe side and they have done nothing wrong. I have an
opinion on which one I think is most likely.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Sort of. Some products are real magnets for stolen card use, for example
anything that sells "gift cards" or "stored value card" where the crooks can
convert a one time use of a stolen credit card into a 'clean' gift card. Some
forms of merchandise are similar.

~~~
mootothemax
_Some products are real magnets for stolen card use_

Charities also have huge problems with CC fraud, as they're seen as an easy
target to test card details against before making the "full" purchase
elsewhere:

[http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/stolen-cards-tested-on-
chari...](http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/stolen-cards-tested-on-charity-
sites-a-7608/op-1)

------
kawsper
I tried to help a business that received the exact same message as you. They
had $7.500 on their account.

We eventually gave up, as no one from Stripe answered with other than pre-
written answers. I even tried pinging them on IRC, but they couldn't help with
these matters.

They had no disputes, and Stripe provided no reason for the cancellation.

------
gharial
I recently reached out to Stripe to get their opinion on whether or not I
should bother trying to integrate stripe.js with my browser based game. I
obviously didn't want to invest the effort if they were just going to shut me
down a few weeks later. It says in their TOU that virtual currency sales are
allowed so long as it's self contained and can't be traded for real money or
across other websites - that was the case with my game.

After over a week of waiting for a reply (PayPal's initial responses are
rarely helpful, but at least they tend to respond..), they told me I shouldn't
use Stripe because I would almost undoubtably be considered high risk. Why not
just say it isn't allowed?

~~~
onewaystreet
They do in their TOS.

~~~
gharial
[https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-
businesses](https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses)

>Video game or virtual world credits: Sale of in-game currency unless the
merchant is the operator of the virtual world

I am.

>Virtual currency or stored value: Virtual currency that can be monetized,
resold, or converted to physical or digital products and services or otherwise
exit the virtual world (e.g., Bitcoin); sale of stored value or credits
maintained, accepted and issued by anyone other than the seller

It can't and isn't.

Their TOS actually makes no mention of virtual currency whatsoever.

~~~
pki
Game currency purchases that aren't converted or sold are still disgustingly,
ridiculously high risk, bordering internet pharmacy level stuff, especially if
a lot of under-18 play your game.

~~~
gharial
Again - then why not just explicitly ban it altogether? Why say it's allowed
under certain parameters and then ban users anyway when they meet those
parameters exactly as required? They obviously have a list of
products/transactions deemed too high-risk by their contract, they need to
state what they are explicitly if they want to stop the PR bleeding.

I've been doing this for four years and we've never had a single dispute, but
that's really neither here nor there.

------
dangrossman
What were you selling, how and to whom? I feel like there's probably more to
this.

~~~
happyscrappy
It is quite likely that certain outrage deflating details were left out.
Stripe and Paypal are polar opposites in my experience.

~~~
onion2k
"I've had a good experience with Stripe so everyone must have unless it was
their fault" is a good example of the Halo Effect. It's entirely possible that
Stripe have failed one of their customers without it being the customer's
fault.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect)

~~~
happyscrappy
I said "quite likely" not "must have" which makes your argument very weak.

------
disappointeddev
Update: After speaking with Stripe I have decided to end our dealings.
Unfortunately the issue could not be resolved. We are looking at alternate
providers.

~~~
jordanthoms
When you are vague and refuse to elaborate, it can only lead us to think that
your business isn't as squeaky clean as you make out.

~~~
developer1
I believe you meant to say "it proves your business isn't as squeaky clean as
you make out". With a response like that, clearly their business was operating
in some kind of grey area. It's unfortunate that when this happens, the
company (ex: Stripe) can't come back and disclose specific details about the
scumbag making a stink on HackerNews over something that the company was
perfectly in the right to shut down.

Unfortunately, a lot of businesses want to accept credit cards online with
little to no effort in managing the risk. 1-2% doesn't sound like enough
wiggle room, but if a company isn't using misleading marketing, is not
defrauding users, has a product actually worth what they are charging, and
offers instant support for refunds - then staying under 2% is not difficult.
Too many businesses want the risk to be handled by external forces. If you
want to accept money online, make sure your business is prepared to manage the
risks. You can't just drop in the payment processing and wait for the money to
roll in.

------
exelius
This is what happens when you replace business relationships with APIs. APIs
should complement a business relationship, not replace it.

------
holdenc
It's worth noting: if you do 100K+ monthly via PayPal, you get a VIP support
team for all business issues, and a Christmas card with their faces printed on
the front. No kidding.

~~~
hamburglar
It's actually quite a bit lower than 100K. My company does about $20K/mo with
PayPal and we have an assigned account rep who we contact directly for
support. I don't think they've ever sent us a Christmas card, though. Maybe
that's the difference between $20K and $100K. :)

------
manishsharan
The one thing that surprises me most is why banks don't provide an payment
processing API for their customers. I consult at a top bank in Canada ,and I
brought this issue up several times in the online banking division and was met
with complete indifference. The middle management ( all PMP certified) dont
have the vision and the upper management is busy coasting along. My reasoning
was that the bank is already doing a lot of business with the business
customers and there is trustful relationship and quite a lot of these
customers had some form of online presence ,so helping them with online
payment processing would be cheaper for the bank ,given their working
relationship. and these businesses would not consider taking their business to
competition as that would entail switching costs. Also, fraudulent transaction
would be less given the relationship history. But what do I know ? I am just
an engineer .

~~~
dangrossman
This is already something every major US and Canadian bank offers. It's called
a merchant account. The API for using a merchant account on the web is called
a payment gateway. They all offer them.

[http://www.rbcroyalbank.com/RBC:z7TrmawYUA4BRAAwmCMAAAD8/bus...](http://www.rbcroyalbank.com/RBC:z7TrmawYUA4BRAAwmCMAAAD8/business/cardprocessing/index.html)

[http://www.tdcanadatrust.com/products-services/small-
busines...](http://www.tdcanadatrust.com/products-services/small-
business/merchant-services/)

[http://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/0,,557,00.html](http://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/0,,557,00.html)

[https://www.bmoharris.com/us/small-
business/services/merchan...](https://www.bmoharris.com/us/small-
business/services/merchant-services)

[https://www.cibc.com/ca/small-business/merchant-
services.htm...](https://www.cibc.com/ca/small-business/merchant-
services.html)

~~~
manishsharan
Actually no they don't : atleast not in the way paypal or Stripe et al do. I
have had meetings with some their "small business advisors" and and I ran
screaming to Stripe. Getting and using Interac device and connection was
simple enough but their solution for online payment processing will set your
hair on fire.

------
gdulli
Every time I see a post like this it makes me wonder if other businesses have
unfairly gotten a bad reputation because of anecdotes reported by anonymous
customers whose version of the story is subjective, biased, possibly
exaggerated, etc.

When a company is huge, even one out of 100,000 transactions going badly adds
up to a lot of anecdotes.

~~~
yc1010
In case of PayPal the bad reputation is deserved

In case of Stripe i sent last week a question in reply to an email from them
from last year, there is no ticketing system it seems I got replies from 2
different people today after a week (not the same person one who originally
was friendly and talked to me and might not be working there). Both answers
were somewhat positive but a bit contradictory.

I do not believe that Stripe are fundamentally "evil" like PayPal, well not
yet anyways we will see how turns out with more growth and more staff who
might not care about customers.

------
jdc0589
Full disclosure, we are still in the implementation stage with Stripe, nothing
in production yet, but customer service has been excellent so far. Sure, it's
non-traditional, and I think they need a better user facing ticket system
especially for important things that need tracking + accountability.

Every time I have had a question about functionality, needed someone to take a
look at test cases in my account, etc.., someone from Stripe has ALWAYS been
available in IRC and quick to respond.

That said, if they really are canceling accounts on short notice, that's
pretty shitty. No reasonable sized application can realistically swap to a
completely new payment provider in a week. There should be a bare minimum of a
month or two of notice if your account is getting terminated.

------
gt565k
In all honesty you probably got stuck in some automated loop.

It is kind of sad that the support isn't more expedited for things like this.

Seems like more and more people are turning to HN in order to get visibility
and get their Stripe problems resolved. That is quite unfortunate...

I upvoted for visibility, as I know how frustrating it is to deal with payment
processors, especially when your living / business depends on it.

------
wehadfun
Something similar happened

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9619282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9619282)

------
hharnisch
Have you tried tweeting at them?
[https://twitter.com/stripe/](https://twitter.com/stripe/) They're way more
responsive over twitter than email.

~~~
deadmik3
You shouldn't have to publicly tweet at a company about an issue regarding
your bank accounts/debit cards to get their attention though

~~~
hharnisch
You don't have to, they accept DMs from people they don't follow.

------
lnanek2
Kind of reminds me of doing business with Google. Most times they ban you it
is just a robot that has no clue it is wrong. They just set the thresholds
ridiculously high and put up with false positives intentionally as a business
choice. Throwing out some innocents is worth it to them to throw out anyone
faking clicks or whatnot.

------
beat
Fraud is an incredibly difficult problem for payment processors, for both
technical and business reasons. It's well worth studying if you're into this
sort of thing.

Fraud is a sensitivity/specificity problem. For sensitivity, Stripe wants to
detect as many actual fraud cases as possible, because undetected fraud is
expensive. For specificity, they want as few false positives as possible,
because false positives mean angry customers who feel mistreated.

Generally, there's a sensitivity/specificity tradeoff, and priorities need to
be set (which is worse - letting criminals get away, or frustrating honest
customers?). But at such a scale, and with so many creative minds working on
new mechanisms for fraud, it's impossible to achieve perfect numbers on either
side.

------
mseebach
Pick two:

\- Strongly regulated banks/strong consumer protection in financial services.

\- Good merchant customer service.

\- Cheap credit card processing.

~~~
stephengillie
Security/Convenience/Price

Security and Convenience are a classic tradeoff. I suppose you could argue
that a good implementation of either isn't cheap.

------
blfr
I'm just surprised the handle disappointeddev was still available.

Do you sell cheap virtual goods? They're sometimes used to test stolen cards I
heard.

------
Osiris
I use the MinFraud service from MaxMind to try to avoid unauthorized
transactions. Using Braintree, I first do an Authorization, if that goes
through, I send details to MinFraud. If that passes a threshold, then I submit
the payment for settlement. If not, I void the transaction.

This process has helped to avoid all kinds of scammers using my website to try
to validate stolen credit card details.

~~~
jonathancordeau
Maybe you should build it. YC RFS Maybe?
[https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/](https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/)

------
fasteo
This is pretty useless. You should give some context.

Using a disposable HN account does not help either.

------
tptacek
If every time a company popular on HN did something that one HN user found
inexplicable we had a top-of-the-front-page story about it, the front page
would be nothing but complaints. An "Ask HN" would make more sense, since that
would (a) generate information instead of just broadcasting a complaint, and
(b) reveal whether there was a trend behind it.

I flagged this story, and hope other people will too.

~~~
jbrooksuk
With all due respect, take a quick look through the replies, there are a lot
of "I experienced this too" comments. If you go further and search HN you'll
see that this tends to be a common problem with Stripe support.

I think that this type of post is fine for HN. It's a YCombinator backed
company, with the founders and most of the team commonly browsing the site and
people here are usually able to point you in the right direction.

~~~
rgbrenner
_It 's a YCombinator backed company, with the founders and most of the team
commonly browsing the site and people here are usually able to point you in
the right direction._

That's understandable.. but this isn't a support forum, and people would stop
visiting if it became one.

~~~
jbrooksuk
In most circumstances that'd be fine, but as the OP states, he's tried getting
in touch with them. This is essentially the last resort.

------
spdustin
Wouldn't it help in a lot of cases to have an automatic escalation system in
place, via SLA rules or other triggers, to raise up the visibility of messages
from people whose accounts are being shut down? Have it post to IRC, Slack,
PagerDuty, etc. when an email comes in from a customer flagged as "account
closing by administrative action" or whatever?

------
DINKDINK
>So how could it be true that the payments are unauthorised?

It could be no fault of your own but maybe your customers are using stolen
credit cards.

------
kitbrennan
As mentioned by many others - there are a number of details missing here that
are extremely relevant. What are you selling? Where? To whom? If you had
hundreds of charges in your first month, did you migrate over from another
payment supplier or are they brand new customers? If you migrated, how did you
migrate?

I used to work on fraud operations at a payment processor and there was always
more to the story. There were four categories that account's broadly fell
into:

* The quiet fraudster. These would either have a scam business model with real victims attempting to pay, or would not have a business and were using stolen payment details to pay themselves. The quiet fraudster would not argue when you closed their account - they would just sign up again and try a different approach to get round your system.

* The loud fraudster (the vast majority of fraudsters). These come in all shapes and sizes. They were often the most obvious frauds (100 payments from the same IP at our max payment amount, within 10 minutes of each other). Unfortunately they sometimes came in the form of someone deluded - for example the man that sold 'magic beans' that cured AIDS. These are the loud fraudsters because they will either shout down the phone at your support team (shouting never helps when calling support - by the way), or try and drum up negative PR to create pressure.

* The accidental fraudster. These people have good intentions, but are none-the-less breaking the rules. For example, migrating all of your customers over to a new payment supplier by filling out a new payment form on their behalf (note - I worked for a payment processor that was not based on cards - this method may be allowed for CC though I doubt it). The accidental fraudster might also have fraudulent customers paying them yet be a legit business - for example online sellers of jewellery will have a lot of people pay with stolen details hoping that the business will ship the goods before the payment is flagged. Sometimes you can work with the business to fix the issue, many times you have to let them go (remember, they will have all the signs of an obvious fraudster - so you have to be sure that their story is true).

* The innocent. As you can imagine, sometimes there are people that have all the signs of a fraudster yet are perfectly legitimate. There can be many reasons for this.

===

Without a lot more information, I cannot begin to speculate what category the
author falls into - hopefully one of the latter two.

That said, as much as I love what Stripe in general, it is completely
unacceptable for them not to have an escalated support/appeals process for
fraud complaints. If they have made a mistake (which happens even with the
best fraud systems), then they could be destroying a business that might have
customers/employees/suppliers that are also relying on them to receive their
payments on time.

------
christop
Reminds me of this tangentially-related comment from jwz a few days ago:

[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/06/internet-commerce-how-
does-i...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/06/internet-commerce-how-does-it-
fucking-work/#comment-162859)

------
josefresco
Square might be the new PayPal in that they're (finally) big enough to have
banks breathing down their neck. Honestly, I think the hate is misplaced (for
both Square and PP), and should be directed towards the banks who have pushed
the security burden upon these tech providers.

------
amelius
Why isn't there a standard way of filing complaints against a company and/or
discussing them online? It would be so helpful if a consumer could just go to
www.company.com, and click on a "discuss website" or "complain" button in the
browser.

------
joshdance
TLDR - One devs account was shut down. He wants support and is getting it in
the comments.

------
gukov
Good to know, but is there anyone that's better right now?

------
djmollusk
I've had no problems getting responses back from Stripe. Glad to see the CEO
responded. Please please please don't become PayPal!

------
GBond
Is it me of posting/commenting on HN has become the default method of
resolving a Stripe issue when all normal channels fail?

------
weego
This is pure gamification of the site. So many points for making a baseless
statement with a most likely heavily edited version of the events and then get
exposure just because _DAE companies hate us entrepreneurs_

Everyone here should know better than this. When I had a problem, I phoned up
Stripe and sorted it in minutes. I didn't post on the internet when my
business was suffering.

~~~
Pyramids
I'm curious how you phoned them up, as they're quite adamant and public about
not offering any sort of phone based point of contact.[1]

[1] [https://support.stripe.com/questions/do-you-have-a-phone-
num...](https://support.stripe.com/questions/do-you-have-a-phone-number-i-can-
call)

------
gravanom
Huh, and here I am just finalizing my application for Stripe's "user ops"
support crew.

~~~
pbreit
Congrats, it's a great company.

------
elliotec
Scary. I was hoping they'd remain the oasis in the harsh desert of online
payment systems.

------
edem
I will not use Stripe's services while I see these support issues cropping up.

------
fndrplayer13
What was the end result of your discussion with the CEO? Was everything
resolved?

------
ShirsenduK
Have you tweeted to them?

~~~
roosterjm2k2
The fact that this is a valid reply saddens me...

~~~
timboslice
Right? This is the financial industry, you shouldn't have to "publicly shame"
a company to get a response.

A ticketing system would give some organization to the chaos

~~~
eertami
Hell, I shouldn't have to register for a twitter account to be able to contact
someone in any industry.

------
paulhauggis
..Or the new Google..or the new Amazon.

Both of the above companies have nearly 100% automated responses. With Amazon,
if you get your selling account put on hold for any reason (even if it's by
mistake through their automated bots), you will not be able to talk to anyone
on the phone or through email. Your account is also put on hold for 90 days
and your money might get transferred back to you when they feel like it.

It happened to me a few years back. A customer was ordering merchandise,
stealing it, and filing disputes with Amazon. I wasn't able to block the
customer, because it's not possible with their current system. Support was
unhelpful (automated copy/paste responses) and they pretty much sided with the
customer every time and deemed my account a "threat". Before this, 100%
feedback.

It's a good lesson to learn: Don't base your business on one companym because
they might just pull it out from under you one day.

~~~
akhatri_aus
Except Google and Amazon's primary customers are consumers. Amazon's customer
support is quite good afaik, at least if you're on the buying end.

Stripe is a B2B business it's also a bit 'lower layer'. You would have to rely
on them for your business quite heavily.

~~~
wmf
I guess this is the endpoint of "consumerized" B2B. Slick UI, very easy to
use, low pricing, no support.

------
anotherangrydev
Just my 2¢. I create custom web commerce solutions for a few small/medium
businesses in Mexico. Ever since Stripe launched a few years ago I wanted to
try them out but, as expected, they were not available yet here.

Still, I subscribed to their 'mailing list' in order to be notified whenever
they would launch. Last year, I've heard that they were about to do it and
eventually announced the market as 'Beta', whatever that means. Again, I
subscribed to their list, this time, in order to be 'invited for their private
beta'. I'm pretty sure I was at the top of their list, because back then not
many people knew about stripe and further, less people from Mexico were
interested with them; tbh, nowadays Stripe is something that you don't hear in
the field in Mexico, at all.

To this day I haven't heard from them, and for what I see Stripe here in
Mexico operates more like some kind of secret society than a real business. My
point is, I'm not doing business with them, and the reason is that it is clear
that they're not here to offer a payment solution for developers in general,
they are just here to hang out and provide the payment backbone for a few of
their friends, and that's it.

Even if I'm later deemed 'worthy of their attention', I won't integrate their
payments platform with any kind of serious project that I would develop, and
the reason is that they will always look at me as 'just another guy' and
whenever I come up with some real problem that would need their attention they
would just check out their A-list, realize that my name is not there and
pretty much let me fuck up; just like it's doing it with many of the other
guys that are posting here.

For the moment I'll stick with PayU which I think is, by the way, a much
better payment platform than Stripe if you take out all the 'pay with a single
JSON Curl' fanfare.

TL;DR: Ignoring your actual clients is the worst PR ever.

------
AC__
All of these payments services are going to die within 5 years anyway. Before
people get all pissy and down vote this assertion let me you remind you that a
massive(and growing) portion of the world has become completely disillusioned
with the global fiat currency system(or perhaps just enlightened as to how it
works?), regardless, its days are numbered. I am not however entirely
convinced that cryptocurrencies, namely bitcoin, aren't in fact a creation of
global financiers anticipating rejection of the fiat currency model, but fuck
it we'll see.

~~~
thoughtpolice
Hacker News: where some people legitimately believe that the entire world will
abandon the current credit/monetary system, because reasons (or alternatively,
"just because" \- you know, to see 'how it works', because an entirely new
monetary system is like testing on some FiveFinger shoes to be spontaneous).

Also, Bitcoin is totally an invention by the Fed to ween people off fiat,
despite the fact the Bitcoin network and its total overall volume are a joke
compared to global currency trade, and basically worse, or completely
irrelevant, for consumers in pretty much all cases.

If there was any ever proof techno libertarian supernerds are insanely
disconnected from reality, stuff like this is it. You have a better chance of
actually being The Highlander. But seriously, I could write a comedy novel
about this stuff at this point - so do continue to go on.

~~~
AC__
I'm disconnected from reality? So how do you view the global monetary system
working 10 years from now? Will the world be using U.S. petro-dollars? Can the
fed print off another hundred TRILLION and avoid hyper-inflation. Like it is
all well and good to say I have my head up my ass but can you give me some of
these answers?

~~~
task_queue
Why would the world shift from a currency that is economically and politically
entrenched via trade and treaty?

What would Bitcoin solve that the USD doesn't?

Why would the world accept a technological "solution" whose implementation
already contains dire technical problems?

What makes you think hyperinflation is a realistic outcome?

If I grant you a world that decides fiat model is Bad, why would they choose a
system that is inherently centralized? One whose early adopters and hoarders
have been manipulating the crypto-currency market for their advantage for
years? One whose transaction history is public to _everyone_? One that only
has a handful of gatekeepers, that have been proven to work with governments
and have been caught delaying transactions to profit from the change in the
price in Bitcoin?

