You need to explain what happened, and what sector you operate in. Doing this support stuff on HN as a last resort & getting on the front page is crap in the first place, not feeding back is even worse.
I would still recommend you change your payment backend to direct your customer payments via one or more "backup" processors asap. Perhaps leave Stripe altogether if you prefer, once that's done, or keep Stripe around as the backup.
After all, they have a track record of screwing you over again, after fixing and checking your account. Whatever triggered that could do it again when you least expect it, despite Edwin's good work. Probably the triggers haven't changed as you are still running the same business.
(Like several other commenters, I was thinking of using Stripe as a main payment processor before seeing this article because of their great API, documentation, test mode and ease of setup. They seemed like a good choice, but I had wrongly assumed they were reasonable and reliable and if there were issues they could be resolved; that I didn't need to worry about Stripe being shady themselves. Now I've learned Stripe is like the Paypal of old when it comes to killing a business abruptly with no warning or recourse. That's so severe it cancels out every benefit and feature. With much disappointment I now feel it will be necessary to evaluate other services instead.)
I was trying to find it but can't... I thought it was on Planet Money but might not have been. I'm pretty sure it was a program on NPR because that and college radio are about all I listen to on the radio, and it wasn't a podcast.
I wish I could remember the details better. They were focused on small business owners, retail mostly. I think they started out with an interview of someone with an interior design-related business.
We're built on Rails which has the extreme luxury of being able to use ActiveMerchant, which does exactly this. The problem is, abstraction falls apart when you're using functions that are specific to a product. Stripe Connect is is nearly impossible to replicate with an adapter.
This is more a function of the fact that I don't want my business to be identifiable from this post than that it's a sketchy business. You'll have to take my word for it, but it's exceedingly benign.
It is not. A company like Stripe is free to decide it does not want to be associated with certain services. You may disagree with that, and I would certainly agree they should at least be upfront about it, but it is not beside the point.
It is free to do that, but if it decides it wants to kick customers out immediately without explanation, we are free to tell one another and use a different provider. That is the point we're discussing, whether the dev community can still consider Stripe reliable and professional.
Are you sure it's not a medium risk business that IS benign, but STILL is considered medium to high risk?
For example, selling video game digital products like a strategy guide is benign, but gaming industry is ripe with fraud so most processors will give you shit if you're in the gaming niche, let alone (non-crypto) digital currencies, crypto, health products, non-snakeoil supplements, etc.
Even if this is the case, it doesn't mean that Stripe should just be able to turn off a 3rd of the guy's business with no warning or reason. If they don't like what he's doing, tell him and give him notice to switch to another provider rather than just tanking his business over night.
Yeah that isn't how payment processors work. If his clients are in breach of Stripes TOS it puts Stripe at odds with the compliance teams at Visa/MC/Amex immediately if they are processing his payments.
Source: I used to run adult websites which is considered 'high risk' and also these days responsible for overseeing 1M/m in CC processing for a state agency.
Since HN is a community, you might have more luck getting this fixed if you posted this with your regular username? Never mind this suggestion if you have previously posted "sketchy" opinions that would harm your business, although you may be past that point now...
Agree. The OP account was created today. If it was a long-standing user with lots of comment history, then I’d be more inclined to wonder what was going on etc.
Creating a new account on here to potentially get support is just plain wrong, and needs dealing with IMO. Should never hit the front page.
Totally understandable, but what kind of business is it? If you just keep saying 'it's a business' but refuse to provide any further details then people are gonna make assumptions, eg adult entertainment. Nobody's asking what your specific business model is.
Also consider that if the situation continues your pissed-off downstream customers will ID you sooner or later.
Yeah, me too. I was wrong to suspect that you wanted to avoid associating your business with your HN content. So, are you trying to avoid leaving an online record of "this business helped Stripe screw over its customers"? Unless your customers have strong incentives not to talk publicly about their experiences, that ship has sailed...
Ha, not quite. It's more I'm concerned that people considering using my product will see this in the future (hopefully when this issue is resolved) and be wary of doing business with us.
Is it an animal, a mineral, or a vegetable? Surely you can give us enough generic information that we can know roughly what kind of business you run without making it searchable.
There are clearly problems at Stripe. But this kind human is not one of them.