[icelancer]

Stripe has been pretty bad for us lately. Downtime yes, but also slashed our corporate card limits with no explanation and refused to restore them despite our bank writing letters supporting our position.

We've been with them for 10 years and their customer service is atrocious on this position, which is unfortunate since historically it's been quite good.

We went through the arduous process of switching our corporate credit card structure to Stripe away from another vendor, and we probably have to go back to the other vendor now. Starting to understand the anti-Stripe comments that pop up from various people on HN.

[rich_sasha]

It seems like with a number of the high-growth startups, the client isn't really the client.

The real client is the VC who writes cheques and provides validation in increasing valuations. The "regular clients" are a raw material, to be converted into the service provided to VC.

Clearly, in the early days, you desperately need "regular clients" to prove yourself to the "VC clients". But eventually you earned your stripes and you can again care about valuation over revenue and profit, and consequently customer retention.

Add to it the SV dream of inventing a niche and monopolising it, and you care about your customers less still.

[bcgraham]

Isn’t it right and proper for management to serve ownership?

[RHSeeger]

In much the same way that the cashier at McDonalds does what the manager instructs them too, yes. But if the goal of the manager is to get what they want at the expense of the customer, then the restaurant should fail. The same holds true with other businesses; the management serves the ownership, but the ownership should want the business to make the customers happy.

[DoughnutHole]

The issue isn't about what's "right and proper" - it's a risky decision to do business with a company with this business model. Even if it's not "wrong" it's better value for a business to work with other businesses that treat them as a valued customer and not as replaceable fodder to fund an unsustainable valuation.

If Stripe want to sacrifice customer experience to chase a higher valuation that's their prerogative. But their current investors better hope they can cut and run before the core business substantially declines.

[drewbeck]

If the best we can come up with is hierarchies of servitude we will end up with yet another destructive and oppressive system.

which is about where we're at, so

[bfuller]

In a corporate structure, yes I would say so. Whether that is the best organizational method is another debate for another thread.

[papito]

No, the right and proper management is to grow a business and make it sustainable and profitable long-term.

Your description is exactly how Capitalism goes late stage. Use the profits from the committed work and effort of employees to "buy back" stocks, depriving the company of reinvestments and growth. Jack up the share price, therefore increasing the lauded "shareholder value". Keep going until only a husk of the company is left, and peace out with walkaway money.

This is all great, for those with platinum parachutes and those that know what's going on. These are vulture capitalists, but they infiltrate a company first and then eat away at it from the inside.

This is how America lost GE and Boeing. They served "ownership" very well however.

[mrjin]

Yes and no. No customers and no owner to serve soon.

[welder]

At least you had a high limit for a while. I emailed support many times trying to get my low Stripe Corp Credit Card limit increased to no avail. After some time I had single bills larger than my limit, making the card useless. Ended up switching to another provider and now enjoying business points with a high limit. Sorry Stripe, I wanted to use you but you made it impossible.

[icelancer]

I wish we never had a high limit. We went through painstaking transfers over to their Corp Card infrastructure and now have to switch to something else.

Because I have to switch to something else and they're completely incompetent / unwilling to work with us (not sure which one it is, but I think it's primarily the first one), we're gonna switch payment providers too. No reason to give them any business if they're going to make my dev team and managers do a shitload of work.

[88913527]

Is the fact that their cards tend to have lower limits a business "code smell" for lack of a better term? Does it say anything about Stripe's own financial standing, or perhaps they are just conservative compared to other creditors.

[icelancer]

Possibly they're just incompetent - here's my update:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32558191#32558635

[whatshisface]

What's your new provider?

[welder]

Mercury and Capital One

[richardw]

Might not be a popular opinion, but I’d guess that they’ve just de-risked a lot across the board. Fair chance we hit a real recession and if we do, people will be hitting those cards. Unfortunately it catches the solid clients too.

I’d guess Stripe has an exceptionally good view of what’s going on in the economy, worldwide.

[icelancer]

No doubt. Very possible. Makes sense given the fact their model docked us 66% credit limit despite nothing changing in our financial health model outside of an LOC/cash switchover (which is a normal setup for ecom businesses).

Just wild that AMEX and other banks have zero issue giving us a limit 3-5x that (verified it today!) but Stripe can't. AMEX account rep is begging for us to come back. Just sucks since Stripe's invoicing integration is absolutely nails, and all third party ones I've used are horrible (special shout to SAP Concur for being the worst of all time).

[joshmanders]

> Just wild that AMEX and other banks have zero issue giving us a limit 3-5x that (verified it today!) but Stripe can't.

Probably because Stripe is about 50-60B in valuation lower than AMEX and AMEX is a bank with long history with the government so bailouts are probably a high possibility for them to play loose like that. Stripe not so much.

[phpisthebest]

AMEX and other banks probably have the Fed on Speed dial to get that bailout money

While Stripe is big, they have not been around long enough to have built up the "To big to fail" government crony status of larger, longer lived companies so stripe would likely be allowed to fail where other companies will never have to pay for their miscalculations

[edwinwee]

Sorry for the issues here—could you email me at [e-mail]?

[thiscatis]

We did that last time you offered and never heard back.

[mtlynch]

I've had the same experience with Edwin. When I published an article critical of Stripe that reached the front page of HN,[0] he was very helpful and set up a direct phone call for us to talk. Edwin said many times on the call that if I ever ran into a situation where I seemed to be getting the runaround from Stripe support, I could contact him to get things unstuck.

A month later, I ran into an issue where the Stripe API contradicted the API documentation. I contacted support, and support told me that it's intended behavior for the API to violate its own documentation. I emailed Edwin since that seemed like the exact scenario he volunteered to help with, and he didn't respond. I followed up a week later, and he didn't respond.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22936818

[icelancer]

Well, I'll respond if and when I hear something. I've gotten a confirmation response email from Edwin at the very least.

Update: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32558191#32558635

[edwinwee]

Ah, sorry, may have missed it—could you forward and put your HN username in the subject?

[hindsightbias]

This is not a serious way to run a business. Unless ypu’re google.

[shawnz]

Letting customers slip through the cracks of the traditional support channels is a bad indicator obviously, but what's the problem with keeping an eye on social media channels in addition to the traditional channels? Why is that not a "serious way to run a business"?

[onion2k]

Why is that not a "serious way to run a business"?

Rather than trying to solve the problem of "customers having serious problems", listening to HN and replying here says "we only really care about people being critical of our product in public; we don't actually care about the underlying issue people are criticising us about." It's not real support if Joe Random can't access it without knowing the secret formula.

Support-by-HN-replies is theatre, even if it works sometimes.

I'm not really suggesting Stripe are guilty of this. Stripe support has actually been fine for me in the past.

[dylan604]

Because it's too easy to be bad at that as well. Just look at the thread where "Edwin" (I use quotes because it may or may not actually be Edwin) says "sorry, hit me up" and then the repsonse is "bitch, we did but you never replied back" (emphasis mine, but it was there if you read between the lines).

Now, "Edwin" looks even more pathetic and bot like

[KennyBlanken]

Here's a thought: treat your customers better so you don't have to do damage control when one of your customers finds a big enough audience.

For every person who gets an HN post/comment with traction, there's a thousand people with no voice or platform just as fucked over or more.

[artursapek]

Why is complaining on HN necessary to get proper customer support?

[xwdv]

Because otherwise you have no leverage. If you go through proper channels your request for help will sit rotting in a queue until someone decides to pick up the ticket.

If you complain loudly and publicly in a popular forum, everyone’s opinion of the company will degrade the longer your cries go visibly unanswered, so it requires immediate attention. Your request gets elevated to critical.

[m_sahaf]

As someone who worked as front-line support and turned into the authority who's asked to resolve complex cases, this is nonsense. They aren't playing Tetris ignoring the queue. It's more likely the front-line staff are overwhelmed and/or don't know how to cut through the corporate hoops/politics to find and deliver the fix, and/or too shy/embarrassed to admit ignorance and having to pass it to the higher-ups for someone who knows how to fix things. It's more likely going in circles because they want to resolve it within their levels without having to escalate it.

[krisoft]

> They aren't playing Tetris ignoring the queue.

Nobody said that.

> likely the front-line staff are overwhelmed

Which means that the company knowingly and intentionally decided to skimp on support, or have other policies which lead to their staff being overwhelmed.

> don't know how to cut through the corporate hoops/politics to find and deliver the fix

Which means the corporation decided to skimp on their training and or efforts to streamline the issue resolution.

> and/or too shy/embarrassed to admit ignorance and having to pass it to the higher-ups for someone who knows how to fix things

Same as above.

> It's more likely going in circles because they want to resolve it within their levels without having to escalate it.

And why is that? Ah yes, because the company knowingly and intentionally set the incentives as such.

I don’t have a problem with the front line support. They are just humans like you and me. But I will have zero pitty on companies who under allocate resources to their problems and then try to hide behind their overworked support line as some meat shield.

[voidfunc]

Posting on a popular forum seems to short-circuit all that and get actual results probably because it starts making some executive squirm.

If I'm running a business and losing money because your service is fubar I really don't give a damn that you're all too busy or too ignorant to solve the problem. I'm going to do what I know works and that's basically blast over HN/Twitter/Reddit that your service sucks and has been broke for X duration.

[m_sahaf]

You're right that a customer shouldn't care the staff are too busy or too ignorant. You're also right in how complaining online short-circuits all that to actually receive help. I continuously advocate for the presence of path to higher levels and short-circuits! But it isn't always "the employee of company X responded to me on HN because my post made an executive squirm!" Some people just care and willing to lend a hand in cases where they can help.

[KennyBlanken]

As someone who has worked front-line support: large companies like Stripe purposefully don't create paths in the customer support scripts for resolving issues they don't want to. They're not stupid or blind, they listen to the calls and know these issues crop up. They don't care. Having support staff deal with weird/unusual problems is expensive, more expensive than just having those customers put up with it, or go away and become someone else's problem.

Don't blame minimum wage earners for barriers intentionally thrown up by management to reduce labor costs.

[m_sahaf]

> Don't blame minimum wage earners

If that's directed at me, I am not blaming anyone. Chill. I'm saying it's a human thing.

[refulgentis]

I understand this position but after going from support-intensive startup to FAANG, the difference is scale subtly tipping the balance in small ways.

There's no equivalent for "overhearing a customer problem" at FAANG scale.

It would be dramatically inefficient for software engineers / product managers / those implementing functionality to triage all support tickets.

About 0.5% of support tickets are interesting enough to be a case study the way this user has offered. At both large and small scale.

[lotsofpulp]

> at FAANG scale and it would be dramatically inefficient for software engineers / product managers / those implementing functionality to triage all support tickets

In other words, human labor would be too costly. It not a FAANG thing either, the government does it just as well as most other big entities that are betting they can let some problems slip through without too much loss.

[djbusby]

Not too costly, just cuts into CxO salary, shareholders value and stuff. The line must go up!

[refulgentis]

There, trivially, aren't enough software engineers on the planet to assign one to every incoming support inquiry.

[Victerius]

I think the admiral asked a rhetorical question.

[aaaaaaaaata]

?

[Victerius]

"Top Gun: Maverick" reference.

[justapassenger]

Because that’s 90% of reason why tech startups are profitable. Not by having better product than competition, but buy gutting customer support, which is super expensive AND doesn’t scale.

And it works until it doesn’t.

[icelancer]

Done.

[baobob]

Would OP please consider updating this thread with the outcome of the email exchange. Seems too easy to pop into every complaint thread and act busy. Would love to know if your problem is actually resolved

[icelancer]

Update (can't edit the OP):

Edwin reached out to me but their team can't override their faulty algorithm apparently. Other banks/payment providers have no issue giving us 3-5x the limit Stripe slashed us to, but they can't. Root cause is the fact that Stripe fundamentally doesn't understand eCommerce / cyclical LOCs in their algorithms apparently as our business hasn't changed meaningfully regarding effective cash positions.

Fairly surprising Stripe doesn't understand how to evaluate financial positions correctly. Oh well.

[icelancer]

Yes, I will certainly do so.

[dahx4Eev]

Please also let us know if you found a better alternative.

[icelancer]

I would but that is likely to come months down the road - I doubt this thread will be remembered by then! Still I'll figure out how to get that info out.

[GingerMidas]

Are processors like Square any better?

[icelancer]

Possibly. I'm still angry at Square because I emailed them repeatedly 10+ years ago telling them to add gateway processing (which they didn't have), and they took forever. Stripe's business shouldn't even exist. Square had a head start and should have just made a payment gateway/API and eaten their lunch. They absolutely had an internal API, quite obviously, so not productizing it and letting a whole new business in Stripe come around and launch that product and crush them was absurd.

I've used Square's on-premises processing for minor stuff like a side business of mine, but nothing too serious. Their fees aren't too good; they're comparable to Stripe but Stripe's ecosystem for developers is far better.

If/when we switch, we'll probably just go to a bare bones payment processor that is much cheaper than Stripe with less support.

[GingerMidas]

That's pretty funny in hindsight.

> If/when we switch, we'll probably just go to a bare bones payment processor that is much cheaper than Stripe with less support.

Also what we're considering right about now

[icelancer]

Even I can see the humor in it. You are right!

I hate to switch off Stripe, but the premium I'm paying is theoretically for better support and developer-friendly actions. I'm not getting that right now, so... why am I paying a premium?

Years ago their customer service slashed our rates because of our increased volume and even pc himself reached out to me about a technical matter (and the company was not small). Over the last year the customer service has gone to complete shit in our experience and the rates are still uncompetitively high. Frustrating.

[sneakymichael]

Anecdotally: I've been looking to get answers from Stripe, about fees-related questions that either make my proposed use viable or unviable, and I've received nothing but copied & pasted email replies, a week+ later (or not at all), which essentially ignore what I've asked. Incredibly frustrating.

When I mention the experience to friends, they joke that I have Stockholm Syndrome; to want to continue pursuing them, despite their complete disregard.

[icelancer]

Yeah that's sad. I asked for a fee reduction 2 years into our relationship, and they said no because of XYZ but if we hit revenue targets ABC that they'd re-evaluate.

About a year later, we hit revenue targets ABC, I waited a month (just for systems to catch up) and emailed them. We had a good discussion about a rate cut and they knocked their fees down as they promised.

I emailed in 3-4 years after that and asked for a rate cut as our revenues had gone up by about 10x, and they said they could not, but provided explanations on why because of high international processing, high AMEX/Discover processing, etc. Totally cool, I understood that and appreciated the detailed email. Wasn't disappointed at all.

I tried back a year or so later when our revenues shot up but got the same message more or less, but still personalized. Again, I had to try, but also, not unhappy.

And since all of those excellent customer service responses - many of which did not go my way, which is not how I rate interactions - it's been awful. The corporate card team refuses to answer questions or even apologize for their insane limit cuts. They presumably are hiding behind bullshit KYC/AML justifications for their actions or protecting their algorithmic decisions in order to provide us zero actionable customer support with no personalization. It's embarrassing.

[WillPostForFood]

Who are you looking at switching to? I'm also starting to evaluate alternatives to Stripe.

[icelancer]

I don't want to drop any names here because we're in the exploratory phase, haven't even started negotiations with anyone yet. But there are alternatives that are quite a bit cheaper that offer fewer frills.

Humorously enough we needed a sales tax solution, and Stripe Tax is vastly outgunned by its competitors, possibly leading to the layoffs in its department. It is a significantly inferior product to Avalara, which is the leading product in the space.

[PRLDRS]

There are a lot of alternatives: Checkout.com, Adyen, are the most tech forward I’ve found.

[deepstack]

Yeah that's tech for you! E4X was a ES standard, but Mozilla dropped it in 2014, then FB pick it and made JSX and now that is the defacto "Front-End" development.

[tomnipotent]

You're better off with Adyen.

[lovingCranberry]

OT: I just went through Adyen's prohibited businesses. Why does every major payment processor prohibit vendors of adult toys from using their payment services?

I mean, those aren't even high risk businesses. Credit card fraud usually happens when you offer high priced electronics. Chargebacks usually happen when you sell digital goods like templates, ebooks, videos etc.

[cyral]

You need a merchant account from a high-risk processor, combined with a generic gateway like Authorize.Net. (Don't use their built in processor) The all in one solutions like Stripe or Adyen are convenient but they aren't what high-risk industries need.

[lovingCranberry]

Yes, but how are adult toy sellers "high risk"?

[TylerE]

High chargeback rate when one partner won't fess up to spending $300 at Bob's House'O'Dildos?

[bsder]

Because shipping 6 dildos to Texas can put you in jail.

https://www.ladbible.com/news/latest-the-texan-laws-around-s...

The US federal overturn of the Texas law was based around Roe v Wade which has itself been overturned so the Texas law is now back in action.

[culiao]

Do you have a recommendation for a middle layer for making pretty checkout flows via the API? Authorize.net is what we use - but their API is tough.

[cyral]

I'd love to see a Stripe style wrapper around Authorize, but I don't think it exists. Just thankful we can use JSON now instead of their XML API.

[ficklepickle]

I've wondered about this, too. The simple and unhelpful answer is because banks/CC companies are conservative and consider them high risk. So why is that? I've been able to find two factors: 1) associated (correctly or not) with the sex industry, which is taboo, possibly regulated or outright illegal. 2) high rate of chargebacks. Factors leading to high chargebacks could include no returns allowed and taboo/shame. Imagine an insecure partner finds a charge on a CC and the other partner claims they didn't purchase it, leading to a chargeback to support the lie.

Here is one of the better articles I found: https://instabill.com/do-adult-toys-fall-into-the-high-risk-...

[kasey_junk]

The credit card networks have brand protection clauses in their operating procedures.

They likely don’t actually prohibit adult toys specifically but payment processors can be conservative in fear of having major disruptions from the networks.

[kennydude]

Stripe's rules don't even make sense on this - OnlyFans uses Stripe somehow

[sneakymichael]

Their offering perfectly fit the bill for what we needed, but they turned us away; citing a requirement of transacting €5M per year, despite us needing a payment handler /for launch/.

[lawgimenez]

That’s sad. We integrated Adyen like 5-6 years ago and this requirement was nowhere to be found. All I remember was their SDKs are difficult to integrate.

[icelancer]

That's the main one we're investigating. You have good things to say?

[rkunde]

No, neither for merchants nor for developers.

[ecommerceguy]

Better in what way? I personally would never use a Square product (I feel the entire org has major ethical issues) however other players in this space include Braintree, Amazon Payments and a host of 3rd parties - although 3rd parties are discontinuing internet based direct gateway access such as CardConnect.

[mtrpcic]

I'm curious what ethical issues you have with Square, but are fine with Amazon Payments.

[insane_dreamer]

Square has more ethical issues than Amazon?

[djbusby]

PayPal owns BrainTree now

[mrjin]

How hard is it to switch payment provider? And in particular, how hard is it to get corporate cards from banks? No offending, just curious the reason behind all this.

[dylan604]

That totally depends on the new provider. One of the nice things about Stripe was their APIs and SDKs were so easy to use. As a solo dev, I was able to spin up a site in a very short amount of time.

If the new provider has less features/ease-of-use, then you have to start from square one on integration. If you have a team, then maybe not as big of a burden as being a solo dev.