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

501 points eeemmmooo | 1 comments | 03 Jan 23 15:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.649s | 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.

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DevX101 ◴[03 Jan 23 16:06 UTC] No.34233215[source]▶
I'm glad your issues were sorted, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that you need to make a social media post to get a customer service issue resolved. This isn't just stripe. I see this with many other companies on social media. I don't post on Twitter, and I'd rather not put my account details for some service I use in a public forum.

It's starting to seem like for too many companies, resolving public complaints has become a line item in the marketing budget.

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richardw ◴[03 Jan 23 17:54 UTC] No.34235022[source]▶
The company I’ve spent the last 5 years at (just resigned to emigrate) has a rule. If you come across an unhappy customer and don’t do anything, you should be fired. 10k employees, insurance, banking. Nobody moaned because we understand the reasons for it. I embraced it and have escalated many calls.

In a world of indifference, that’s a solid stake in the ground.

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ethbr0 ◴[03 Jan 23 19:47 UTC] No.34236956[source]▶
A well-known home improvement retailer has a similar rule: you take the time to help anyone with an issue resolve it, or directly hand them off to another employee who can help. No pointing and then ignoring. Or email forwarding and then ignoring.

Granted, everyone is busy and it isn't always followed, but as a guiding organizational foundation one can do a lot worse.

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1. richardw ◴[03 Jan 23 20:23 UTC] No.34237444[source]▶
Ours was anywhere. You come across what seems like a frustrated client in a pharmacy, you identify yourself and help. I've helped people who expressed anger at social events. Can't always fix the issue but the company's app has a place for staff to escalate, so it's easy to kickstart the process.