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Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved]

501 points eeemmmooo | 5 comments | 03 Jan 23 15:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.764s | source

This is an update to my previous post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34189717 . Stripe has resolved the issue and everything has been released. I told the contacts at Stripe that I would do a write up about what happened from my point of view to help them understand what happened to me. I figured it would be good to do that write up publicly to help both Stripe and potential Stripe customers understand what happened and how it was resolved.

Summary: Stripe put my accounts in review for a spike in sales on Cyber Monday. Throughout the month we received very little communication from Stripe and had many support chats and calls. Keep in mind that the whole time Stripe was still accepting payments on our behalf on all of these accounts. Each of the chats/calls asked us to upload the same invoices each time for review and gave us vague information that our accounts were being reviewed. Finally out of frustration I posted on HN about my issue. Thanks to @dang for getting a Stripe employee to respond and he was finally able to resolve the issue for me.

Overall this review process was pretty bad. Very little communication and nothing I could really do directly to move things along or get any real information. It took a random Stripe employee to get an email from @dang and post on HN in order to get this issue resolved. I’m lucky because I know about HN and know that Stripe employees frequent the site, but I don’t think HN wants to become the Stripe support forum.

Stripe you can do better. We all know that in order to scale you need to automate pieces of your infrastructure and communication. But, there is a balance between automation and manual review. When someone like me gets caught up in an automated system there needs to be better ways of letting support help that person.

See my comments below for actual details and dates.

1. ghoomketu ◴[03 Jan 23 16:08 UTC] No.34233248[source]▶
> Thanks to @dang for getting a Stripe employee to respond and he was finally able to resolve the issue for me.

I think it's time to add another HN tab called Complaints where we can post complaints for the common culprits like Google, Stripe, Pinboard, etc. It sounds backwards but the amount of people HN has helped over years it must add to millions of dollars to priceless things like getting back your email and photos.

Big kudos to dang and HN for standing up for the average person and being this helpful!

replies(2): >>34233325 #>>34233605 #
2. droopyEyelids ◴[03 Jan 23 16:12 UTC] No.34233325[source]▶
Have we ever seen a complaint for Pinboard?
replies(2): >>34233346 #>>34233385 #
3. marpstar ◴[03 Jan 23 16:14 UTC] No.34233346[source]▶
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29873306
4. honoraryfly ◴[03 Jan 23 16:16 UTC] No.34233385[source]▶
Yes, often. It's yet another HN-celebrated startup that turned into a neglected pile of crap:

Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (Dec '22 edition)? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34062802

Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (November '22 edition) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33398395

Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (August '22 edition)? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32580491

etc.

5. prirun ◴[03 Jan 23 16:30 UTC] No.34233605[source]▶
Doesn't seem to me that this would work. Most of the HN audience will not go to the Complaints tab, so the forces of social shaming wouldn't work. The marketing dept only cares about complaints that affect the company's reputation.