[dkersten]

Since most of us are mere humans don't have the ability to get your attention by a viral post, how should someone get in touch to get this reviewed and rectified if they find themselves in such a position? I mean, OP's post shows that Stripe still decided to close the account even after "further review", so simply contacting support doesn't seem to be enough.

EDIT: I see that while I was typing you replied to a sibling comment. So we should contact you directly? Can I ask why this slipped through further review, it seems like a bug like this shouldn't require contacting a founder directly by email to resolve.

[pc]

You don’t have to contact me in particular — you can get in touch with anyone at Stripe. (Or even DM Stripe on Twitter.)

With regard to the last part of your comment — absolutely. This is a final recourse when the system breaks, not a part of the system that we hope you ever have to use.

[dkersten]

I suppose a related question then is if your review team is applying stricter rules than you are. Surely, in this particular instance, the review team should have been able to see that its a bug in the same way you are. I guess I'm confused by why contacting a founder helps here, are you overriding some checks somehow? Is that safe to do? If not, why did the review team not spot it?

Maybe it really was a strange and unusual set of circumstances that made this occur, so hopefully its rare that someone would need to escalate to you directly. Thanks for being responsive to questions and making your contact details available. That's a lot better than some companies do.

PS: since I have you here, completely off topic, I met you once in Dublin long ago and you got me interested in Lisp. Thanks for that :)

[rubynerd]

I don't doubt that from your perspective as the founder of Stripe, that's the workflow you'd like to have for when things "go wrong", but from the perspective of someone currently interacting with Stripe support, I strongly doubt that simply raising a support ticket or reaching out on Twitter would result in any meaningful movement on a rejection like this.

Regarding Stripe's support: I emailed last night to confirm how to delete a user's card when it's represented as PaymentMethod, and in reply I received a link[0] to the cards/delete API documentation (which, in case you're not as steeped in PaymentMethod's as I am, won't work because the two objects are fundamentally different).

Given this rather lacklustre handling & having also been on the receiving end of someone trying to fraud the company I'm working for, I highly doubt someone who is asking for reconsideration after receiving a fraud ban would actually receive an escalation via the front-line agents manning [e-mail], and if they could, the actual legitimate bans that Stripe no doubt needs to put in place would simply abuse that channel and waste everyone's time.

I appreciate it's a really challenging balance of trying to provide an escalation/appeals process that won't be abused itself, and by comparison Stripe's approach of direct-founder-contact seems easier than Apple, as if your developer account application is rejected[1] you have absolutely zero recourse apart from going H.A.M. on Hacker News & hoping the community helps you out, whereas in this case there is a magic button that starts an invisible and unaccountable appeals process, that ultimately resulted in another rejection.

The only "solution" (if any) I can see to counter the negative experience (& associated PR) would be involvement in the appeals process, where you are allowed to effectively "state your case" via video call or submission of evidence, but this draws a thorny parallel to the judicial system, and I doubt Legal would sign off on such a process.

This is a problem that impacts basically any kind of appeals process, and Stripe's not alone in suffering from it, but that perspective doesn't help the dozens of founders that don't have the connections to sort this issues out in private, and are burning the attention span of Hacker News in the process of unblocking their businesses. Front-line support also isn't the answer, unless specific processes can be put in place to handle rejection escalations and get them into the eyes of the right people.

---

[0] https://stripe.com/docs/api/cards/delete

[1] Long story short: to use Apple's Mobile Device Management APIs, you need an Enterprise developer account, which thanks to The Verge & gambling apps skirting the App Store, isn't possible unless you went to Stanford with a future Apple PM. Admittedly, the chances of an Apple executive personally addressing this if I were to email is statistically quite low compared to emailing you.

If someone from Apple is reading this & would like to pre-empt the classic "Apple screwed me" Hacker News post, do feel free to email me on [e-mail] and I'll happily brief you on The Great Saga of Enrollment 4HZY7VX69S.

[fencepost]

The only "solution" (if any) I can see to counter the negative experience (& associated PR) would be involvement in the appeals process, where you are allowed to effectively "state your case" via video call or submission of evidence, but this draws a thorny parallel to the judicial system, and I doubt Legal would sign off on such a process.

There's also the question/option of considering reputation, which also brings up scary thoughts about China's moves in that area. If you're complaining and are a well known highly voted participant on HN, YouTuber with thousands of subscribers, etc the risk that you as a public-ish figure are trying to scam is lower.

[rubynerd]

Oh absolutely, and that's something I'm taking into heavy consideration as I figure out the next move with Apple: I have next to no social clout or network, so if the loudest move I make in the tech sphere is "Apple screwed me", is that all I want to be known for?

I'm not hopeful for any change in these sort of review processes without any legislation changes, but it would be a truly tragic state of affairs if it were to escalate that far.

[aeontech]

Just a heads up that your domain (ghostworks.io) seems to have an expired SSL cert... (not relevant to your post, but figured you might like to know)

[rubynerd]

Ah! I knew I was forgetting something: much like that dude living in a cave in Lost, I have to SSH into that server and HUP nginx every ~80 days, as the user that does the certificate renewal isn't the same user that runs nginx.

One day I'll overengineer something to solve this, but for the meantime it's "ssh statichost -- sudo kill -s HUP 947" every so often. Thanks for reminding me, much appreciated!

[aeontech]

If you want to under-engineer it instead, maybe this could just be a cron job? :)

[mhdhn]

So, contrary to your email to your customer directly stating that this has been completely and fully and finally reviewed, there's this secret way you won't tell anyone (except your friends here on HN)? Yeah, this is working great.