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

501 points eeemmmooo | 3 comments | 03 Jan 23 15:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.714s | 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.

replies(11): >>34233273 #>>34233335 #>>34233358 #>>34233481 #>>34233483 #>>34233484 #>>34234259 #>>34235004 #>>34235022 #>>34235713 #>>34236367 #
jlokier ◴[03 Jan 23 17:08 UTC] No.34234259[source]▶
After 5 days of trying to get my bank account at Revolut unblocked so I could pay my rent with the cash locked up in it, having chatted with maybe 5 representatives, waited for hours each time (their only official contact channel was in-app chat and you had to wait hours for a response), got told "since you are not replying I'm closing this chat" a couple of times in the middle of the night while I was asleep having sent a query hours before, and uploaded requested photos of documents, cards and id... I took someone's advice and posted to their Facebook chat.

The account was unblocked within 20 minutes.

Their social media person miraculously had the ability to ask someone to fix the problem, who miraculously got in touch within a few minutes and pressed the miraculous "fix problem" button in Revolut, which a series of "customer support" agents somehow couldn't do for most of a week.

replies(5): >>34234685 #>>34235962 #>>34236868 #>>34241796 #>>34253831 #
ornornor ◴[03 Jan 23 19:41 UTC] No.34236868[source]▶
Revolut is a terrible company with an insane CEO exploiting its workers[0][1][2].

There are better alternatives like TransferWise or N26.

[0]: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/revolut-employment-coronavir...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280131

[2]: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/revolut-trade-unions-labour-...

replies(1): >>34240859 #
maeil ◴[04 Jan 23 01:46 UTC] No.34240859[source]▶
I'd love to move away from Revolut but neither of those options seem to offer a virtual credit card which is my main use case. Online purchases in US, EUR, GBP etc without having to worry about exchange fees or supported payment methods.
replies(1): >>34241406 #
1. rmsaksida ◴[04 Jan 23 02:57 UTC] No.34241406[source]▶
Wise does offer virtual cards as well as a physical one.
replies(1): >>34241937 #
2. maeil ◴[04 Jan 23 04:12 UTC] No.34241937[source]▶
Just had a look, looks like you need to first get a physical Wise card in order to get a virtual one (not the case for Revolut), and it's only available in a rather limited number of countries.

https://wise.com/help/articles/5O9VNQR4wt3iXwV0Dmm6zB/how-do...

replies(1): >>34242747 #
3. refurb ◴[04 Jan 23 06:34 UTC] No.34242747[source]▶
Depends on the country you’re account is in. I got virtual cards before ever ordering the physical card.

But keep in mind it’s a bank debit card (charge immediately comes off your balance), not a credit card.