[smca]

Why not publicly? But yes: my [e-mail]. You mention something about reducing chargebacks, was your chargeback rate high for a particular reason? If so, you know we can't support businesses with excessively high chargeback rates. If you exceed the chargeback thresholds set by card networks, they can place you in a "dispute monitoring program" and the fines imposed on businesses can be very high.

[sschueller]

"Why not publicly?"

Because HN is not your support forum.

[smca]

The post was made here with no detail, making it look as though Stripe arbitrarily closed an account without cause. If you choose to post here, you should share details. If not, you should use our support channels (chat, email, phone, and @stripesupport on Twitter).

[southernplaces7]

>If you choose to post here, you should share details. If not, you should use our support channels (chat, email, phone, and @stripesupport on Twitter).

An unhappy Stripe user has zero obligation to do any damn thing you prefer for the sake of helping you with your PR. They were counting on you for a vital service and you failed to continue providing it through a very abrupt termination of that service with no further internal recourse available. Despite this they should keep their complaints private unless they detail them in just the way you'd prefer, where you prefer? Fuck outta here...

Stripe already has a burgeoning track record of shitty behavior to users from what many of us have seen reported here and elsewhere, but this smugness from one of its own staff on a third party site is a nice bonus.

[jjoe]

unixy.net

[smca]

I'm happy to take a look at this for you. I also won't share any more details on this post unless you want to provide them yourself.

I will reiterate that we'd like to grow with any user we have (particularly a long-tenured one!). However, we can't support businesses with excessively high chargeback rates, no matter what. Keeping chargebacks at an acceptable level is a financial obligation for every business: https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/monitoring-programs.

[jjoe]

I hear you. This is why I've gotten on top of this. I've essentially turned Stripe automation off in my system. So each and every customer wishing to go with Stripe for payment is fraud-checked and dd'ed.

[brianwawok]

What kind of chargeback rates were you talking to get in trouble? 10%? 5%?

[smca]

Using Visa monitoring program as an example here, high dispute rates thresholds are as follows: 0.75% is an early warning, 0.9% is standard and can lead to fines, 1.8% is excessive. Dispute counts and other signals are also taken into account, not just the rate. https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/monitoring-programs#vdmp

[brianwawok]

That’s rough when some percent of users will chargeback just out of regret for the purchase without even contacting the merchant. As a SaaS app on stripe the disputes are virtually unwinnable.

[smca]

I don't disagree—chargebacks can be abused by end-users, especially if you don't make it easy to get a refund or your communication is lacking. That being said, Stripe doesn't own any part of the process, we're an intermediary that communicates evidence and outcomes between a cardholder and their bank. The same painful fraudulent chargeback patterns exist with any PSP.

So, we make it as easy as possible to submit evidence. The cardholder's bank decides whether the chargeback is won in favor of the business or not. The card networks are aware that "friendly fraud" is increasing too, hence the introduction of Compelling Evidence 3.0 (more to come on this): https://support.stripe.com/questions/how-does-stripe-support....

[figassis]

You can make sure to always collect enough evidence such as agreeing to TOS (including date, ip/location), invoices, providing easy refund paths as well as a way to demonstrate usage, etc. you can also automate dispute evidence submission. But the business model is often what determines whether you’ll have higher cb rates.

With a SaaS, maybe try a trial period and monitor is the customer actively uses the service, and make sure you notify them before you start charging. Often I signup for a trial, find out the service is useless but forget to cancel. That first charge is a prime cb candidate.