Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation
138 comments
Follow-up a few days later:
Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34233011 - Jan 2023 (191 comments)
Update: Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation [resolved] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34233011 - Jan 2023 (191 comments)
Thanks for posting this, it's good to know that Stripe is like Paypal in that they might just decide to not give you your money, and their uncaring bureaucracy will just waste your time.
For all its warts and the trouble and waste it causes, I'm still very grateful that crypto exists and I hope that it continues to exist until a real solution to digital cash (where bullshit like this can't happen) pops up.
Until then, godspeed crypto, you wasteful dysfunctional mess of a solution.
Until then, godspeed crypto, you wasteful dysfunctional mess of a solution.
Tangential: After hearing so many PayPal horror stories on HN and elsewhere, I do sweeps several times per week. I also stay away from big banks and SVB, using a local bank where the staff know me and can get real answers quickly. Once someone on the bank's staff worked with me in their conference room to troubleshoot a QBO integration issue for my business. Intuit, PayPal, or any other big bank would never have given me that kind of attention.
This is harder than it sounds. PayPal can go after swept funds, and there's always a bank at the end of the chain that is more likely to cooperate with another bank and with FinCEN than with you. But the idea is sound!
Can you share more context around avoiding SVB?
Can you share more context around avoiding SVB?
I'm more concerned with PayPal denying me access to my account, preventing me from attempting to move funds out, or disabling integration with my business that prevents customers from completing payments. Yes, reversing a sweep that already happened would be bad, but it's the other stuff that worries me more, along with the lack of proper support for such cases which are true emergencies for small businesses.
SVB: Used them about 10 years ago for a startup. Didn't go back to them when I started my second business, as I didn't feel like they had many staff or really cared about having me as a customer.
SVB: Used them about 10 years ago for a startup. Didn't go back to them when I started my second business, as I didn't feel like they had many staff or really cared about having me as a customer.
PayPal will (for $2) mail you a check. And while they do not allow you to remove the last bank account attached to your account, you can just close that bank account. I did that. I sweep from PayPal by requesting a check. I wish them luck stealing from me. They have NO access to any valid bank accounts of mine.
This is probably a smart approach, although there may be a ToS stipulation about requiring active bank/debit information which could lead to account disruptions if they notice.
How would they know without accessing my bank account without my direction? If they try that, I’ll call my state’s AG.
Plus, as I remove all funds instantly, disruption costs me nothing.
Plus, as I remove all funds instantly, disruption costs me nothing.
There are non-transactional checks to validate the active status of debit cards and bank accounts. You would never know -- there is no reporting requirement or mechanism.
If PayPal cares, they can do these things. If you move serious money through them, they should probably care.
If PayPal cares, they can do these things. If you move serious money through them, they should probably care.
> PayPal can go after swept funds
that sounds horrible. What do you mean by this ?
I assume by "sweeping" the GC meant transferring funds to a bank outside of PP?
that sounds horrible. What do you mean by this ?
I assume by "sweeping" the GC meant transferring funds to a bank outside of PP?
ACH transfers can be reversed.
That is why I use multiple bank accounts accounts at different financial institutions, and only some are used for others to send and receive funds, and then I transfer the funds from there to the other bank accounts that others do not know about.
That is why I use multiple bank accounts accounts at different financial institutions, and only some are used for others to send and receive funds, and then I transfer the funds from there to the other bank accounts that others do not know about.
This is very interesting and something I’d like to replicate. Can you give an example of a typical transaction? For instance, after you withdraw say $10,000 from Stripe or PayPal to Bank, do you the transfer $10,000 from Bank A to Bank B?
I'm not the GP, and I'm not a nefarious actor for whom the strategy has been tested, but this is similar to my personal approach:
PayPal, Venmo, Stripe, etc -- any service provider that I choose to share bank account (or debit card) numbers with -- gets the information for a small holding account only.
I maintain the balance in that holding account around the level where I'd be "irritated but not affected" if something were to go wrong.
Honestly I just don't trust them to correctly and quickly fix any errors or exposures. So I prefer to avoid the issue altogether.
PayPal, Venmo, Stripe, etc -- any service provider that I choose to share bank account (or debit card) numbers with -- gets the information for a small holding account only.
I maintain the balance in that holding account around the level where I'd be "irritated but not affected" if something were to go wrong.
Honestly I just don't trust them to correctly and quickly fix any errors or exposures. So I prefer to avoid the issue altogether.
Thanks for sharing that.
I already have a "burner" bank account for gym memberships and other non-trusted entities.
Maybe I should take a two-tier approach for business accounts, to "sweep the sweeps," so to speak, and PayPal et al only have access to a business burner.
I already have a "burner" bank account for gym memberships and other non-trusted entities.
Maybe I should take a two-tier approach for business accounts, to "sweep the sweeps," so to speak, and PayPal et al only have access to a business burner.
Is there a way to use an app similar to Privacy to set up a "burner bank account"? Or do you physically go into a bank, credit union, etc. and sign up for a new account as a new member?
Some banks will let you create new accounts through their mobile app or online banking app. Even for new customers (some banks have no physical presence).
And most banks that I'm aware of will let existing customers create new accounts with distinct routing/account numbers online.
And most banks that I'm aware of will let existing customers create new accounts with distinct routing/account numbers online.
> most banks that I'm aware of will let existing customers create new accounts with distinct routing/account numbers online.
Not in the US. Especially unique routing numbers. Maybe you mean virtual credit card numbers.
Not in the US. Especially unique routing numbers. Maybe you mean virtual credit card numbers.
Sorry, I edited "distinct ACH info" to "distinct routing/account numbers" to be more clear, but evidently it was just differently-confusing!
A bank will only have one or a small number of routing numbers.
My point was that most banks will let existing customers open new accounts online. This will create a new routing/account number combination that you can share with the service you don't trust enough to share your primary account with.
You can also add a (new) debit card to the new account, and some providers let you create virtual cards at will. But that's not what I was talking about.
A bank will only have one or a small number of routing numbers.
My point was that most banks will let existing customers open new accounts online. This will create a new routing/account number combination that you can share with the service you don't trust enough to share your primary account with.
You can also add a (new) debit card to the new account, and some providers let you create virtual cards at will. But that's not what I was talking about.
Revolut and Monzo do virtual debit cards. They're pretty handy to have, and have helped me dodge spurious charges in the past.
Yes, just keep enough in Bank A to cover the bills, and any extra gets sent to Bank B, which account number is never given to anyone (other than Bank A).
Sounds like someone is being investigated to me. Think it might be time to talk to a lawyer and have them make some inquiries ?
Honestly that's the next step. Hoping to not have to involve lawyers. I know Patrick posts on HN a lot, so this is kind of my last hope to getting this done quickly.
Yes. "Freeze funds and do not communicate to customer" is basically AML response 101.
Even if you know you've done nothing wrong (but of course audit your transaction history to make sure), you'll want to have an appropriate lawyer ready.
Even if you know you've done nothing wrong (but of course audit your transaction history to make sure), you'll want to have an appropriate lawyer ready.
How are anti-money-laundering laws that require that treatment constitutional? Didn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_v._United_States establish innocent-until-proven-guilty? Isn't this at least as bad as civil forfeiture?
Financial restrictions are not the same as incarceration.
And you can be held in jail before a trial anyway, so the comparison just isn't relevant.
No argument to your larger point though: freezing funds can be devastating and applied carelessly!
And you can be held in jail before a trial anyway, so the comparison just isn't relevant.
No argument to your larger point though: freezing funds can be devastating and applied carelessly!
They’re not, but unconstitutional law can exist and even become precedent for decades before a court with the stones comes along to overturn it.
Both this and CAF violate basic constitutional pillars like not depriving you of life/liberty/assets without due process.
Both this and CAF violate basic constitutional pillars like not depriving you of life/liberty/assets without due process.
Deprivation of access to property is not quite the same as deprivation of property.
And there is plenty of legal precedent (and justification) for freezing funds in advance of charging.
This line of argument is a dead end.
And there is plenty of legal precedent (and justification) for freezing funds in advance of charging.
This line of argument is a dead end.
In the context of banking, I would call it at least a dirty-trick. If you're saying "How can you pay a lawyer if you cannot...speak???", then you're not the good-guy.
The contextual assertion is that the frozen funds were obtained by non-lawful process.
Allowing access to those funds for your defense is not automatic.
Sometimes a judge will partially ease restrictions. And of course a lawyer will be provided for you. :-/
It's reasonable on the surface of things, but mistakes can be devastating. The US legal system often fails to handle the "mistake" case well, despite some intended protections.
Allowing access to those funds for your defense is not automatic.
Sometimes a judge will partially ease restrictions. And of course a lawyer will be provided for you. :-/
It's reasonable on the surface of things, but mistakes can be devastating. The US legal system often fails to handle the "mistake" case well, despite some intended protections.
The US legal system doesn't care very much if it's those specific dollars or other dollars that have a dirty history. If, God forbid, I'm ever arrested for something, I don't trust those "intended protections" very much.
Nonsense. Depriving you of access to your property indefinitely is no different than depriving you entirely.
The government is welcome to charge and deprive, then provide a speedy trial to that end.
That’s not what is happening though and you know it, they know it, their collaborators know it. Everyone involved here deserves jail time, and in a just world they will see it.
The government is welcome to charge and deprive, then provide a speedy trial to that end.
That’s not what is happening though and you know it, they know it, their collaborators know it. Everyone involved here deserves jail time, and in a just world they will see it.
"We can't allow normal constitutional rights because racketeers are too smart. Also, everyone is a racketeer."
Note that this is a corporation not releasing funds, not the government so the constitution doesn’t apply. In this case it would be the terms of service which likely calls out this as a possibility.
But the constitution applies to the law and the law applies to the company. They can't do whatever they want just because they aren't the government.
The government (FBI, HSI, DEA, Treasury) wants to do all of this but can't because of the great constitutional liberties we have in this country. So they decided to outsource all this enforcement to financial institutions (https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/12/21.11#k). And when financial institutions in the past weren't as arbitrary and capricious in enforcing the vague government's vague rules as the government liked they fined them hundreds of millions of dollars. So now everyone is like Paypal and apparently this is supposed to be a good thing.
Read enforcement actions by the government. There will be a financial institution with tens or hundreds of thousands of customers and the government will use them failing to find three suspicious customers as a basis for enormous fines (https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/enforcement_actio... is a good example). Another thing you'll find if you read enforcement actions is that the government barely even cares what was illegal or not - they fine institutions for not reporting "suspicious" activity (without themselves investigating whether it was legal or not).
Read enforcement actions by the government. There will be a financial institution with tens or hundreds of thousands of customers and the government will use them failing to find three suspicious customers as a basis for enormous fines (https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/enforcement_actio... is a good example). Another thing you'll find if you read enforcement actions is that the government barely even cares what was illegal or not - they fine institutions for not reporting "suspicious" activity (without themselves investigating whether it was legal or not).
I think what comes to people as a surprise is that the government, by default, considers any activity that it, the government, is not doing to be suspicious. The government, as entity, functions to extend its reach and not to serve citizens. This is by design.
The government could care less if you lost access to your money if it means they have more control over the financial system. The tiniest gain of control is worth it for the bureaucracy even if it means locking hundreds of thousands of people out of their savings.
The government could care less if you lost access to your money if it means they have more control over the financial system. The tiniest gain of control is worth it for the bureaucracy even if it means locking hundreds of thousands of people out of their savings.
Unfortunately that is often the case.
The question that naturally comes to my mind is, shouldn't corporations who are acting on behalf of government be bound by the same rules as government.
The question that naturally comes to my mind is, shouldn't corporations who are acting on behalf of government be bound by the same rules as government.
> Note that this is a corporation not releasing funds, not the government so the constitution doesn’t apply.
You'd be right if corporations decided to do that on their own, but the anti-money-laundering law says that corporations have to do that.
You'd be right if corporations decided to do that on their own, but the anti-money-laundering law says that corporations have to do that.
Why would you hope to not involve lawyers in a situation where someone has taken $400,000 from you?
Because one of the most common themes on HN are Stripe complaint posts immediately getting the attention of Edwin? I recall Patrick being more active on product announcements / otherwise positive news. I appreciate their level of reactivity here, and the truth is complaining on HN really does eyeballs on problems where their internal processes seem too broken to help.
Because resolving without lawyers is cheaper?
Op is juggling cash to make payroll. Crushing insolvency can be far more expensive than lawyers.
And swinging round Home Depot to pick up some buckets in the event of a fire is cheaper than funding a fire department, but it's not really the right tool for the job.
Using a fire extinguisher on a small flame before it grows in to needing the fire department seems like a reasonable approach.
Still, one should still call the firefighters _before_ using the extinguisher.
If the extinguisher did not work, and you tried 5min, these 5min are lost.
If the extinguisher did not work, and you tried 5min, these 5min are lost.
I’ve seen more than a couple stripe disputes resolved here. If the problem isn’t urgent, which it somehow seems to not be, this is a fine step.
A lawyer will run through 400k quite quickly so yeah he should be prepared but..
That's like 6 months of an associate's time at a high billing rate. We are talking about sending a letter or making a phone call here.
If they respond to the OP's lawyer via their legal team, is the OP going to want to continue to engage them without a lawyer?
One letter can become several with a multitude of billable hours and services.
One letter can become several with a multitude of billable hours and services.
Because lawyers cost > $0 ?
How much does not having access to their money cost? I bet also >$0.
If your option is either lose $400,000 or pay for a lawyer - you're of course right that you want to get a lawyer.
OP said: > Honestly that's the next step. Hoping to not have to involve lawyers.
My understanding is that OP was hoping to communicate with support and get access to their accounts without paying for a lawyer - as that would be preferable with a cost of ~0$
All three of us appear to agree - If that doesn't work definitely time for a lawyer
OP said: > Honestly that's the next step. Hoping to not have to involve lawyers.
My understanding is that OP was hoping to communicate with support and get access to their accounts without paying for a lawyer - as that would be preferable with a cost of ~0$
All three of us appear to agree - If that doesn't work definitely time for a lawyer
The last time I saw a post about Stripe holding money, it turned out the guy was selling a car via his cell phone accessories business.
So, double check to make sure you didn't do anything stupid.
So, double check to make sure you didn't do anything stupid.
We've been selling escape room online bookings on these accounts for 5+ years and nothing has changed.
since that wouldn't be illegal if there was no payment processor involved, that doesn't sound like its stripe's role to be involved with
stop putting paranoid financial services on a pedestal
stop putting paranoid financial services on a pedestal
Do you think Stripe is doing this just to be a dick?
It's because if it turns out to be money laundering, theft, or fraud, Stripe gets shafted financially (best case), and fairly likely FBI agents show up and start asking pointed questions.
It's because if it turns out to be money laundering, theft, or fraud, Stripe gets shafted financially (best case), and fairly likely FBI agents show up and start asking pointed questions.
Stripe is doing what it needs to optimize it's revenue/profits/value which does not mean it's the right or best thing for all it's legitimate customers. Stripe is free to do what it does and we are free to call them out for the pain it causes their customers.
you literally just described putting paranoid financial services on a pedestal
most of these things are:
- poor company policies masquerading as response to a law but are actually
- poor implementations of a
- poor legal interpretation
most of these things are:
- poor company policies masquerading as response to a law but are actually
- poor implementations of a
- poor legal interpretation
I think it's far more likely a mediocre implementation of a correct legal interpretation of a poor regulatory system.
thats why you need criminal banks like Wells Fargo and HSBC
great user experience because they dgaf and their relationship with the Federal Government wont be altered
great user experience because they dgaf and their relationship with the Federal Government wont be altered
Overall I know that Stripe has (most likely) sophisticated systems to deal with account reviews. It is a black box though and once you're in the review system and have given them the information that they ask for, there doesn't seem to be any way to escalate or get any information on ways that we can help the process move forward. I'm not mad at Stripe for reviewing the account. I'm frustrated at the lack of communication and support in working through this process.
Every now and then you get these horror stories. Is it time to round robin between multiple PSP's? I switched to daily payouts to prevent accumulation at the PSP level.
In the lens of vendor diversification, using multiple providers is good business sense.
It's kind of sad that earlier stripe founders would always watch HN and reply to community members who had issues, but now it is so abused by anyone who has a stripe problem that they don't bother (and as much as I sympathise with small business owners being screwed by BigFin, I can see why as the amount of detail in (and general plausibility of) the Stripe complaints that reach front page HN definitely seem to have vastly deminished)
Do you have any specific criticism of OP's complaint here? It sounds like they've tried to go through normal support channels and have gotten nowhere (e.g. being asked to submit the same documentation multiple times and not getting any new info). Sure, the "amount of detail" might be low compared to an issue that one might receive as official customer support, but what exactly do you think they could be providing here that would be relevant to the readers here? I don't the the fact that they didn't provide account numbers or whatever on a public HN post is surprising, and I don't think it would be reasonable to draw conclusions about whether they provided more specific info in their official communication with customer support. As for plausibility, I don't really see any basis for assuming this claim is more likely to be false than true. As someone who has never used Stripe and as far as I know never interacted with someone who works there, my initial instinct is that OP's question seems more likely to be in good faith than your response.
Is it "abused by anyone who has a stripe problem" or is stripe support so woefully unresponsive that HN "escalation" is the only way to get a response?
Yeah I've been trying for a month to go through the regular support channels with this issue and we're still selling via stripe because it's not an easy change to make in the middle of our busiest season of the year. So the money is just piling up with very little communication from Stripe.
$400k and you're only just hassling customer service and HN?
I'm not particularly litigious, but I'd be suing by $40k, if only to get a resolution to satisfy my creditors.
What's crazier is you're still throwing money into this black hole! You claim imminent insolvency but haven't changed your payment processor. What?
I'm not particularly litigious, but I'd be suing by $40k, if only to get a resolution to satisfy my creditors.
What's crazier is you're still throwing money into this black hole! You claim imminent insolvency but haven't changed your payment processor. What?
Where's the bingo card blogging guy to explain this bullshit away? Gotta hear both sides!
I'd be happy to hear Stripe's side. So far they have asked for 2 invoices for charges on each account. I've provided them. 2 of our accounts have been released, but the others are still being held. All the charges that they asked for are legitimate bookings. So I don't know what to do about it.
[deleted]
They are def doing some shady things to juice revenue - ie I had a chargeback which I worked out with the customer and saw proof that the bank dropped it more than a month ago, but Stripe just only marked it as resolved. Was probably purposely sitting on the difference as long as they could
I checked out your website and noticed you have a non-U.S. location (in addition to your U.S. locations). Whatever triggered the hold is probably related to some sort of international transaction that Stripe has flagged as fraud.
I say that from experience with Stripe...
I say that from experience with Stripe...
It wasn't on that account though.
Having multiple accounts log in from the same IP can also trigger a flag in Stripe's systems. They have a lot of anti-"fraud" triggers.
So I've found myself asking this question more and more often on these topics, but I don't really interact with stripe. Does stripe offer paid customer support? Are you paying for it?
They are paying for the product. Are you suggesting customer support should be paid for separately?
If you want premium support then yes you should be for example: one of my clients spent several hundred thousand a year and has a massive part of their operation dependent on AWS, so they also paid for premium support.
If a business is wholly dependent on a particular vendor and that vendor offers additional support, it seems to behoove the business to pay for the additional vendor support.
It's similar to people who complain that they are losing millions of dollars because they can't get Azure support to work with them, but then when asked if they have contacted their account rep confess they don't have an account manager to help them.
Basically paying for additional support is like insurance, you probably won't need it, but if you do you'll be glad you have it.
If a business is wholly dependent on a particular vendor and that vendor offers additional support, it seems to behoove the business to pay for the additional vendor support.
It's similar to people who complain that they are losing millions of dollars because they can't get Azure support to work with them, but then when asked if they have contacted their account rep confess they don't have an account manager to help them.
Basically paying for additional support is like insurance, you probably won't need it, but if you do you'll be glad you have it.
Can you provide a link to your business or what you're selling?
Posted on another comment. But we do escape rooms. breakoutgames.com we just use stripe for online bookings. Been customers for 6+ years with stripe consistently.
I love escape rooms and play them fairly regularly with my friends. I have a hard time imagining how you’ve managed to get 400k held up in stripe. Did you treat them like a bank and didn’t take money out regularly? Or do you just have so many rooms you are booking 400k+ per week?
Not that this helps at all, I’m just curious.
Not that this helps at all, I’m just curious.
just doing some ballpark numbers here they look to have an average of 100-120 bucks an hour per room (from 85-185) if you break that down into an average you'd need 4000 bookings a week to get there. they have 30 locations so each location would have to do 133 on average a week or 19 a day to make that kind of weekly thing. 19 a day doesn't seem that hard to pull on average. they have more than one room running at a time. could also be two weeks of cash or it could also be also ancillary stuff like sodas and other refreshments, teeshirts to commemorate a birthday or corporate retreat kinda thing too.
OP seems to have had an issue for over a month now. Guessing they haven’t switched off stripe for whatever reason and have multiple locations.
1) The only thing I would suggest for OP is to have some patience and wait for after New Years. Many normal business activities are shutdown or slowed between Christmas-New Years as many key staff for all organizations are basically on vacation. Depending on when this issue started, you might be dealing with some less experienced members of Stripe's staff who might be on duty through Christmas-New Years with the main managers who are able to decide big questions taking a holiday. There might be a question mark about your account, and they really can't do much of anything for you right now other than collect your information and give their report to their managers when they come back.
2) To the people who say that these kinds of stories aren't relevant and shouldn't be posted on HN, I'd strongly disagree for these reasons.
> There are many startup founders here who won't ever realize that keeping loads of cash in their payment processor is a bad idea if they don't see these stories. Just because they've been posted in the past doesn't mean that they'll see them now if they're not regularly posted.
> This is legitimately an issue that affects peoples' lives: not only many jobs if companies can't make payroll, but actual life/death. I'm sure there's a number of entrepreneurs who have eventually committed suicide because of bad/scummy behavior of tech companies causing them to lose everything they've worked for.
2) To the people who say that these kinds of stories aren't relevant and shouldn't be posted on HN, I'd strongly disagree for these reasons.
> There are many startup founders here who won't ever realize that keeping loads of cash in their payment processor is a bad idea if they don't see these stories. Just because they've been posted in the past doesn't mean that they'll see them now if they're not regularly posted.
> This is legitimately an issue that affects peoples' lives: not only many jobs if companies can't make payroll, but actual life/death. I'm sure there's a number of entrepreneurs who have eventually committed suicide because of bad/scummy behavior of tech companies causing them to lose everything they've worked for.
If you're having trouble getting your money back from customer support, why not give ChatGPT[0] a try?
Give it a goal of getting your money back at all costs. It just might help you out!
[0] https://chat.openai.com
[0] https://chat.openai.com
400k is much cheaper than having a lawyer send them a pointed letter/email
Further, stop using stripe if you don't like them - I get the impression that most of the stripe complaints on HN are bogus though this could always be a real one
Further, stop using stripe if you don't like them - I get the impression that most of the stripe complaints on HN are bogus though this could always be a real one
Oh, here we go again
Literally looking for a payment processor for my self-funded startup, I will not use Stripe. It sounds like it's just as risky as Paypal -- and the thought of using Paypal is laughable to me.
What can I use to charge a monthly rate for members of my website?
What can I use to charge a monthly rate for members of my website?
Just use stripe...
Don't keep 400k cash in stripe, the merchant account is not a damn bank.
Don't keep 400k cash in stripe, the merchant account is not a damn bank.
I'm also reading here that you can't leave the money into the bank account that is attached to the stripe account, because Stripe can get back the money from that account. They can automatically put funds in, then they can take them out.
So you need to sweep out accounts from both Stripe AND your bank account connected to Stripe.
So you need to sweep out accounts from both Stripe AND your bank account connected to Stripe.
I have automatic daily transfers. This isn't a bank. They have just been building up over the month over my accounts.
Can you email me at my HN username @stripe.com? I'm looking into this right now.
While you're at it and looking into things, maybe look into your support organization and have them properly handle these types of issues when they come in through regular channels as well. The fact that people have to use HN to get a hold of someone who cares is ridiculous and does not make Stripe look like a company I'd ever want to do business with.
When you introduce elements of risk outside of Stripe's control it can affect how our support team is able to respond. We respect that users will use any channels they are active on to challenge decisions. I'm actively looking into OP's issue and will be in contact with them until it's resolved.
We could opt not to respond to issues on Hacker News on New Year's Eve—but we do. That's what supporting each and every one of our users looks like in practice.
Nothing has changed from what I wrote on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34037757.
We could opt not to respond to issues on Hacker News on New Year's Eve—but we do. That's what supporting each and every one of our users looks like in practice.
Nothing has changed from what I wrote on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34037757.
If you get better support from a news aggregation site’s comments than you get from official support channels, those support channels are defective.
This discussion shouldn’t have to happen here to begin with.
This discussion shouldn’t have to happen here to begin with.
A great time to sic the lawyers on Stripe and pronto.
Stripe support is horrific, good luck mate!
I think this has been posted before. I wonder if everyone's responses are being used to train an AI. Strange.
Maybe put your email in your profile so people can contact you outside of this HN post.
Thanks. Will do
I forget where I read it - maybe it was a creative writing exercise somewhere - but the hivemind was tasked with coming up with "a replacement for the car wash in Breaking Bad". Along with the usual suggestion of laser tag (a la Saul Goodman) as a way to launder cash while looking like a legitimate business was the humble escape room. Why? They're high traffic (well, they can _be_ high traffic, on paper), low per-transaction amounts (nothing near the $10,000 reporting threshold).
If I had to guess I'd say that the escape room(s) for which you're selling tickets are in some kind of legal trouble and your company as a vendor of tickets to those escape rooms is also being investigated. (It's unclear to me if you're the owner of the corporate entity that owns/runs these escape rooms or if you're simple a ticket seller to various escape rooms, e.g., a "Groupon but for escape rooms".)
Many friends who sell spare computer parts on eBay have had their PayPal accounts frozen over the years, so they've developed a process whereby if they're relying on a payment processor (PayPal for eBay transactions; stripe for other transactions) they will set up a 'cash out to my bank account' process on as often a cadence as possible. Ideally nightly if that's an option. I haven't used Stripe, but does anyone know if there's a setting whereby you can say "punt my Stripe balance over to my bank account every X days"?
Also, there's a push to use payment processors and 'neobanks' (see below) to basically do parts of the IRS' job for the IRS (or I should say that the government is allowing these private corporations to take on the role of governmental agencies probably in return for campaign finance contributions):
- https://www.propublica.org/article/chime
- https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/the-chime-banking-ap...
Immigrants, children of undocumented immigrants, the recently incarcerated, the poor, etc. are the Chime customer base. One of the draws with Chime is that you can get your paycheck a few days early, so it's literally a payday lender, but calls itself a "neobank". As digital surveillance increases in the ability to connect transactions across disparate systems I expect these sorts of actions by Stripe, Chime, and other fintech companies to increase in frequency.
Sorry I don't have any "here are 5 steps to take to get your account back to normal" guides, but I wish you luck and - like others are suggesting - I would probably retain legal counsel.
If I had to guess I'd say that the escape room(s) for which you're selling tickets are in some kind of legal trouble and your company as a vendor of tickets to those escape rooms is also being investigated. (It's unclear to me if you're the owner of the corporate entity that owns/runs these escape rooms or if you're simple a ticket seller to various escape rooms, e.g., a "Groupon but for escape rooms".)
Many friends who sell spare computer parts on eBay have had their PayPal accounts frozen over the years, so they've developed a process whereby if they're relying on a payment processor (PayPal for eBay transactions; stripe for other transactions) they will set up a 'cash out to my bank account' process on as often a cadence as possible. Ideally nightly if that's an option. I haven't used Stripe, but does anyone know if there's a setting whereby you can say "punt my Stripe balance over to my bank account every X days"?
Also, there's a push to use payment processors and 'neobanks' (see below) to basically do parts of the IRS' job for the IRS (or I should say that the government is allowing these private corporations to take on the role of governmental agencies probably in return for campaign finance contributions):
- https://www.propublica.org/article/chime
- https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/the-chime-banking-ap...
Immigrants, children of undocumented immigrants, the recently incarcerated, the poor, etc. are the Chime customer base. One of the draws with Chime is that you can get your paycheck a few days early, so it's literally a payday lender, but calls itself a "neobank". As digital surveillance increases in the ability to connect transactions across disparate systems I expect these sorts of actions by Stripe, Chime, and other fintech companies to increase in frequency.
Sorry I don't have any "here are 5 steps to take to get your account back to normal" guides, but I wish you luck and - like others are suggesting - I would probably retain legal counsel.
When your money or revenue is put into an account with a US American payment provider, then the money is theirs, not yours. Any and all reasons and excuses to keep them are fair.
This is pointlessly incorrect and unhelpful.
Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You're right.
Thanks for all that you do.
Thanks for all that you do.
It's helpful if you want to avoid the problem OP and many, many others are experiencing.
So you're going for the "incorrect but helpful" angle?
Why not just go for "correct and helpful" instead? It's only a few extra sentences, and comes across much more believably.
Why not just go for "correct and helpful" instead? It's only a few extra sentences, and comes across much more believably.
Flagged because we are seeing a lot of these on HN, and they seem to be attempts to fraudulently manipulate customer support, rather than genuine stories.
This is legit. We run escape rooms. Breakoutgames.com and have been Stripe customers for 6+ years on all of these accounts. No issues and low chargebacks. Not sure what triggered this.
It might be legit, but that doesn’t change the fact that HN is rapidly becoming the defacto escalation point for failed customer support; and while @dang hasn’t yet set a policy around this, it’s not really in the spirit of the website.
I guess you can call this a policy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33745192.
The principles that we apply to this kind of thing are clear, but they conflict with each other in this case because Stripe is a YC-funded startup. Basically, these two:
- We downweight overly repetitive topics and follow-up posts [1] because repetition goes against the mandate of the site [2]
- For major ongoing topics, keep the stories that contain significant new information and downweight the rest [3]
conflict with this one:
- We moderate less when YC or a YC-funded startup is part of a story [4]
The latter takes precedence, so for years we've downweighted these posts much less when the story is connected to YC. However, they've been proliferating, and when complaints like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34189858 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33744053 start showing up in numbers, that's a community immune response that we have to take care of. So we've recently started downweighting.
(Of course none of this is a comment on the OP's situation, which I'm sure is distressing and stressful.)
Edit: I got an email with a question that I should clarify. The "major ongoing topic" here is really the "customer support of last resort" category of post in general. It's not Stripe-specific—there are tons of these, like this one from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34116361. The trouble is that they're repetitive and usually not intellectually interesting (not to discount how important these situations are to the people caught in them). For this reason and because of the repetitive quality (see [2]), we often downweight these. It's just that when the YC angle gets entwingled into this, there's a constraint on how much we can downweight. That's the aspect I was talking about above.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
The principles that we apply to this kind of thing are clear, but they conflict with each other in this case because Stripe is a YC-funded startup. Basically, these two:
- We downweight overly repetitive topics and follow-up posts [1] because repetition goes against the mandate of the site [2]
- For major ongoing topics, keep the stories that contain significant new information and downweight the rest [3]
conflict with this one:
- We moderate less when YC or a YC-funded startup is part of a story [4]
The latter takes precedence, so for years we've downweighted these posts much less when the story is connected to YC. However, they've been proliferating, and when complaints like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34189858 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33744053 start showing up in numbers, that's a community immune response that we have to take care of. So we've recently started downweighting.
(Of course none of this is a comment on the OP's situation, which I'm sure is distressing and stressful.)
Edit: I got an email with a question that I should clarify. The "major ongoing topic" here is really the "customer support of last resort" category of post in general. It's not Stripe-specific—there are tons of these, like this one from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34116361. The trouble is that they're repetitive and usually not intellectually interesting (not to discount how important these situations are to the people caught in them). For this reason and because of the repetitive quality (see [2]), we often downweight these. It's just that when the YC angle gets entwingled into this, there's a constraint on how much we can downweight. That's the aspect I was talking about above.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Thanks @dang. Let me know if there is anything that I should change with this post. I'm trying to stick to facts and not get too emotional with this post. I'm sure that Stripe has automated things in place and we got caught up in them. I don't really have an issue with that. I'm trying to provide them with whatever they need to show we are legit, but right now the communication from their support hasn't given me any way to do that.
I'm writing to some contacts at Stripe. If you want to send a note to [email protected] with permission to pass on your email address, I can do that as well.
Well what would you do if it was your $400k when you know that they look here. If this is the only place that the higher ups actually communicate then this is where they need to see the issues with their company.
Using a side-channel to get your problem solved sounds like legit hacker spirit imo.
Using HN to contact founders is absolutely the spirit of the site imo
manipulating customer support to actually providing customer support seems pretty genuine to me, regardless of the reasoning
Sounds like an amusing homebrew for shadowrun: Heist, grift, or socially engineer your way to customer support.
Did you do something bad? like money laundering or create a business that Stripe doesn't allow in their TOS?
If not, I don't understand otherwise why this would happen.
If not, I don't understand otherwise why this would happen.
> If not, I don't understand otherwise why this would happen.
Even if you don't understand why, it shouldn't come as a surprise. Megacorps wrongfully lock people out of their accounts with no recourse all the time these days. We need a law to the effect of "once your service has more than a million users, if it wouldn't be trivial and painless for them to switch to a competitor of yours, then you can't ban them without due process."
Even if you don't understand why, it shouldn't come as a surprise. Megacorps wrongfully lock people out of their accounts with no recourse all the time these days. We need a law to the effect of "once your service has more than a million users, if it wouldn't be trivial and painless for them to switch to a competitor of yours, then you can't ban them without due process."
> If not, I don't understand otherwise why this would happen.
Bureaucracies do this kind of thing all the time for opaque and arbitrary reasons that may have absolutely nothing to do with the account holder in question.
Bureaucracies do this kind of thing all the time for opaque and arbitrary reasons that may have absolutely nothing to do with the account holder in question.
> If not, I don't understand otherwise why this would happen.
Because mistakes happen? You really think every single entity investigated for fraud or money laundering is guilty?
Because mistakes happen? You really think every single entity investigated for fraud or money laundering is guilty?
It must be really bad if Stripe is holding $400K of your money.
They are probably doing something wrong or most likely having a very risky business.
They are probably doing something wrong or most likely having a very risky business.
The accounts that are restricted are all 5+ years old and have been used nonstop in that time. Anyone know a better way to get this resolved because regular support hasn’t been able to do anything to help or explain what happened.