[cavisne]

Actually a 44% chargeback rate by volume!

It only takes a little bit of reading between the lines to see the author bought a site that sold fraudulent gear, didn’t realise this for a bit and then shut it down.

If stripe hadn’t frozen payouts they would be stuck holding the bag for 44 percent of the total charges in the account.

The new account thing does sound beuracratic but I guess it restarts the KYC process.

[goatforce5]

I worked for a high-risk merchant, and a 44% chargeback rate is utterly insane. IIRC, internal alarms would go off and the processors would be breathing down our necks if the chargeback rate started to approach 2%.

[degenerate]

I've pushed $600K through stripe with >7K orders and only had 1 dispute, ever.

OP is definitely in the 'fraudster' category, and deep into it! I am surprised Stripe didn't flag way sooner.

[badwolf]

Stripe held our payouts when we got over 1%.

If you get put into a monitoring program, it gets real expensive, real fast. Though Stripe would probably rather just ban you.

https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/monitoring-programs

[toomuchtodo]

> the author bought a site that sold fraudulent gear, didn’t realise this for a bit and then shut it down.

I don’t think that’s the case. It looks like they bought a flipping or drop ship site and they botched the transition process; orders weren’t getting fulfilled and customers were rightfully pissed about it, hence the chargebacks.

Stripe has a lot of rough edges once you have to talk to a person due to outlier activity, but this could’ve been mitigated by isolating businesses into their own Stripe accounts, as well as better handling the business acquisition that took place.

[alexwebb2]

I mean, if you're selling branded products that you don't actually have available to give to the customer, aren't able to get quickly, and don't even have the legal rights to sell anyway, and then customers start filing chargebacks... that's kind of entirely on you.

Also keep in mind that for such a large number of users to go through the trouble of filing the chargebacks, it means that A) it's been long enough that they seriously believe your shop is fraudulent and you have no intention of shipping them what they paid for, and B) your communication and customer support is so terrible that they felt this was their only recourse.

[toomuchtodo]

There is no requirement for me to have an agreement to sell a branded product (first sale doctrine). If I go buy a cargo container full of North Face gear on clearance, there is nothing North Face can do to stop me from legally selling that gear.

Agree with the shipping delay points.

[privateSFacct]

Since most of the cargo containers of north face gear on "clearance" are actually fake product, believe it or not they can absolutely shut you down.

We really need to call out these types of scammers better. Nothing you can do to stop me selling my crap fake "Apple" charges on amazon (amazon should be doing a much better job screening), my "ecommerce store" that is experiencing "fraudulant transactions" == trying to scam users by not shipping anything, too I bought a container of "north face" gear from china and there is nothing you can do to stop me.

In all these cases, the seller had a reasonable ability to think - hey, this is probably a fraud and stop doing what they are doing.

Seriously, for reputation reasons North Face and many other brand retailers do not sell containers of product on "clearance" to rando third party retailers.. Some even destroy amazing amounts of product to avoid to entering into this scammy reseller chain.

[toomuchtodo]

You’re moving the goal posts. Counterfeit goods, entirely legal to shut down the sale of. Authentic goods, you cannot. It’s up to the brand to prove they’re not authentic goods being sold and pursue the necessary channels to shut the seller down.

[privateSFacct]

Says the scammers. You are willfully ignorant here.

Your post did not consider the high likelihood that a container of product on "clearance" from north face is counterfeit.

My point is simple. We have to have less tolerance of the willful ignorance by scammers. The brand should not need to pursue this.

Stipe / Atlas CAN and SHOULD shut down merchants who exhibit characteristics of fraud. Amazon should shut down the fake apple product sellers.

And yes, my job interects with fraud / ripoff detection, and I've worked with folks like you. My advice to folks in business and elsewhere, someone that willfully ignorant is not someone you want to do business with.

[amyjess]

The problem is that many people, after exhausting the cargo container, don't bother to take down the listings and continue to take orders in the hope that they'll stumble on another cargo container for cheap.

[toomuchtodo]

Business is hard and fraught with peril.