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Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

1624 points yaythefuture | 24 comments | 15 Sep 22 16:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.765s | source | bottom

Saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32261868 from a couple weeks ago and figured I'd share my own story.

3 weeks ago, I woke up to a pissed off customer telling me her payments were broken. My startup uses Stripe Connect to accept payments on behalf of our clients, and when I looked into it, I found that Stripe had decided to deactivate her account. Reason listed: 'Other'.

Great.

I contact Stripe via chat, and I learn nothing. Frontline support says "we'll look into it." Days go by, still nothing. Meanwhile, this customer is losing a massive amount of business and suffering.

After a few days, my team and I go at them from as many angles as possible. We're on the phone, we're on Twitter, we're reaching out to connections who work there / used to work there, and of course, we reach out to patio11. All of these support channels give us nothing except "we've got a team looking into it". But Stripe's frontline seems to be prohibited from offering any other info, I assume for liability reasons. "We wouldn't want to accidentally tell you the reason this happened, and have it be a bad one."

We ask: 1. Why was this account flagged? "I don't have that information" 2. What can we do to get this fixed? "I don't have access to that information. 3. Who does? "I don't have access to that information" 4. What can you do about this? "I've escalated your case. It's being reviewed."

I should mention at this point that I've been running this business since 2016, my customers have been more or less the same since then, and I've had (back when it was apparently possible) several phone conversations with Stripe staff about my business model. They know exactly who our customers are and what services we offer, and have approved it as such.

After a week of templated email responses and endless anxiety, we finally got an email from Stripe letting us know that they had reviewed the account and reactivated it. We never got a reason for why any of this had happened, despite asking for one multiple times. Oh well, still good news right? Except nope, this was only the beginning.

This morning I woke up to an email that about 35% of my client accounts had been deactivated and were "Under review", the kicker here being that one of those accounts is the same one they already reviewed last week! This is either the work of incompetent staff or (more likely) a bad algorithm. No reasonable human could make this mistake after last week's drama.

So currently, my product doesn't work for 35% of my customers. Cue torrent of pissed off customer emails.

And the best part is, this time I have an email from Stripe this time: Apparently these accounts are being flagged, despite the notes on our file, and despite the review completed literally last week, as not in compliance with Stripe's ToS. They suggest that if I believe this was done in error, I should reach out to customer support. Oh, you mean the same customer support that can't give me literally any information at all other than "We have a team looking into it"? The same customer support that won't give me any estimates as to how long it's going to take to put this fire out? The same customer support that literally looked into this a week ago and found no issues!?

I feel like I'm going crazy over here. These accounts have hundreds of thousands of dollars in them being held hostage by an utterly incompetent team / algorithm that seems to lack any and all empathy for the havoc they wreak on businesses when they pull the rug out from under them with no warning, nor for the impact they have on customers when they all of a sudden lose all ability to make money. And all that for an account that has been using Stripe for nearly 7 years without issue!

This goes so far beyond "customer support declining at scale." If lack of customer support means that critical integrations start to fail, that's not a customer support failure, that's a fundamental business failure.

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orionint ◴[15 Sep 22 17:04 UTC] No.32855106[source]▶
Used to work for a “high risk” payment processor, we inherited tons of accounts that were terminated by Stripe, Square, and PayPal. Here’s one small bit of inside info that may help the newer businesses out there:

Most real payment processors (e.g. banks, merchant services companies) “underwrite” a company BEFORE allowing them to process. Underwriting means they look over the business model, financials, etc and make sure the business is an acceptable risk, not doing anything illegal or against their terms, etc. So you’re more likely to be declined initially, but if you’re lit up, you should be good for the future because the underwriters actually saw the deal and approved it.

While I haven’t worked for these other companies, a lot of experience seems to show that Stripe, Square and PayPal operate differently: they light up ANYONE, and then only underwrite when the account hits a critical threshold of revenue. So it’s easy to get an account there, but if you scale up, that’s when you’ll be scrutinized and potentially terminated. It’s a very unethical practice because it ends up hitting businesses at the worst possible time, when the termination or suspension causes a huge financial hit.

So basically, always have a backup processor and use these web based services at small scale to prove out your model, but NEVER rely on them as your sole payment solution.

replies(18): >>32855209 #>>32855229 #>>32855413 #>>32855475 #>>32855511 #>>32855624 #>>32855781 #>>32855816 #>>32855838 #>>32855852 #>>32855879 #>>32856102 #>>32856591 #>>32856799 #>>32859022 #>>32859240 #>>32860210 #>>32860907 #
awinter-py ◴[15 Sep 22 17:13 UTC] No.32855229[source]▶
seriously you should write this as a blog

(or if you are trying to be pseud, let me interview you and I'll write it)

if this is SOP it's important information

replies(2): >>32855548 #>>32855580 #
1. layer8 ◴[15 Sep 22 17:33 UTC] No.32855548[source]▶
I’m curious what benefit you think publishing the comment as a blog post would provide over the existent HN comment (which also has its own URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32855106). Possibly better SEO?
replies(5): >>32855677 #>>32855690 #>>32855815 #>>32855949 #>>32856051 #
2. i_am_jl ◴[15 Sep 22 17:40 UTC] No.32855677[source]▶
I don't think it's unreasonable to think that a blog post has an easier time gaining traction than a HN comment outside of HN users.
replies(1): >>32855810 #
3. humanistbot ◴[15 Sep 22 17:41 UTC] No.32855690[source]▶
I've literally never seen a link to an HN comment go viral on social media, such that my non-HN friends would read it. It happens for blog/medium/substack posts all the time.
replies(2): >>32855818 #>>32857504 #
4. layer8 ◴[15 Sep 22 17:48 UTC] No.32855810[source]▶
How, other than SEO? If you want to share a link to it, you already can.
replies(3): >>32855880 #>>32856046 #>>32866912 #
5. AkshatJ27 ◴[15 Sep 22 17:49 UTC] No.32855815[source]▶
More detail?
6. layer8 ◴[15 Sep 22 17:49 UTC] No.32855818[source]▶
But for what reason? The styling?
replies(2): >>32855928 #>>32856012 #
7. cubecul ◴[15 Sep 22 17:53 UTC] No.32855880{3}[source]▶
More that you can go deeper in context / detail, with images, styling, better links
8. elliekelly ◴[15 Sep 22 17:57 UTC] No.32855928{3}[source]▶
Definitely. HN is suspiciously devoid images. To most people on the internet in 2022 that alone makes it wholly uninteresting.
replies(2): >>32856367 #>>32858972 #
9. awinter-py ◴[15 Sep 22 17:58 UTC] No.32855949[source]▶
Good question. Feels like there's two Qs in there: 1) when is long-form better than short form, 2) why write about problems at all?

2. Why write at all: consensus drives policy change, and information drives consensus. Writing, of any length, assembles information, bundles it into an argument, and (if the argument lands) becomes a 'capsule' around which consensus can form.

1. Why long form: room for nuance and research. Long form can include different perspectives (including stripe's -- perhaps they have a reason for these practices). It can address questions like 'what % of the industry behaves this way, what are the downsides to the banks' approach'. The interview + editing process can tease out anecdotes that sharpen the argument, or uncover new aspects of the problem.

This part is selfish, but for the writer, long form lets you improve your own knowledge of the topic, and your ability to make arguments around it.

replies(1): >>32856330 #
10. codehalo ◴[15 Sep 22 18:03 UTC] No.32856012{3}[source]▶
HN reads like grumpy old tech and finance guys in Dockers pants and Alligator t-shirts stuck in 2000.
replies(1): >>32856487 #
11. collyw ◴[15 Sep 22 18:06 UTC] No.32856046{3}[source]▶
Name a blog post that has stuck with you because you learned something useful. Could you search for it and find it easily? Now do the same for an HN comment.
replies(2): >>32856192 #>>32856290 #
12. nibbleshifter ◴[15 Sep 22 18:06 UTC] No.32856051[source]▶
People outside of HN are more likely to click on and read a link to a blog post than a link to a random HN comment.

A blog post also feels more trustworthy than a random social media site comment.

Shocking, I know.

13. pessimizer ◴[15 Sep 22 18:17 UTC] No.32856192{4}[source]▶
I'm pretty confident I could find any HN post that I remember with the search box at the bottom, or by googling it with site:news.ycombinator.com.

With, half of the blogs that I liked I can't remember the name of the blog, it's probably either been dropped from search engine indexes for being older than a year or two or pushed to the 10th page by better SEO, or the site has simply vanished.

replies(1): >>32863831 #
14. layer8 ◴[15 Sep 22 18:24 UTC] No.32856290{4}[source]▶
That’s usually easy using Algolia when you have sufficiently unique search terms, but otherwise that’s what I meant by SEO. Any other reasons?
15. layer8 ◴[15 Sep 22 18:27 UTC] No.32856330[source]▶
Ok, I thought you meant publishing the same text as in the comment, but as a blog post. So what you actually meant was “please expand on this in longer form”. So “blog” not necessarily as a publishing medium, but as a genre of text.
replies(1): >>32856502 #
16. klyrs ◴[15 Sep 22 18:29 UTC] No.32856367{4}[source]▶
I often wonder how the site survives without sticky autoplay videos popping up halfway down the page and covering 80% of the content...
replies(1): >>32857919 #
17. Tao3300 ◴[15 Sep 22 18:36 UTC] No.32856487{4}[source]▶
They're alligator polos, you rugrat!
18. ◴[15 Sep 22 18:37 UTC] No.32856502{3}[source]▶
19. q7xvh97o2pDhNrh ◴[15 Sep 22 19:43 UTC] No.32857504[source]▶
> I've literally never seen a link to an HN comment go viral on social media

I've never thought about this, but now that you've pointed it out, I'm realizing this is genuinely a fantastic feature.

Sounds like yet another of the many perks of the spartan design here. All substance, with just a hint of (cascading) style.

20. dotancohen ◴[15 Sep 22 20:18 UTC] No.32857919{5}[source]▶
Surely it's due to the mobile application that HN is always pushing. And the invasive tracking. And the paywall. And the ads, the ads go without saying.
replies(1): >>32858981 #
21. easrng ◴[15 Sep 22 21:56 UTC] No.32858972{4}[source]▶
It uses images for the upvote/downvote arrows, the Y in the header, and the spacer gifs in the table layout (yes, HN uses table layouts)
22. bombcar ◴[15 Sep 22 21:58 UTC] No.32858981{6}[source]▶
The ads keep HN alive. But because each one only needs to sell "one product" (the job they're hiring for) nobody hardly notices them.
23. collyw ◴[16 Sep 22 09:01 UTC] No.32863831{5}[source]▶
OK, I have little doubt that many readers of HN could find something here, but I think that for the vast majority of people finding a blog post will be a lot easier than an HN post. Styling will be an obvious advantage, you will be able to take a very quick look at a blog post and be able to remember if it's what approximately you saw before or not. You will need to read at least partially through an HN post to gather if it is the wrong one and reject it.
24. i_am_jl ◴[16 Sep 22 14:57 UTC] No.32866912{3}[source]▶
Rich-embeds in social media/communications platforms, mostly. Simply taking up more space in a Discord/Slack/Teams/$SOCIAL channel with a bold title, an excerpt, and an image adds visibility, context and is more interesting to the viewer.

A link to an HN thread is opaque, uninteresting, and context-less.