
Tell HN: Stripe Is the New PayPal (Again) - yougotpaypaled
This must be one of my darkest days.<p>Have been a customer with Stripe for 6 years since their beta started here in Germany.<p>Recently took on a project for one of our oldest customers (a German university) to build a conference registration for their annual conference with SEPA direct debit.<p>The technical support I received from our contact at Stripe the weeks before was literally the best and most detailed I have ever seen. We also discussed everything regarding the project in terms of number of transactions (there is a fixed number of attendants) and pricing (there is only one price my customer has for tickets). All was approved &quot;sounds good&quot;.<p>After weeks of development the project finally went live yesterday. Everything smooth. At 2am I notice some failed charges that piled up quickly. When I look at them in the dashboard I see &quot;volume reached. Please contact support@stripe.com&quot;. Wait what?<p>I contacted them 10 hours ago. Do you think anyone at Stripe would actually help in a situation like this? No. Contacted them 2 times more since then. There is NO ONE on the phone or chat who can actually help, they can only refer you to someone else via email...who is not writing back.<p>I literally do not know what to do. I have done everything I can over the last weeks to deliver a great project, stayed up for the last 24 hours during this nightmare.<p>1) the exact transaction volume was discussed and approved before, number of transaction, pricing, I layed out everything, did every additional verification for people in charge, etc.<p>2) Not a single notification from Stripe when the &quot;volume limit&quot; issue hit. No email. Nothing. I discovered this purely by accident.<p>How am I gonna explain this to my customer? I have worked for them for 8 years only to let them down during their most important time of the year. Who contacts all those customers with failed charges? Who knows if they will buy again?
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simplecto
You get on the phone and explain the situation.

Immediacy and transparency is key.

Here is what I know.

Here is what I dont know.

These are the people I have contacted.

This is what they have said (or not replied to).

Ask customer if they have any contacts at banks, govt, etc they can leverage
for you.

This is just like a real-life status page. You just need to keep all
stakeholders informed as to the status, follow-up, and keep hammering stripe
or their agents until you make progress.

If you are short on resources, raise that flag to your client as well.

Grinding through this to a satisfactory resolution will make your relationship
STRONGER because of how you handle unknown unknown's.

Building on this -- this is what will go into your future business continuity
plan for the future.

Anyway, my $0.02

~~~
yougotpaypaled
Thanks for the advice!

I took your advice and communicated everything in a very transparent way to
the customer.

Regarding Stripe after email/call/chat I got in touch on their IRC channel and
the user (Stripe engineer?) karllekko got in touch with me. The issue is now
resolved. karllekko if you are reading this once again: thank you.

