I own multiple interactive entertainment concepts. We build room scale hardware and props. So definitely a bit different than normal consumer hardware, but still have a lot of the same problems. One of our issues is we our low volume and unique use cases for our hardware.
I’d love to connect with anyone else doing similar things. My info is in my bio.
Thanks for your help. Especially on New Years Eve. My goal was always to try to find someone at Stripe that could help me get through the automated process churn and you were very helpful in that. It was not to slam Stripe overall because you all have been very good to us for years. Which is also why I’m trying to be as fair as I can be to both sides and also why I didn’t just jump to lawyer calling levels etc. I knew eventually Stripe would do the right thing. Just figuring out how to make that happen was the hard part.
Yeah this. I'm actually not upset with Stripe that put our accounts into review. We did have a big sale spike and I can see how that would warrant a review. My issue is with the speed and communication of the whole process.
Well luckily for us we are big enough to be able to handle this, but a lot of smaller companies aren't able to. These are 6+ year old accounts that have been very steady, so it wasn't like we just opened our Stripe account last month and started doing large volume. Overall it was very frustrating and time wasting. That's the main thing. I was confident that we didn't do anything wrong and that we would get it figured out eventually. But, other people might not have the ability to wait as long as we were able to. We definitely had a couple accounts go negative before we loaned money into that accounts though.
Yeah I agree. There wasn't much more information for me to provide there that would be helpful. I pretty much had the same conversation the whole time. I explained the issue. They reached out (supposedly) to the review team who just told them it's under review. They asked me to upload the same invoices again. Then said they'll let me know. It just seemed like no one in that chain was able to actually do anything.
Nov 28: Cyber Monday my business had a sale that spiked our revenue on that day. I believe this is what kicked off this whole thing. I believe that Stripe has automated systems in place to put accounts into review when something like this happens. I have no problem with that, and understand there are anti money laundering laws that they need to abide by.
Nov. 29: I received an email from Stripe that 6 of our accounts were under review and payouts were paused. I filled out the forms asking for more information immediately.
Dec 1: I received another set of emails asking for invoices for 2 transactions for each account for their review. One of the other admins on the account emailed those invoices back to Stripe within about 2 hours of the receipt of the requests. The invoices were sent from another email address alias that wasn’t his Stripe account address, so support asked him to change his official stripe account email address and confirm it then they would authenticate the invoices. He followed their instructions and the invoices were apparently accepted, but there was no confirmation email. Logging into the accounts there was a message that the accounts were under review, but no more information was needed from us at the time.
Dec 16: After no communication for 2 weeks on our reviews, I reached out to stripe via Chat. Spending over an hour on chat explaining the issue. Stripe support asked for the same 2 invoices for each account that were send previously. I uploaded them all into the upload link provided by stripe support. After over an hour the chat was moved to email.
Dec 20: Received an email from Stripe support in response to the 12/16 chat thread that they have reviewed my account and had released payouts. I logged into Stripe expecting all 6 accounts to be released, but found that it was only released for 1 account. In response I asked for information on why we were flagged and got no real answer.
Dec 21: Asked for update on other 5 accounts status. I was told that they were still under review.
Dec 24: Received another email in the same 12/16 chat thread that we had payouts re-enabled. I logged into Stripe and found 1 more account was re-enabled. No indication in the email which account they were communicating about.
Dec 27: I had Stripe support call me and I spent close to 2 hours on the phone with them. It seemed like we were starting all over again. All he could say is that the accounts were under review and he reached out to the team reviewing my accounts and hadn’t heard back yet. Then he asked me to upload the same invoices for the affected accounts a 3rd time. No resolution at the end of the call.
Dec 27: I was getting desperate because Stripe support wasn’t giving me any good information and it didn’t seem like things were moving forward quickly. So I tweeted to Stripe about the issue and they asked to DM them. I did, and they gave me a generic response about looking into the issue. No resolution or further contact that day.
Dec 30: After no resolution I decided to try other social media platforms. I posted on Reddit on r/Stripe about the issue. I was asked to email Stripe at [email protected]. I did, but never received a response from that email. I also emailed [email protected] since someone on r/Stripe told me to try that (No response).
Dec 30: I also decided to post on HN about the issue. I knew from past Stripe stories that Patrick and Edwin frequented HN, so I figured it couldn’t hurt. This is what eventually solved the issue. @dang asked me to email him and he would send some info on to people at Stripe that he knew and maybe someone would be able to help. Not long after emailing someone from Stripe commented asking me to email them. I did and he was able to expedite my review.
Dec 30: While I was writing my HN post I was also on chat with Stripe for over an hour. No new information. They were basically trying to shut down the chat with me until I sent them the HN story and showed that it was getting some traction. Then they started working on my issue again and trying to communicate with more people. No resolution.
Dec 31: Stripe employee from the HN post emailed and told me that they completed the review of my accounts and re-enabled payouts on the remaining 4 accounts. I was also finally able to get some information from Stripe that most likely the spike of sales on Cyber Monday is what started the review process.
Jan 3: I have confirmed that all of my accounts are now receiving payouts again.
This is our busiest time of the year. But it is our busiest time of the year every year. So if they have systems that are smart enough to see trends then our accounts shouldn't be that far off from past years.
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.
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.