Tell HN: Stripe closed my GPT-3 G.Sheet addon because they think I “sell essays”
Apparently Stripe is closing GPT-3 tools because they "are unable to accept payments for the sale of essays and other academic work". I tried to appeal but no luck. What can I do? The tool is EndType.com and I obviously don't sell academic work
66 comments
Can you email me at [email protected]?
We support a bunch of AI businesses on Stripe and I'd like to take a closer look. (What you're describing doesn't sound unsupportable to me.)
We support a bunch of AI businesses on Stripe and I'd like to take a closer look. (What you're describing doesn't sound unsupportable to me.)
Hi Sam, I just got a personal email from you and my account is being re-enabled. I just want to underline the fact that I did send 3 different appeals and they all got refused, and it seems that HN is the only way to get attention from Stripe. I like Stripe but is getting painful to deal with this sort of support. Thanks for looking at my case personally!
I'm glad I could help resolve this for you. The number of appeals you had to step through to get to this point is frustrating and I'm sorry for the hassle.
We're going to take a closer look at our policies for businesses tangential to "essay mills" and how we can better delineate between them so that this doesn't happen again.
We're going to take a closer look at our policies for businesses tangential to "essay mills" and how we can better delineate between them so that this doesn't happen again.
I’m surprised by how often I see these threads about Stripe specifically. I don’t know how much of this is because Stripe is the biggest player, or how much of it is because people have learned that you can come here to get your stuff sorted. Honestly, to me, it doesn’t matter. There are a handful of beyond viable Stripe alternatives that I’d be tempted to use because this is just teaching me that this is a regular thing that happens for anything but the most bland Stripe uses. I vaguely understand that anything financial has these sorts of ham-fisted risk controls. That doesn’t help quell the unease I have about Stripe. The optics are just…not great.
Same. I put my startup on a different platform because of things like this. I’m not a crypto bro but I strongly hope crypto eventually develops into a system where I can just get a direct payment from my users without a pearl-clutching middleman like Stripe / Paypal / whatever.
Employee vigilantes browsing forums is not a viable method of customer support.
It's not, but employees who see things that are wrong and shrug their shoulders isn't exactly viable, either.
shrug works for google, amazon, microsoft
Do you honestly think that people from those companies aren't on here and taking active feedback? And actually, I've seen people from two of those companies (amazon and microsoft) in the comments actively engaging with the community, so not great examples to use.
You're talking about issues feedback, but this thread is about issues resolution.
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It's really two sides of the same coin.
That makes zero sense.
They are both examples of using public channels to identify issues and respond to people having those issues. It is extremely clear.
Seems you can usually replace 'not a viable' with 'only available' and be in basically the same place.
Practically, you gotta thank the person for the role they're taking on.
Holistically, they're not really part of the system, so that role doesn't exist. They're certainly not getting paid to do that and it needs to not scale up to where it's interfering with their real job.
Practically, you gotta thank the person for the role they're taking on.
Holistically, they're not really part of the system, so that role doesn't exist. They're certainly not getting paid to do that and it needs to not scale up to where it's interfering with their real job.
Scale first, clean up later. It's the DNA of unicorns.
When does a startup stop being a startup and starts being a normal company that handles things like support and "edge cases" only affecting 0.01% of their users/customers? At some point, those 0.01% are still (tens/hundreds of) thousands.
Maybe the ideal is to exist in a superposition where you are a normal unresponsive scaled-up tech company to your boring ordinary customers, but still project a startup image to cutting-edge users who might bring in substantial new business.
Stripe seems to be doing a pretty good job at that.
Stripe seems to be doing a pretty good job at that.
Seems like it is though.
Have they ever responded to this criticism on HN? This is so weird, and it really shows that you should stay away as far as possible from Stripe.
Actually from what I've seen is the best way to get someone to really care. I appealed 3 times, always rejected. I posted this and in 30 minutes my account was getting re-enabled.
Stripe is probably the tech company doing the most outreach ever in terms of help, support and documentation. They have people on HN and many subreddits, they officially use Discord, Reddit, Twitter as support channels, they provide phone support…
Really there’s many tech companies guilty of the “so complaining on HN is the only way to fix it” but in my experience this is not the case with Stripe.
Disclaimer: I work in fintech and sometimes partner with Stripe.
Really there’s many tech companies guilty of the “so complaining on HN is the only way to fix it” but in my experience this is not the case with Stripe.
Disclaimer: I work in fintech and sometimes partner with Stripe.
Parent comment is right. Whether they monitor social media or not, it is only needed because their official support channel failed and shut the door on their customers. So they're here to pick up the pieces for PR. If this forum was not full of entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs what might one day be a larger customer/partner to stripe, I'm not sure they'd show up here. It makes me very hesitant to use stripe at any considerable scale.
Why is it that we don't see 1+ posts/month regarding AWS? Seems to me that there is an incentive to closing cases in companies like stripe, regardless of actual resolution.
Why is it that we don't see 1+ posts/month regarding AWS? Seems to me that there is an incentive to closing cases in companies like stripe, regardless of actual resolution.
I’ve seen these types of post for AWS here too, they just don’t get upvoted because more people use AWS and know better.
I have seen this pattern a lot with HN. Stuff gets upvoted based on the external perception of how things “probably” work.
Another example about stripe from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34760887
Guy complains his business was shut down by stripe; you dig into it, you find that he was proxying payments in a way that bypasses KYC for his customers (and was even aware of the issue and fixing it but chose to grandfather existing customers into the old system). In other words, if a customer wanted to sell deeply illegal stuff on his platform, they could do so untraceably. No wonder he got hit by a massive fine.
Just as you’d be dubious if you encountered a customer saying “aws shut down my account for no reason and won’t talk to me”, I am similarly dubious when people say this about stripe. That’s not to say they’re flawless; they’ve definitely been getting worse as they keep scaling. I just don’t think it’s fair to put them in the same category as Facebook or something.
My guess, this was a mistake, and a resolution would have easily been possible through any of the support channels (faster if using the external ones probably) iff indeed it is a mistake.
I have seen this pattern a lot with HN. Stuff gets upvoted based on the external perception of how things “probably” work.
Another example about stripe from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34760887
Guy complains his business was shut down by stripe; you dig into it, you find that he was proxying payments in a way that bypasses KYC for his customers (and was even aware of the issue and fixing it but chose to grandfather existing customers into the old system). In other words, if a customer wanted to sell deeply illegal stuff on his platform, they could do so untraceably. No wonder he got hit by a massive fine.
Just as you’d be dubious if you encountered a customer saying “aws shut down my account for no reason and won’t talk to me”, I am similarly dubious when people say this about stripe. That’s not to say they’re flawless; they’ve definitely been getting worse as they keep scaling. I just don’t think it’s fair to put them in the same category as Facebook or something.
My guess, this was a mistake, and a resolution would have easily been possible through any of the support channels (faster if using the external ones probably) iff indeed it is a mistake.
What do you mean when you say that they closed your add-on? Did they stop your add-on from working, or did they just close your Stripe account? If it's the latter, you should be able to sign up with another payment provider and leave them behind.
Agree. There are dozens of payment providers you could use in this situation.
This call for help rubs me the wrong way.
This call for help rubs me the wrong way.
It still takes effort to switch and there may be an issue with the original payment provider retaining your funds.
Payments are a critical part of your business and it's a disaster to be switched off at zero notice.
Yes, the obvious mitigation is to support two providers, but that can be a big investment when you want to integrate with your book keeping, fulfilment systems etc.
And if customer service was a bit more proactive then people wouldn't have to come to social media to flag when they have been treated unfairly.
I'm happy that people have an escalation path through social media noise as I've had to rely on it myself many times.
Payments are a critical part of your business and it's a disaster to be switched off at zero notice.
Yes, the obvious mitigation is to support two providers, but that can be a big investment when you want to integrate with your book keeping, fulfilment systems etc.
And if customer service was a bit more proactive then people wouldn't have to come to social media to flag when they have been treated unfairly.
I'm happy that people have an escalation path through social media noise as I've had to rely on it myself many times.
> It still takes effort to switch and there may be an issue with the original payment provider retaining your funds.
I haven't seen a case where Stripe doesn't retain 1-2 weeks worth of revenue "to handle refunds".
OP also is subscription based, and if he used Stripe's tooling to implement the subscription process, they're holding a lot of customer data hostage.
(Which is why you shouldn't touch these "helpful" all in one solutions in the first place, but it's an easy enough mistake to make.)
I haven't seen a case where Stripe doesn't retain 1-2 weeks worth of revenue "to handle refunds".
OP also is subscription based, and if he used Stripe's tooling to implement the subscription process, they're holding a lot of customer data hostage.
(Which is why you shouldn't touch these "helpful" all in one solutions in the first place, but it's an easy enough mistake to make.)
Are there any payment providers that let you migrate a customer subscription to a competitor?
This isn't solely a Stripe problem, yes.
And the random cancelling doesnt rub you the wrong way?
Well, you kinda do?
It doesn't really matter what you want your product to do. It's what people do with your product. Intentions are easy to fake, it's the outcomes that people care about.
It doesn't really matter what you want your product to do. It's what people do with your product. Intentions are easy to fake, it's the outcomes that people care about.
Aside from government regulatory requirements, am I the only one who thinks Stripe shouldn't have this kind of say? I know there are business categories that have more risk which may or may not be allowed to transact, but this particular instance seems like a huge power trip to me.
Perhaps someone with better insight can educate me on this matter?
Perhaps someone with better insight can educate me on this matter?
AFAIK, the moralizing comes from higher up (Banks, Visa, Mastercard), instead of Stripe themselves.
Alternatively, it could be a category of transactions that eventually almost always see high fraud (e.g. kids paying for essays using parent's money, parents reporting the transactions afterwards).
Alternatively, it could be a category of transactions that eventually almost always see high fraud (e.g. kids paying for essays using parent's money, parents reporting the transactions afterwards).
It's really all about risk.
There are certain categories of transaction that see a lot of disputes.
Payment processors, banks, and card schemes (like Visa/MasterCard) don't like disputes - they are costly to deal with.
There are certain categories of transaction that see a lot of disputes.
Payment processors, banks, and card schemes (like Visa/MasterCard) don't like disputes - they are costly to deal with.
But stripe already charges the customer for disputes, and presumably makes a little margin on top.
I can understand if they're saying "we think you're about to get a lot of disputes, and you may not be able to pay for all of them, so we're going to hold some of your money for a few days just to see".
But that isn't what they're saying.
I can understand if they're saying "we think you're about to get a lot of disputes, and you may not be able to pay for all of them, so we're going to hold some of your money for a few days just to see".
But that isn't what they're saying.
It's really not. It's about regulatory requirements and political pressure (including the attempt to avoid said political pressure)
Stripe works closely with banking partners and card networks in many countries. These institutions have strict rules that govern them. We have an obligation to uphold those rules—and so the decision to support a business isn't solely up to Stripe. We wrote more on that here (as it can be a understandable source of confusion): https://stripe.com/blog/why-some-businesses-arent-allowed.
Essay mills fall under the category of "deceptive" products and services. It's clear we made a mistake here in looking at this particular business and we've re-enabled the account (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34802504). In particular, we didn’t correctly distinguish between augmenting the ability to write content vs. buying essays to commit academic fraud. We'll be revisiting our internal policies to better dilineate between these categories.
Essay mills fall under the category of "deceptive" products and services. It's clear we made a mistake here in looking at this particular business and we've re-enabled the account (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34802504). In particular, we didn’t correctly distinguish between augmenting the ability to write content vs. buying essays to commit academic fraud. We'll be revisiting our internal policies to better dilineate between these categories.
While I'm sure the OP appreciates the successful "support via HN", it seems very clear that the real problem with your organization in this regard is people needing to do this in the first place. OP did say of the initial ban that "I tried to appeal but no luck."
If it weren't for your intervention would Stripe have made this correction through its regular processes?
Yes, we'd like Stripe to be available to as broad a set of users as possible. Restrictions on businesses ought to be malleable and we need to have the capacity to adapt as the world around us changes.
We also work with our partners to relax or remove unnecessary restrictions where we can. Being overly restrictive towards legitimate businesses flies in the face of growing the GDP of the internet—it's a precondition for us to operate. A small component of that is being reactive: seeing where we make mistakes and noticing where our processes need to be adapted. (As we saw today with essay mills!)
We also work with our partners to relax or remove unnecessary restrictions where we can. Being overly restrictive towards legitimate businesses flies in the face of growing the GDP of the internet—it's a precondition for us to operate. A small component of that is being reactive: seeing where we make mistakes and noticing where our processes need to be adapted. (As we saw today with essay mills!)
The problem is probably related to the alerting system being automatic. The rate of fraud is likely much higher than we all can imagine, I once read a number about credit cards, which was incredible.
And if you know the constraints of classifiers where recall and precision are a tradeoff, and consider that basically fraud cannot happen for economic reasons, you can imagine that yanking up the recall (loss avoidance) at the expense of precision (stomping over innocent false positives) is tempting and lucrative, at least on short term.
And if you know the constraints of classifiers where recall and precision are a tradeoff, and consider that basically fraud cannot happen for economic reasons, you can imagine that yanking up the recall (loss avoidance) at the expense of precision (stomping over innocent false positives) is tempting and lucrative, at least on short term.
Don't use them?
I had a look at your website.
How is it obvious that you don't sell academic work and/or a paid tool to write essays for kids? It looked like 'have GPT-3 write stuff in Google Docs, but more so' to me.
What are people going to be doing, journaling?
The Stripe thing is a separate issue, I'm calling out your 'I obviously don't sell academic work'. Oh come on. Really? Who's gonna pay for this?
How is it obvious that you don't sell academic work and/or a paid tool to write essays for kids? It looked like 'have GPT-3 write stuff in Google Docs, but more so' to me.
What are people going to be doing, journaling?
The Stripe thing is a separate issue, I'm calling out your 'I obviously don't sell academic work'. Oh come on. Really? Who's gonna pay for this?
Guilty until proven innocent?
Tech industry let these actors have too much power, they can cut any business at their will. Web3 is the answer, I hope it is. Matter of time before they get replaced.
It's unlikely that web3 will solve it; cryptocurrency already exists, and its many serious issues are not going to be solved by a fresh coat of paint or "moar adoption".
If you want an actual solution, look at FedNow. This would enable direct bank account payments, like in most of Europe, with a government-run intermediary in the place of MasterCard/VISA. This changes the censorship situation from "four out of four must accept" to "one out of thousands must accept".
If you want an actual solution, look at FedNow. This would enable direct bank account payments, like in most of Europe, with a government-run intermediary in the place of MasterCard/VISA. This changes the censorship situation from "four out of four must accept" to "one out of thousands must accept".
The situation in Europe isn't quite as rosy. SEPA is a huge PITA, usability wise, and closer to US ACH transfers; and so most countries have their own special sauce online payment solution that serves as central point of failure for that country's customer base. Belgians use Bancontact, Austrians use EPS, Germans use giropay, Dutch use iDEAL, … or, more often, don't, and just use Paypal or credit cards anyway, since it's so much of a hassle.
And even if you wanted to implement all these systems, it's so much effort that you're back to relying on payment providers like Stripe, realistically.
And even if you wanted to implement all these systems, it's so much effort that you're back to relying on payment providers like Stripe, realistically.
SEPA isn't great, but there exist functioning country-wide systems as you mention.
> And even if you wanted to implement all these systems, it's so much effort that you're back to relying on payment providers like Stripe, realistically.
No. Payment providers like Stripe have to comply with the rules placed upon them by the card networks. If you only have to deal with European payment systems + FedNow, you don't have to worry about things like the MATCH list. This removes 95% of the censorship issues.
> And even if you wanted to implement all these systems, it's so much effort that you're back to relying on payment providers like Stripe, realistically.
No. Payment providers like Stripe have to comply with the rules placed upon them by the card networks. If you only have to deal with European payment systems + FedNow, you don't have to worry about things like the MATCH list. This removes 95% of the censorship issues.
> SEPA isn't great, but there exist functioning country-wide systems as you mention.
Great, except each country is tiny and cross-border commerce common, so you end up having to implement all of them…
Or, much more likely, you give up and just go with Paypal + Credit Cards again, especially since more and more banks in Europe are rolling out Mastercard Debit as their regular banking card (on top of Apple Pay and whatever Google is pretending to be supporting today), making credit/debit card payments more popular than ever.
> If you only have to deal with European payment systems + FedNow, you don't have to worry about things like the MATCH list.
I'm not aware of any payment provider that gives me all European networks, but not credit cards.
Not that it would be helpful, since most people use credit cards anyway.
> This removes 95% of the censorship issues.
Together with 95% of your customer base, realistically.
Great, except each country is tiny and cross-border commerce common, so you end up having to implement all of them…
Or, much more likely, you give up and just go with Paypal + Credit Cards again, especially since more and more banks in Europe are rolling out Mastercard Debit as their regular banking card (on top of Apple Pay and whatever Google is pretending to be supporting today), making credit/debit card payments more popular than ever.
> If you only have to deal with European payment systems + FedNow, you don't have to worry about things like the MATCH list.
I'm not aware of any payment provider that gives me all European networks, but not credit cards.
Not that it would be helpful, since most people use credit cards anyway.
> This removes 95% of the censorship issues.
Together with 95% of your customer base, realistically.
> Great, except each country is tiny and cross-border commerce common, so you end up having to implement all of them…
Yes, and this can be done by software firms. You don't need to roll your own solution, but taking the payment networks' fees out of the equation drastically reduces costs.
> I'm not aware of any payment provider that gives me all European networks, but not credit cards.
That's true, since most sellers can access credit cards. But for EU-only sellers of "sensitive products", of course there is a market. (It's an open question if people on the MATCH list can use those payment providers as long as they don't accept cards.)
> Together with 95% of your customer base, realistically.
Most people where I live are comfortable using mobile payments and use it on a regular basis. I see mainstream retailers offering to take it (alongside cards) very often.
Yes, and this can be done by software firms. You don't need to roll your own solution, but taking the payment networks' fees out of the equation drastically reduces costs.
> I'm not aware of any payment provider that gives me all European networks, but not credit cards.
That's true, since most sellers can access credit cards. But for EU-only sellers of "sensitive products", of course there is a market. (It's an open question if people on the MATCH list can use those payment providers as long as they don't accept cards.)
> Together with 95% of your customer base, realistically.
Most people where I live are comfortable using mobile payments and use it on a regular basis. I see mainstream retailers offering to take it (alongside cards) very often.
> If you want an actual solution, look at FedNow.
Fed No.
The US is not the world and the rest of the world is certainly not on FedNow, and never will be.
At least with stablecoins like USDC on Ethereum, Stellar, Solana, etc it is available today 'right now', worldwide, 24/7 and with instant, same day transfers with low fees.
Fed No.
The US is not the world and the rest of the world is certainly not on FedNow, and never will be.
At least with stablecoins like USDC on Ethereum, Stellar, Solana, etc it is available today 'right now', worldwide, 24/7 and with instant, same day transfers with low fees.
And yet nobody uses them. I wonder if there's some reason for that?
> And yet nobody uses them.
I wonder why USDC is currently being used on these blockchains today from all over the world, 24/7 in the billions of dollars daily and has been integrated into business like MoneyGram, Stripe, VISA and Coinbase Commerce and even the United Nations using it for donations and humaritarian aid, who are not 'Nobody'.
"Nobody" is using FedNow 'right now', and there is a obvious reason why nobody outside of the US cannot use and will never use FedNow.
I wonder why USDC is currently being used on these blockchains today from all over the world, 24/7 in the billions of dollars daily and has been integrated into business like MoneyGram, Stripe, VISA and Coinbase Commerce and even the United Nations using it for donations and humaritarian aid, who are not 'Nobody'.
"Nobody" is using FedNow 'right now', and there is a obvious reason why nobody outside of the US cannot use and will never use FedNow.
Wait, you don't actually think Web3 is a real thing do you? Oh bless. That's kind of sweet.
If - and this is a big if - anything if any value ever happened in web3, the same ‘risk people’ would implement the same hamfisted risk controls on top of it in service of making a system that people actually want to use. The risk controls are stupid but they’re in service of something. People outside of your bubble don’t want “digital cash”.
Stripe might have detected that you are grifting with an AI chatbot and is clearly telling you not to do that on their payment gateway.
Like I said before [0], perhaps it is better to go on multiple gateways. At least then you can continue your hustle / grift on another payment processor rather than complain here and use HN as Stripe customer support.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34747526
Like I said before [0], perhaps it is better to go on multiple gateways. At least then you can continue your hustle / grift on another payment processor rather than complain here and use HN as Stripe customer support.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34747526
This is an awful take
Also, they are likely using the OpenAI API which is not a "chatbot", and was built exactly for the purpose of building apps like this
Also, they are likely using the OpenAI API which is not a "chatbot", and was built exactly for the purpose of building apps like this
Grift? What is this? Twitter? Stop using such loaded trendy vitriolic language and take this for what it actually is.
> Grift?
Yes. Selling AI snake oil is indeed a grift.
It also doesn't surprise me that with the recent hype of AI all over the place, Stripe would be taking extra steps in cracking down on new so-called AI companies and scams selling their snake-oil re-packaged as 'AI' to ride the hype cycle.
This one is just low hanging fruit.
> Stop using such loaded trendy vitriolic language and take this for what it actually is.
Exactly. It is actually a 'grift'. Just like the rest of the low effort so-called AI companies sitting on someone else's APIs. It is another plain old confidence trick which is as old as the hills.
Yes. Selling AI snake oil is indeed a grift.
It also doesn't surprise me that with the recent hype of AI all over the place, Stripe would be taking extra steps in cracking down on new so-called AI companies and scams selling their snake-oil re-packaged as 'AI' to ride the hype cycle.
This one is just low hanging fruit.
> Stop using such loaded trendy vitriolic language and take this for what it actually is.
Exactly. It is actually a 'grift'. Just like the rest of the low effort so-called AI companies sitting on someone else's APIs. It is another plain old confidence trick which is as old as the hills.
There are lots of great use cases for incorporating GPT3 in Google Sheets. It works quite well for cleaning messy data, transforming data, etc etc