[mbreese]

I know it’s not an ideal support mechanism, but I think this is one of the services HN provides to the community (informally). It can provide backdoor/informal channels through engineers and founders to some rather large companies. Especially when other avenues fail. But for the community, in this case, not only Stripe gets to learn about the issue, but we can all take something from this about automated systems and needs for manual overrides/reviews. This type of “case-study” can help many other companies avoid similar problems.

But we also get some of the back story from Stripe about why their systems are designed this way. What challenges they face that made these engineering choices make sense.

I’m sorry that this happened to the OP. But at least this channel of communication exists. And I think we can all benefit from it.

[falcolas]

It only exists as long as the post gains enough attention to get to the front page. Which doesn't happen for every post - not even most posts - which makes it an exceptionally poor avenue of support.

[rualca]

> I know it’s not an ideal support mechanism, but I think this is one of the services HN provides to the community (informally).

I would like to know where and why Stripe's customer support failed in this case. Or even if it failed at all. Those are the only relevant details.

It's immaterial to the discussion whether any other web forum was used as an alternative to Stripe's customer support. I'm sure HN didn't signed up to be any company's customer support channel, or if it's reasonable to get it involved in this ordeal.

If I have a problem with Stripe, I want my business to be dealt with Stripe directly, and in the process not get a web forum involved. I would hate to be in a position where escalating an issue so that it becomes a PR issue as well is seen as the first step in a problem-solving workflow.

[atatatat]

The answer is usually:

Maintaining the magic abuse detector requires secrecy around the heuristics, which means not always giving the clearest error codes/any error codes to the user re: what's wrong with their account/transaction.