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Stripe is extremely bad at fraud. I have a company that continues to charge my credit card monthly, their website and email do not work anymore. I continue to c

Stripe is extremely bad at fraud. I have a company that continues to charge my credit card monthly, their website and email do not work anymore. I continue to charge back them every single month, and Stripe continues to charge my card. This has been going on for about 7 months now. If I ask them to help, they tell me to contact AMEX, I contact AMEX they tell me to contact Stripe. The website doesn't work, the email doesn't work, I charge it back every single month, yet Stripe doesn't care one bit. Attempting to contact Stripe results in emails asking if I need help resetting my password (yes I legit sent an email asking for them to investigate the "company" and they sent back a reply with details on how to reset my password), to telling me to contact my credit card provider. Honestly both companies are giant bags of turds, if you can you should look elsewhere, you can save money on almost every fee, there are alternatives to every single product they provide, and pretty much all of the alternatives are varying degrees of better or cheaper.

codegeek 4y ago
You can contact AMEX to block the vendor from any further charges. Can you not ?
- dubcanada 4y ago
  I've done that 4 times, AMEX has a block (multiple blocks as per the reps). But the charges still go through (that's another story). The AMEX people just keep saying Stripe has a "iron clad contract" so even with that, they cannot do much. I am not saying it is a 100% Stripe. But why would a company like Stripe allow me to do (successfully) 7 chargebacks in a row. At what point would an account be shut down or a subscription terminated? If this was PayPal, the account would have been frozen ages ago.
  - WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
    Can you not report your card as stolen, get your bank to issue you a new one, and be done with it?
    - dubcanada 4y ago
      I've got a brand new card number, CVC, etc. They can still charge it because the subscription contract exists, there is nothing AMEX can do. Even with a brand new credit card, reported as stolen, what ever. If a monthly subscription contract exists (which you sign once you click that button to pay $5 monthly I guess), they can continue charging the account. This was what AMEX rep told me.
      - andreareina 4y ago
        You can try contacting your ombudsman, official notice is less likely to get the circular finger-pointing game
      - massysett 4y ago
        It’s pretty surprising that credit card companies will route charges to the particular “account” linked with a “number” even if the “number” is “closed” or “cancelled” or “expired”. Certainly not the experience one intuitively expects up front. I realized this when the bank issues me a new card proactively due to a data breach, but old recurring charges still work. I guess this is both for customer convenience and to give the bank more flexibility, but I think this would be a lot simpler if closed credit card numbers just stopped working.
        cj 4y ago
        If anyone is interested in how this works: https://stripe.com/docs/saving-cards#automatic-card-updates https://stripe.com/docs/saving-cards#automatic-card-updates > Stripe works with card networks and automatically attempts to update saved card details whenever a customer receives a new card (for example, replacing an expired card or one that was reported lost or stolen). > It is widely supported in the United States, allowing Stripe to automatically update most American Express, Visa, Mastercard, and Discover cards issued there.
        prirun 4y ago
        Google did this to me with GCS: they automatically updated my expiring credit card. It's not a terrible feature, but I think users should consent to it before companies do it.
  - codegeek 4y ago
    Some stripe folks are very active on HN. May be they can help ?
smca_ 4y ago
(Sam from Stripe here.) Sorry for the issues so far. Could you email me more details at smca[at]stripe.com? I'll dig into this.
- dubcanada 4y ago
  I will send the full details/email chain tomorrow morning. I appreciate you looking into it, but why does this type of interaction require a HN article for a response? Why do none of the regular methods go anywhere?
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    They don’t care about fixing your payment problem. They care about fixing their PR problem. Not to pile on poor Sam here. This is a common thing in the finance industry, and tech, and basically everywhere.
    - lettergram 4y ago
      With thousands of employees you’re bound to get some (say 5-10%!) which are outright bad at their job or malicious. The fact the founders quickly offered assistance directly, when they’re business is worth tens of billions is at least worth giving the benefit of the doubt. Even if it’s just for PR, they’re at least doing it.
      - Judgmentality 4y ago
        > Even if it’s just for PR, they’re at least doing it. Why the hell would you praise a company for an empty gesture? You're defending bullshit like it's a good thing.
        lettergram 4y ago
        I never suggested they were doing an empty gesture. I’m assuming they’ll fix the problem, even if it’s just for PR purposes.
kaivi 4y ago
I have a perspective from the other end of this, as a seller. Been using Stripe for 5 years selling digital content with a low, $5 average bill. A year ago the site was likely noticed by hackers who started punching in dozens of stolen credit cards. I kept refunding manually at first, but then I had activated Stripe Radar. It made absolutely zero difference out of the box. "-Is it a 100th charge coming from the same IP in Ukraine with a Canadian VISA? No problem, charge approved, here's your success webhook.". "-Same fake TLD for the email address, for a customer number 2235? Nothing suspicious here, charge approved.". What helped fight this was to create a rule in Radar to reject all cards without 3D Secure capability, but it had cut off a sizable chunk of legit revenue.
- gary_0 4y ago
  Is there no way to get Stripe to automatically refund all chargebacks/disputes? What if you're only getting a 5% fraud rate for something cheap and you want to just eat the loss and not have to manually deal with disputes? Or if you're selling something like a premium online account, you can just disable the user's account automatically if they dispute the charge.
  - spinlock 4y ago
    5% is huge. Like, ban your business from taking credit cards huge.
    - Brystephor 4y ago
      Yep. Anything greater than 1% is leading to trouble such as huge fees or being kicked off a card network.
    - gary_0 4y ago
      So you're saying all I need to do to knock a business offline is spam it with enough fraudulent CC numbers?
      - jacobolus 4y ago
highwaylights 4y ago
Cant you just cancel the card and get a new one?
- pGuitar 4y ago
  That's what I do once in a while... it works.
- freedomben 4y ago
  Yeah but such a horrible solution. After the pain of reporting it and getting it changed, now you get to update a dozen or more auto-pay accounts. You're sure to miss at least one and have something (probably important like your internet or phone bill) cut off on you at the worst possible time. Plus you get to spend days without usable plastic. Hope you have a spare card or cash. Would much prefer a solution simpler/easier/less devstating than dropping Mjölnir on it.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  It's not a guarantee - card networks have a system where they will send payment processors the new card details, so the fraudulent charges will recur. As far as I know, it's not granular, per-merchant, so you can't skip the fraudulent merchant while updating the legitimate ones. Furthermore, some banks may not even give control to the user about whether this happens or not.
allisdust 4y ago
I really like how they implemented this in India. Due to recent central bank changes, all recurring subscriptions need customer notification before the card is charged. So before a recurring charge occurs (1 day before), they send a sms with a link to cancel that charge if required. Also now most credit cards are providing a single place to manage all subscriptions. So you can approve requests for recurring authorisation (first time) and also delete an existing recurring charge with a single click. Not to mention to be able to see who all are charging or going to charge you recurring in the first place.
- pyb 4y ago
  The EU should adopt this.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    The EU already has this but for some insane reason there are no electronic SEPA mandates only paper ones, also you must request the cancellation of the SEPA mandate from the merchant.
  - CydeWeys 4y ago
    The US too! This sounds great. Even better would be a recurring subscriptions management panel provided by the credit card issuer. Then you could cancel from there, and the service provider would be notified.
- rajup 4y ago
  This is a fantastic idea! Wish it were here in the US. In some areas like fintech/banking it appears "developing" economies like India are light years ahead of us.
  - toast0 4y ago
    There are benefits to being late to market. The US also has close to 5000 banks and nearly as many credit unions, whereas most 'developing' economies have only a handful. Banks have to follow state and federal rules (sometimes both, sometimes only one or the other, depending on the rules and the corporate details). Centralization into only a few firms and maybe a single regulator makes it easier to have consistent features and requirements.
njovin 4y ago
This sounds like a fun time to run an experiment with getting an injunction against Stripe. Next time it happens, rather than doing a chargeback, sue them for the actual amount in addition to all of your time spent dealing with it. Then seek a preliminary injunction preventing them from charging your card any longer. You can probably do this on your own, although it will be time-consuming. At that point it becomes a legal problem for them and I suspect they'll be forced to take more serious action.
- j-bos 4y ago
  But then woudn't the poster be locked out of purchasing goods and services facilitated through Stripe?
- zdragnar 4y ago
  For such a small transaction, in the US you're stuck with small claims courts, and iirc you generally aren't going to get any damages for your time there unless it somehow interfered with your work hours.
  - arbuge 4y ago
    > unless it somehow interfered with your work hours This doesn't sound like a particularly difficult bar to clear.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      It is if you're not an hourly employee. In small claims courts, you need a pretty clear demonstration of actual damages. You don't get to just make up a number that sounds nice. Therapy bills from stress, maybe, but this scenario seems like it would be taking up an hour or so of time in a month. In any case, small claims courts usually try to get you to go through arbitration first, and stripe would almost certainly cave with a small offer since it would cost less than an hour of a lawyers time.
  - rvcdbn 4y ago
    Since this is HN I will characteristically take my precious private moments sitting on the toilet to correct this wrong understanding on the internet. Small claims court is an additional option if the defendant lives in the same state and the amount is small. Civil court is always also an option even if small claims court also applies. So this reply makes no sense. You’re wrong. I know it hurts so bad but it’s okay because we are all wrong sometimes. So we will let it go this once there is no need to delete your account and make a new one. Small claims court is great for some things: I sued my ex land lord who wouldn’t return my deposit. Lawyers aren’t allowed and it’s usually open and shut. Anyway hope you have a great Thursday!
olivermuty 4y ago
Do you have suggestions for replacements for Stripe Connect for marketplace usage? The combination of being able to calculate fees and cuts before you tell Stripe to pay it out to partners through Stripe Connect seems pretty unique. There are several other Merchant of Record alternatives, but I have not found something that can do quite the programmatic approach you can with Stripe.
- jjeaff 4y ago
  Braintree has a similar product. But they were bought by PayPal several years ago, so you are getting into that mess of a company.
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  Airwallex is pretty good and it can replace both Stripe and Connect. I am a customer of their banking service and I played with their APIs. It feels like Stripe at the beginning, hopefully they'll be good for this decade
spinlock 4y ago
This happened to me with Citibank. But, I called citibank and got a new card number. Then, citibank gave the new card number to the fraudsters when they tried to charge me the next month. Unfortunately, I’m going through a divorce right now so I can’t cancel that credit card. But, as soon as I’m free that’s on the top of my list of things to do to start living the rest of my life.
- notwhereyouare 4y ago
  Citibank probably didn’t give them the new card number. There’s a link somewhere between stripe and Citibank that is tied to your account and not the specific card
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Citibank did. The major banks all participate in Visa, Mastercard, and Amex’s updater programs. https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-account-updater-product-information-fact-sheet-for-merchants.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-accoun... https://developer.mastercard.com/product/automatic-billing-updater-abu/ https://developer.mastercard.com/product/automatic-billing-u... https://www.americanexpress.com/us/merchant/cardrefresher.html https://www.americanexpress.com/us/merchant/cardrefresher.ht... It’s Citi’s fault for not flagging the change being for fraud reasons, which skips the updaters.
rgbrenner 4y ago
From your description, this is solidly Amex’s problem, and all of your contact should be with Amex (or with the merchant you can’t reach). I have no idea why they would tell you to contact a merchants credit card processor. In fact it’s such a bizarre instruction from Amex, it makes me wonder how you described this to Amex.
- dubcanada 4y ago
  I am curious about your response, what do you think I should do differently? And why do you think this is AMEX's problem? Also how should I describe a rather basic problem? I told them every aspect of it multiple times to multiple tiers of customer service. Email chains (or lack thereof), website details (include login), they already have transaction details. I am not saying it's a 100% Stripes problem, I am wondering why I am able to chargeback it 7 times in a row, and that does not trigger any red flags. If a single customer chargebacks a "subscription" multiple times in a row, should that not be an immediate cancel? Why can I not go to Stripe, fill out my credit card, and click cancel and cancel a subscription? They already have a portal to get transaction information, why not allow me to cancel. Since it's all webhooks anyways, what difference is it if it is through X merchant site or Stripe?
  - rgbrenner 4y ago
    It's Amex's problem contractually. The contractual relationships here are: customer -> card issuer (amex) -> card network (amex) <- card processor (stripe) <- merchant -> customer So as you can see, you have no relationship with Stripe. Your have a relationship with Amex and the merchant. Those are your points of contact. When you make a chargeback, Amex accepts this chargeback, and sends it to the merchant's processor, who then presents it to the merchant for response. This is a process defined in the contracts between each of the parties. To your other question regarding fraud controls in this system, that's handled in the contracts: - If you skip out on your debt, Amex must still pay for any charges they authorized. (The payment flow is customer -> Amex -> stripe -> merchant. This flow is reversed for a chargeback/refund.) - If a merchant skips out, stripe is still responsible for any chargebacks. Think about what this means: If stripe accepts too many high-risk merchants, they'll lose money. If Amex accepts too many high risk customers, they'll lose money. So they each have an interest in controlling fraud. So what happens when a merchant gets too many chargebacks (typically less than 1%): Stripe will refuse to do business with that merchant. Why would they do this? Because if Stripe has too many chargebacks, the card network will refuse to do business with Stripe. They may be able to recertify as a high risk processor, but that comes with additional requirements... and if its above those high-risk levels, the card network won't allow stripe to process any payments at all. This is all defined contractually. What is the contract you have? You have a contract with Amex: your credit card terms. And you have either an implied or explicit contract with the merchant that they must meet. Stripe and Amex are not fully aware of your contract with the merchant (refer to first relationship graph above). Part of the chargeback process is the merchant's response. A valid chargeback defense is that the charge meets the contractual terms the customer agreed to (assuming nothing illegal is going on). When the merchant presents the contract in their response, Stripe and Amex can review that contract. Amex (as the card issuer) gets to decide if they accept or reject the merchant's response and issue a decision on the chargeback. (Stripe (on behalf of the merchant) can disagree with this, and it then goes to the card network for a decision.) So that's the whole process. If you go to stripe directly (as a customer), you're attempting to do an end run around this contractually enforced process... and stripe isnt going to do that (unless they want to be sued for tortious interference by the merchant). So hopefully you can see why Amex telling you to call Stripe is so bizarre. What makes it even more odd is that the type of dispute you have is something Amex handles like a 1000 times a day... they have a process for it. And FYI: Amex can block a merchant from charging you in the future. (Easy on their part: just stop authorizing the charge from the merchant.)
uudecoded 4y ago
It is important to note that Stripe is a wrapper around Wells Fargo. This means it's an 800 pound gorilla in a dev/bay friendly costume (docs? API?). They cannot fix the financial system unless they can become Wells. That will not happen. Thus, their actions, pricing, and product development choices all point to Wells. PayPal has this exact theme of a problem. Or lack of solving.
- thecosas 4y ago
  Would something like Column [0] be a solution here in regards to it being a Wells Fargo problem? [0] * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31109170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31109170 * https://column.com/ https://column.com/
badpun 4y ago
I wonder if this counts as a case of wire fraud.
kweks 4y ago
There are third party solutions to fraud that actually work, providing chargeback insurance. Essentially, they screen transactions; if any approved transactions are chargebacked, they refund you. A good start point is https://signifyd.com https://signifyd.com We dropped in this solution on our e-commerce about 5 years ago; fraud has been a non existent problem.
altairprime 4y ago
For whatever it’s worth, in your specific scenario, Amex can usually place a merchant block on that specific seller to prevent them from ever charging you again — I know they can for the New York Times, anyways. (I recognize this does not offer value to the Stripe conversation, but still.)
hrbf 4y ago
I had been using Stripe for a short time a couple of years back. I looked into collecting sponsorships and donations for OSS development via BuyMeACoffee (I strongly advise against them). As expected, just a couple of bucks accumulated. Then a user sent an unsolicited $15 donation, along with an accompanying comment, asking for macOS user support, for help solving a user issue entirely unrelated to my project. I declined, explained the situation and offered to refund the donation. I never received a reply, but immediately after, I received a chargeback notification. Stripe took the $15 from my account as well as a $15 chargeback fee. The user claimed fraud. An appeal went unanswered, despite me providing all required proof. In the end, this little experiment cost me money. It also opens up a disturbing avenue of hurting someone financially, given enough credit cards and chargebacks.

codegeek 4y ago

You can contact AMEX to block the vendor from any further charges. Can you not ?

dubcanada 4y ago
I've done that 4 times, AMEX has a block (multiple blocks as per the reps). But the charges still go through (that's another story). The AMEX people just keep saying Stripe has a "iron clad contract" so even with that, they cannot do much. I am not saying it is a 100% Stripe. But why would a company like Stripe allow me to do (successfully) 7 chargebacks in a row. At what point would an account be shut down or a subscription terminated? If this was PayPal, the account would have been frozen ages ago.
- WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
  Can you not report your card as stolen, get your bank to issue you a new one, and be done with it?
  - dubcanada 4y ago
    I've got a brand new card number, CVC, etc. They can still charge it because the subscription contract exists, there is nothing AMEX can do. Even with a brand new credit card, reported as stolen, what ever. If a monthly subscription contract exists (which you sign once you click that button to pay $5 monthly I guess), they can continue charging the account. This was what AMEX rep told me.
    - andreareina 4y ago
      You can try contacting your ombudsman, official notice is less likely to get the circular finger-pointing game
    - massysett 4y ago
      It’s pretty surprising that credit card companies will route charges to the particular “account” linked with a “number” even if the “number” is “closed” or “cancelled” or “expired”. Certainly not the experience one intuitively expects up front. I realized this when the bank issues me a new card proactively due to a data breach, but old recurring charges still work. I guess this is both for customer convenience and to give the bank more flexibility, but I think this would be a lot simpler if closed credit card numbers just stopped working.
      - cj 4y ago
        If anyone is interested in how this works: https://stripe.com/docs/saving-cards#automatic-card-updates https://stripe.com/docs/saving-cards#automatic-card-updates > Stripe works with card networks and automatically attempts to update saved card details whenever a customer receives a new card (for example, replacing an expired card or one that was reported lost or stolen). > It is widely supported in the United States, allowing Stripe to automatically update most American Express, Visa, Mastercard, and Discover cards issued there.
        prirun 4y ago
        Google did this to me with GCS: they automatically updated my expiring credit card. It's not a terrible feature, but I think users should consent to it before companies do it.
- codegeek 4y ago
  Some stripe folks are very active on HN. May be they can help ?

smca_ 4y ago

(Sam from Stripe here.) Sorry for the issues so far. Could you email me more details at smca[at]stripe.com? I'll dig into this.

dubcanada 4y ago
I will send the full details/email chain tomorrow morning. I appreciate you looking into it, but why does this type of interaction require a HN article for a response? Why do none of the regular methods go anywhere?
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  They don’t care about fixing your payment problem. They care about fixing their PR problem. Not to pile on poor Sam here. This is a common thing in the finance industry, and tech, and basically everywhere.
  - lettergram 4y ago
    With thousands of employees you’re bound to get some (say 5-10%!) which are outright bad at their job or malicious. The fact the founders quickly offered assistance directly, when they’re business is worth tens of billions is at least worth giving the benefit of the doubt. Even if it’s just for PR, they’re at least doing it.
    - Judgmentality 4y ago
      > Even if it’s just for PR, they’re at least doing it. Why the hell would you praise a company for an empty gesture? You're defending bullshit like it's a good thing.
      - lettergram 4y ago
        I never suggested they were doing an empty gesture. I’m assuming they’ll fix the problem, even if it’s just for PR purposes.

kaivi 4y ago

I have a perspective from the other end of this, as a seller. Been using Stripe for 5 years selling digital content with a low, $5 average bill. A year ago the site was likely noticed by hackers who started punching in dozens of stolen credit cards. I kept refunding manually at first, but then I had activated Stripe Radar. It made absolutely zero difference out of the box. "-Is it a 100th charge coming from the same IP in Ukraine with a Canadian VISA? No problem, charge approved, here's your success webhook.". "-Same fake TLD for the email address, for a customer number 2235? Nothing suspicious here, charge approved.". What helped fight this was to create a rule in Radar to reject all cards without 3D Secure capability, but it had cut off a sizable chunk of legit revenue.

gary_0 4y ago
Is there no way to get Stripe to automatically refund all chargebacks/disputes? What if you're only getting a 5% fraud rate for something cheap and you want to just eat the loss and not have to manually deal with disputes? Or if you're selling something like a premium online account, you can just disable the user's account automatically if they dispute the charge.
- spinlock 4y ago
  5% is huge. Like, ban your business from taking credit cards huge.
  - Brystephor 4y ago
    Yep. Anything greater than 1% is leading to trouble such as huge fees or being kicked off a card network.
  - gary_0 4y ago
    So you're saying all I need to do to knock a business offline is spam it with enough fraudulent CC numbers?
    - jacobolus 4y ago

highwaylights 4y ago

Cant you just cancel the card and get a new one?

pGuitar 4y ago
That's what I do once in a while... it works.
freedomben 4y ago
Yeah but such a horrible solution. After the pain of reporting it and getting it changed, now you get to update a dozen or more auto-pay accounts. You're sure to miss at least one and have something (probably important like your internet or phone bill) cut off on you at the worst possible time. Plus you get to spend days without usable plastic. Hope you have a spare card or cash. Would much prefer a solution simpler/easier/less devstating than dropping Mjölnir on it.
Nextgrid 4y ago
It's not a guarantee - card networks have a system where they will send payment processors the new card details, so the fraudulent charges will recur. As far as I know, it's not granular, per-merchant, so you can't skip the fraudulent merchant while updating the legitimate ones. Furthermore, some banks may not even give control to the user about whether this happens or not.

allisdust 4y ago

I really like how they implemented this in India. Due to recent central bank changes, all recurring subscriptions need customer notification before the card is charged. So before a recurring charge occurs (1 day before), they send a sms with a link to cancel that charge if required. Also now most credit cards are providing a single place to manage all subscriptions. So you can approve requests for recurring authorisation (first time) and also delete an existing recurring charge with a single click. Not to mention to be able to see who all are charging or going to charge you recurring in the first place.

pyb 4y ago
The EU should adopt this.
- imtringued 4y ago
  The EU already has this but for some insane reason there are no electronic SEPA mandates only paper ones, also you must request the cancellation of the SEPA mandate from the merchant.
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  The US too! This sounds great. Even better would be a recurring subscriptions management panel provided by the credit card issuer. Then you could cancel from there, and the service provider would be notified.
rajup 4y ago
This is a fantastic idea! Wish it were here in the US. In some areas like fintech/banking it appears "developing" economies like India are light years ahead of us.
- toast0 4y ago
  There are benefits to being late to market. The US also has close to 5000 banks and nearly as many credit unions, whereas most 'developing' economies have only a handful. Banks have to follow state and federal rules (sometimes both, sometimes only one or the other, depending on the rules and the corporate details). Centralization into only a few firms and maybe a single regulator makes it easier to have consistent features and requirements.

njovin 4y ago

This sounds like a fun time to run an experiment with getting an injunction against Stripe. Next time it happens, rather than doing a chargeback, sue them for the actual amount in addition to all of your time spent dealing with it. Then seek a preliminary injunction preventing them from charging your card any longer. You can probably do this on your own, although it will be time-consuming. At that point it becomes a legal problem for them and I suspect they'll be forced to take more serious action.

j-bos 4y ago
But then woudn't the poster be locked out of purchasing goods and services facilitated through Stripe?
zdragnar 4y ago
For such a small transaction, in the US you're stuck with small claims courts, and iirc you generally aren't going to get any damages for your time there unless it somehow interfered with your work hours.
- arbuge 4y ago
  > unless it somehow interfered with your work hours This doesn't sound like a particularly difficult bar to clear.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    It is if you're not an hourly employee. In small claims courts, you need a pretty clear demonstration of actual damages. You don't get to just make up a number that sounds nice. Therapy bills from stress, maybe, but this scenario seems like it would be taking up an hour or so of time in a month. In any case, small claims courts usually try to get you to go through arbitration first, and stripe would almost certainly cave with a small offer since it would cost less than an hour of a lawyers time.
- rvcdbn 4y ago
  Since this is HN I will characteristically take my precious private moments sitting on the toilet to correct this wrong understanding on the internet. Small claims court is an additional option if the defendant lives in the same state and the amount is small. Civil court is always also an option even if small claims court also applies. So this reply makes no sense. You’re wrong. I know it hurts so bad but it’s okay because we are all wrong sometimes. So we will let it go this once there is no need to delete your account and make a new one. Small claims court is great for some things: I sued my ex land lord who wouldn’t return my deposit. Lawyers aren’t allowed and it’s usually open and shut. Anyway hope you have a great Thursday!

olivermuty 4y ago

Do you have suggestions for replacements for Stripe Connect for marketplace usage? The combination of being able to calculate fees and cuts before you tell Stripe to pay it out to partners through Stripe Connect seems pretty unique. There are several other Merchant of Record alternatives, but I have not found something that can do quite the programmatic approach you can with Stripe.

jjeaff 4y ago
Braintree has a similar product. But they were bought by PayPal several years ago, so you are getting into that mess of a company.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
Airwallex is pretty good and it can replace both Stripe and Connect. I am a customer of their banking service and I played with their APIs. It feels like Stripe at the beginning, hopefully they'll be good for this decade

spinlock 4y ago

This happened to me with Citibank. But, I called citibank and got a new card number. Then, citibank gave the new card number to the fraudsters when they tried to charge me the next month. Unfortunately, I’m going through a divorce right now so I can’t cancel that credit card. But, as soon as I’m free that’s on the top of my list of things to do to start living the rest of my life.

notwhereyouare 4y ago
Citibank probably didn’t give them the new card number. There’s a link somewhere between stripe and Citibank that is tied to your account and not the specific card
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Citibank did. The major banks all participate in Visa, Mastercard, and Amex’s updater programs. https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-account-updater-product-information-fact-sheet-for-merchants.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-accoun... https://developer.mastercard.com/product/automatic-billing-updater-abu/ https://developer.mastercard.com/product/automatic-billing-u... https://www.americanexpress.com/us/merchant/cardrefresher.html https://www.americanexpress.com/us/merchant/cardrefresher.ht... It’s Citi’s fault for not flagging the change being for fraud reasons, which skips the updaters.

rgbrenner 4y ago

From your description, this is solidly Amex’s problem, and all of your contact should be with Amex (or with the merchant you can’t reach). I have no idea why they would tell you to contact a merchants credit card processor. In fact it’s such a bizarre instruction from Amex, it makes me wonder how you described this to Amex.

dubcanada 4y ago
I am curious about your response, what do you think I should do differently? And why do you think this is AMEX's problem? Also how should I describe a rather basic problem? I told them every aspect of it multiple times to multiple tiers of customer service. Email chains (or lack thereof), website details (include login), they already have transaction details. I am not saying it's a 100% Stripes problem, I am wondering why I am able to chargeback it 7 times in a row, and that does not trigger any red flags. If a single customer chargebacks a "subscription" multiple times in a row, should that not be an immediate cancel? Why can I not go to Stripe, fill out my credit card, and click cancel and cancel a subscription? They already have a portal to get transaction information, why not allow me to cancel. Since it's all webhooks anyways, what difference is it if it is through X merchant site or Stripe?
- rgbrenner 4y ago
  It's Amex's problem contractually. The contractual relationships here are: customer -> card issuer (amex) -> card network (amex) <- card processor (stripe) <- merchant -> customer So as you can see, you have no relationship with Stripe. Your have a relationship with Amex and the merchant. Those are your points of contact. When you make a chargeback, Amex accepts this chargeback, and sends it to the merchant's processor, who then presents it to the merchant for response. This is a process defined in the contracts between each of the parties. To your other question regarding fraud controls in this system, that's handled in the contracts: - If you skip out on your debt, Amex must still pay for any charges they authorized. (The payment flow is customer -> Amex -> stripe -> merchant. This flow is reversed for a chargeback/refund.) - If a merchant skips out, stripe is still responsible for any chargebacks. Think about what this means: If stripe accepts too many high-risk merchants, they'll lose money. If Amex accepts too many high risk customers, they'll lose money. So they each have an interest in controlling fraud. So what happens when a merchant gets too many chargebacks (typically less than 1%): Stripe will refuse to do business with that merchant. Why would they do this? Because if Stripe has too many chargebacks, the card network will refuse to do business with Stripe. They may be able to recertify as a high risk processor, but that comes with additional requirements... and if its above those high-risk levels, the card network won't allow stripe to process any payments at all. This is all defined contractually. What is the contract you have? You have a contract with Amex: your credit card terms. And you have either an implied or explicit contract with the merchant that they must meet. Stripe and Amex are not fully aware of your contract with the merchant (refer to first relationship graph above). Part of the chargeback process is the merchant's response. A valid chargeback defense is that the charge meets the contractual terms the customer agreed to (assuming nothing illegal is going on). When the merchant presents the contract in their response, Stripe and Amex can review that contract. Amex (as the card issuer) gets to decide if they accept or reject the merchant's response and issue a decision on the chargeback. (Stripe (on behalf of the merchant) can disagree with this, and it then goes to the card network for a decision.) So that's the whole process. If you go to stripe directly (as a customer), you're attempting to do an end run around this contractually enforced process... and stripe isnt going to do that (unless they want to be sued for tortious interference by the merchant). So hopefully you can see why Amex telling you to call Stripe is so bizarre. What makes it even more odd is that the type of dispute you have is something Amex handles like a 1000 times a day... they have a process for it. And FYI: Amex can block a merchant from charging you in the future. (Easy on their part: just stop authorizing the charge from the merchant.)

uudecoded 4y ago

It is important to note that Stripe is a wrapper around Wells Fargo. This means it's an 800 pound gorilla in a dev/bay friendly costume (docs? API?). They cannot fix the financial system unless they can become Wells. That will not happen. Thus, their actions, pricing, and product development choices all point to Wells. PayPal has this exact theme of a problem. Or lack of solving.

thecosas 4y ago
Would something like Column [0] be a solution here in regards to it being a Wells Fargo problem? [0] * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31109170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31109170 * https://column.com/ https://column.com/

badpun 4y ago

I wonder if this counts as a case of wire fraud.

kweks 4y ago

There are third party solutions to fraud that actually work, providing chargeback insurance. Essentially, they screen transactions; if any approved transactions are chargebacked, they refund you. A good start point is https://signifyd.com https://signifyd.com We dropped in this solution on our e-commerce about 5 years ago; fraud has been a non existent problem.

altairprime 4y ago

For whatever it’s worth, in your specific scenario, Amex can usually place a merchant block on that specific seller to prevent them from ever charging you again — I know they can for the New York Times, anyways. (I recognize this does not offer value to the Stripe conversation, but still.)

hrbf 4y ago

I had been using Stripe for a short time a couple of years back. I looked into collecting sponsorships and donations for OSS development via BuyMeACoffee (I strongly advise against them). As expected, just a couple of bucks accumulated. Then a user sent an unsolicited $15 donation, along with an accompanying comment, asking for macOS user support, for help solving a user issue entirely unrelated to my project. I declined, explained the situation and offered to refund the donation. I never received a reply, but immediately after, I received a chargeback notification. Stripe took the $15 from my account as well as a $15 chargeback fee. The user claimed fraud. An appeal went unanswered, despite me providing all required proof. In the end, this little experiment cost me money. It also opens up a disturbing avenue of hurting someone financially, given enough credit cards and chargebacks.