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I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had issues with the "support circle". Usually Stripe is on the ball but I dunno, I had a very non-productive back and forth

by nickjj 7y ago

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had issues with the "support circle". Usually Stripe is on the ball but I dunno, I had a very non-productive back and forth with them. Non-productive in the sense that it took a long time to get anything that was in response to my initial email and that in the end I didn't learn anything I didn't know before I sent the first email. Their first couple of replies just tried to get me to use their hosted checkout even though I mentioned needing coupon codes early on which is not supported by that. I also included a super detailed explanation of my workflow (bullet points, using headers, in depth break down of everything) and it was clear their hosted checkout was no way possible to use -- not even the automatic payment intents was viable due to the lack of validation I had to do server side when using automatic PI. Manual PI with a million hoops to jump through or forfeiting sales with Charges was the only option. It really felt like the support person didn't read the request. It felt like they skimmed it for 5 seconds for keywords (or maybe this was algorithmic) and then made a copy / paste suggestion from a script just to make sure they hit a daily quota of "emails answered". It took a number of these until I started to get responses back from someone who sounded like they read the initial email. I'm thankful Stripe exists but the worst possible thing you can ever do in support besides ignoring a customer is having the customer spend 45 minutes writing the most detailed request for help possible and then getting a canned response that was already deemed not able to be used in the original email that was sent. It's just in your face proof that support didn't even read it. Then you have to spend 5 back and forth emails over a week just repeating what you wrote in the first email. I wish multi-billion dollar companies hired support people who cared as much about the company as the CEO. I guess this is why solo devs and smaller teams tend to offer the best support -- simply because the person answering emails is the person running the business or is massively invested in it.

edwinwee 7y ago
Not good. Sorry about that. Could you forward me that support thread (edwin@stripe.com) and I can look into what went wrong?
- nickjj 7y ago
  I just want to follow up with after emailing edwin, I was put in contact with someone who is on a different level than the support team I've talked with originally. We got in touch late Friday so a resolution wasn't made (not enough time), but it's clear he spent more than 1 minute skimming the support message and it felt like he really put in serious effort to help me in my specific situation. I think everything will be crystal clear in the end after a couple of emails (and these aren't just repeating emails, it's to deal with moving forward with new info after implementation). I wish this type of support was the default. It never would have happened without this post on HN happening. There's a lot of value in having in depth emails about specific problems because it leads to documentation improvements that benefit everyone (plus it makes your paying customers happy on the spot because they got help using your product).
  - Chris_Newton 7y ago
    Interesting comment. I hope it works out for you. I wonder whether that might also be what the last person from Stripe support meant when they mentioned sending us to some sort of specialist. Unfortunately by that point we’d already spent more than two weeks going back and forth with numerous people replying but no actionable advice, so we declined and made other arrangements. However, I did also send them some notes similar to my comments here, so perhaps the negative experience in our case could at least be helpful for improving their documentation for others in the future.
- Chris_Newton 7y ago
  If it’s of interest, our recent experience and the impression it created were very similar. We also somehow seemed to wind up with two or possibly three concurrent discussions going on, possibly because my initial contact went unanswered so I wound up chasing. We still use my business email address as our point of contact with Stripe, so if you look for chris.newton in your tracker, you should find all of the relevant discussions.

by nickjj 7y ago

edwinwee 7y ago

Not good. Sorry about that. Could you forward me that support thread (edwin@stripe.com) and I can look into what went wrong?

nickjj 7y ago
I just want to follow up with after emailing edwin, I was put in contact with someone who is on a different level than the support team I've talked with originally. We got in touch late Friday so a resolution wasn't made (not enough time), but it's clear he spent more than 1 minute skimming the support message and it felt like he really put in serious effort to help me in my specific situation. I think everything will be crystal clear in the end after a couple of emails (and these aren't just repeating emails, it's to deal with moving forward with new info after implementation). I wish this type of support was the default. It never would have happened without this post on HN happening. There's a lot of value in having in depth emails about specific problems because it leads to documentation improvements that benefit everyone (plus it makes your paying customers happy on the spot because they got help using your product).
- Chris_Newton 7y ago
  Interesting comment. I hope it works out for you. I wonder whether that might also be what the last person from Stripe support meant when they mentioned sending us to some sort of specialist. Unfortunately by that point we’d already spent more than two weeks going back and forth with numerous people replying but no actionable advice, so we declined and made other arrangements. However, I did also send them some notes similar to my comments here, so perhaps the negative experience in our case could at least be helpful for improving their documentation for others in the future.
Chris_Newton 7y ago
If it’s of interest, our recent experience and the impression it created were very similar. We also somehow seemed to wind up with two or possibly three concurrent discussions going on, possibly because my initial contact went unanswered so I wound up chasing. We still use my business email address as our point of contact with Stripe, so if you look for chris.newton in your tracker, you should find all of the relevant discussions.