Ask HN: Have you noticed an increase in the number of Stripe Disputes lately?

[cellover]

I work on a SaaS app in France. In the past few days we noticed an enormous increase of disputes in our Stripe account, all of them are linked to SEPA payment method (wire).

We used to have 1 every month of so, now we have had around 7 in 2 days.

[EDIT] - I received an email from Stripe a few minutes after I submitted this post on HN. It seems there has been an issue with the management of SEPA payments between end of september and start of october.

[EDIT 2] - I actually received the email before submitting this post, I just did not notice it ;)

[edwinarbus]

(Edwin from Stripe here.) These aren't actual disputes. A very small portion of Stripe businesses saw failed SEPA payments show up as disputes instead. (We've since fixed the bug and we're in touch directly with any impacted businesses on next steps.)

[aliqot → edwinarbus]

Edwin, thanks for popping in.

Serious question that comes up every time I see you: When you leave Stripe, are we going to be shouting into the HN void? I've seen you here so often when Stripe is acting up, but how is it that this stuff happens so often and that HN is the most effective means of resolution?

This is probably not the case, but it very much looks like if I'm a green name on HN or someone with no rapport, or who doesn't have a catchy title on their "stripe hurt my business" post, that I'm just not going to get the right amount of support on HN to get stripe via you to fix my issue.

Is this something that's talked about at all in the upper echelons of stripe? I am not the only person who feels this way from the HN crowd.

[joshxyz → aliqot]

they actually got a cron job that scans the hn api for posts like this, which automatically replies "hi this is edwin from stripe here" + some human relatable reason generated thru machine learning.

edwin is not a human, he's a super ai developed in stripe skunk works division.

[SOLAR_FIELDS → joshxyz]

The first 15 words or so of your post is actually most likely true.

[ksec]

>I received an email from Stripe a few minutes after I submitted this post on HN

I guess posting it on HN gets the fastest reply from CS.

[edwinarbus → ksec]

Funny timing. We hit send on the email batch at 16:43 UTC. Initial HN post looks to be from 16:44 UTC.

[cellover → edwinarbus]

+1 actually yes I noticed the email after I submitted this post.

[BrianHenryIE]

OT: Disputes are a farce. I supply USPS tracking for all disputes and they are always ruled in favour of the customer.

[gnicholas → BrianHenryIE]

I usually win disputes, but not the ones categorized as "fraud" (as in, "someone stole my credit card and signed up for this thing"). When it is accurately categorized ("I forgot this subscription would renew"), I rarely lose. It's just a bunch of time I have to spend getting together the information.

But it's funny that someone can win on a "fraud" claim when it's a renewal of a subscription that they themselves signed up for. IIRC to win on fraud you have to show proof of signature or ID or something, to prove it was that person who signed up. Of course, there is no reasonable way to do this online, and the banks just happily rule in favor of the customer.

[paxys → BrianHenryIE]

Disputes are absolutely not a farce. I'd probably stop online shopping/booking entirely if my CC company didn't exist as an intermediary when things inevitably went south.

[at-w → BrianHenryIE]

I'm curious about your experience as I had a similar impression before dealing with disputes on a large scale, but since actually fighting them with detailed evidence have won ~80% of them. This is true of order not received, claiming the entire transaction was fraudulent etc. With that being said my business is a digital service so that may be the reason for our different experiences.

What kind of dispute claims do most of your customers make, and what kind of evidence do you provide besides USPS tracking?

[esher]

Stripe customer here. I recently had to deal with a credit card dispute, which we all loose. I asked them why. They gave me a general reply on SEPA disputes, which was actually good, since I noticed that most of our disputes, spawning over months are about SEPA.

My reply to them, from the 1st of October (answer pending at the 9th of October):

SEPA:

We used to issue SEPA on our own via XML directly with the bank for 5 years. I know how it works.

At Stripe: Is there a differentiation between failed (bounce, not enough money on the bank account) and a dispute (return the money please) from your side with SEPA? With our SEPA payments at Stripe I can see disputes, but no fails. Why? In our previous practice I saw some fails (bounces, (charge-backs)) but rarely any disputes. Please explain.

Credit Card dispute form:

The problem I have is more about the general dispute form. The questions asked do not apply to our business. You ask for:

A signature from the client. Of course there is none. This is a B2B web service.

When was the customer presented with the cancellation policy While signing up. Like with your service, there are terms you need to check but never read. We provide a date string and then what?

Why was the service not cancelled Why do you ask me that? Ask the client. The client did not cancelled. Service cancellation is automated via Dashboard when the client clicks certain buttons.

Supporting server logs. We don't keep logs that long for privacy GDPR, also such things are not logged in ways humans can identify.

This dispute: https://dashboard.stripe.com/payments/pi_…

What's the purpose for me filling these forms when we always loose them anyhow? Shall I rather accept the disputes to stop wastingly time? What is the acceptance criteria for a dispute. I understand that this send by you to the banks but I hope you can still shine some light on it.

Thanks!

In general I am happy with Stripe. We have been with WireCard before. That was bad, even things were still working.

[esher → esher]

Stripe now:

> As of October 10th, we have identified that more SEPA Direct Debit payments were impacted by this issue than previously known.

[Zaheer]

Short answer: No (for levels.fyi)

Is it typical for you to receive payments via Wire rather than credit card? If not perhaps the customers are fraudulent. Also I'm not entirely sure how SEPA works but could you just accept wires via your bank directly? For wires we've found it's easier to just have it sent directly to our bank account.

[capableweb → Zaheer]

> Is it typical for you to receive payments via Wire rather than credit card? If not perhaps the customers are fraudulent. Also I'm not entirely sure how SEPA works but could you just accept wires via your bank directly? For wires we've found it's easier to just have it sent directly to our bank account.

Sounds to me you don't actually use Stripe for SEPA transfers yourself?

[ThePowerOfFuet → Zaheer]

> Also I'm not entirely sure how SEPA works but could you just accept wires via your bank directly?

SEPA is not a wire payment, but rather better in every way.