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The remarkable thing about the culture around Stripe is that they still get the credit for the things they did well in those early days, even though they are fa

The remarkable thing about the culture around Stripe is that they still get the credit for the things they did well in those early days, even though they are far from the same service now that they've scaled up. Objectively, today's Stripe is often a relatively expensive and unreliable way to collect money from your customers. The API and developer documentation are no longer as simple and effective as they once were, particularly if you need things like PSD2. Something fundamentally changed about Stripe's support a few years ago, and it seemed like almost overnight they went from routinely having knowledgeable people replying with helpful suggestions to having people who can't even be bothered to read your message before hitting whatever button sends boilerplate reply #74 with platitudes #27 and #53 at the start and end. Much of this is understandable. Obviously you're not going to get senior people from an organisation the size of Stripe today personally responding to messages the way they used to. Some of the complexity due to PSD2 itself has been forced on them. Appealing to a wider range of merchants with more diverse needs is inevitably going to make some parts of the system more complicated. However, the hero worship they still seem to enjoy in various forums, including this one, is remarkably cult-like now. Recommending the Stripe you remember from days gone by, particularly if you haven't recently used any of the other services now competing for the online payments market, might even be harmful to those starting small businesses today, who might be better served by one or more of the alternatives and should at least be considering the full range of options available to them.

stevoski 6y ago
> Something fundamentally changed about Stripe's support a few years ago, and it seemed like almost overnight they went from routinely having knowledgeable people replying with helpful suggestions to having people who can't even be bothered to read your message before hitting whatever button sends boilerplate reply #74 with platitudes #27 and #53 at the start and end. That's definitely my experience with Stripe support over the years, too. A definite degradation. Really annoying.
porker 6y ago
This is my experience too. > who might be better served by one or more of the alternatives and should at least be considering the full range of options available to them. Which alternatives should I consider, if I need PSD2? I've written about my experience with Braintree above; there's SagePay but every client has been pleased to move away from them.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  PSD2 implies Europe, so my first question is whether to accept cards as the primary means of payment at all. The various direct payment schemes are typically cheaper, more reliable and, in some countries, much more widely used. If you are handling recurring billing via a Direct Debit scheme then you are probably also outside the scope of the SCA rules that are going to interrupt payment flows using cards whenever the EU member states finally insist on following them. I've used GoCardless to do some of this, but depending on where you are based, there seem to be quite a few other services now that offer some or all of the relevant schemes.
  - porker 6y ago
    UK based here, so for most projects I/clients want cards as the primary payment method due to the audience as they are one-off payments. I've used GoCardless on one project; as the developer I didn't enjoy the experience at all. Setting up testing for all states was painful (as was getting items to the right state to use their scenario simulator). I see Stripe have rolled out UK Direct Debit support now; hopefully their documentation and testing story are better than GoCardless.
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      I certainly agree that testing these integrations is unnecessarily painful, but given that both Stripe and GoCardless offer much the same facilities -- a single sandbox environment, but without comprehensive simulation of all important scenarios and with nothing useful for either automated integration testing or offline simulation at the developer's desk -- I'm not sure I'd say either is much better than the other. The only major difference I can think of is that since they simulate roughly realistic timing as well, GoCardless can also take several days to complete a test run for a new integration or bug fix, which is obviously absurd.
meagher 6y ago
> The remarkable thing about the culture around Stripe is that they still get the credit for the things they did well in those early days, even though they are far from the same service now that they've scaled up. This describes the broader Silicon Valley tech scene quite well too. People worship others for founding/funding X company, being employee #Y at a certain unicorn, creating a cool feature 5+ years ago for a dead app, etc.
usoris 6y ago
> Something fundamentally changed about Stripe's support a few years ago, and it seemed like almost overnight they went from routinely having knowledgeable people replying with helpful suggestions to having people who can't even be bothered to read your message before hitting whatever button sends boilerplate reply #74 with platitudes #27 and #53 at the start and end. I've found that their email support is far better than their live chat support (and I assume phone support too). The last time I used their live chat support I had a confusing back and forth until being told to just use email support.

stevoski 6y ago

> Something fundamentally changed about Stripe's support a few years ago, and it seemed like almost overnight they went from routinely having knowledgeable people replying with helpful suggestions to having people who can't even be bothered to read your message before hitting whatever button sends boilerplate reply #74 with platitudes #27 and #53 at the start and end. That's definitely my experience with Stripe support over the years, too. A definite degradation. Really annoying.

porker 6y ago

This is my experience too. > who might be better served by one or more of the alternatives and should at least be considering the full range of options available to them. Which alternatives should I consider, if I need PSD2? I've written about my experience with Braintree above; there's SagePay but every client has been pleased to move away from them.

Silhouette 6y ago
PSD2 implies Europe, so my first question is whether to accept cards as the primary means of payment at all. The various direct payment schemes are typically cheaper, more reliable and, in some countries, much more widely used. If you are handling recurring billing via a Direct Debit scheme then you are probably also outside the scope of the SCA rules that are going to interrupt payment flows using cards whenever the EU member states finally insist on following them. I've used GoCardless to do some of this, but depending on where you are based, there seem to be quite a few other services now that offer some or all of the relevant schemes.
- porker 6y ago
  UK based here, so for most projects I/clients want cards as the primary payment method due to the audience as they are one-off payments. I've used GoCardless on one project; as the developer I didn't enjoy the experience at all. Setting up testing for all states was painful (as was getting items to the right state to use their scenario simulator). I see Stripe have rolled out UK Direct Debit support now; hopefully their documentation and testing story are better than GoCardless.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    I certainly agree that testing these integrations is unnecessarily painful, but given that both Stripe and GoCardless offer much the same facilities -- a single sandbox environment, but without comprehensive simulation of all important scenarios and with nothing useful for either automated integration testing or offline simulation at the developer's desk -- I'm not sure I'd say either is much better than the other. The only major difference I can think of is that since they simulate roughly realistic timing as well, GoCardless can also take several days to complete a test run for a new integration or bug fix, which is obviously absurd.

meagher 6y ago

> The remarkable thing about the culture around Stripe is that they still get the credit for the things they did well in those early days, even though they are far from the same service now that they've scaled up. This describes the broader Silicon Valley tech scene quite well too. People worship others for founding/funding X company, being employee #Y at a certain unicorn, creating a cool feature 5+ years ago for a dead app, etc.

usoris 6y ago

> Something fundamentally changed about Stripe's support a few years ago, and it seemed like almost overnight they went from routinely having knowledgeable people replying with helpful suggestions to having people who can't even be bothered to read your message before hitting whatever button sends boilerplate reply #74 with platitudes #27 and #53 at the start and end. I've found that their email support is far better than their live chat support (and I assume phone support too). The last time I used their live chat support I had a confusing back and forth until being told to just use email support.