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Evan, thanks for taking the time to write this up. I helped resolve your particular issue on NYE and I’m acutely aware of how painful it’s been. I broadly agre

by smca 4y ago

Evan, thanks for taking the time to write this up. I helped resolve your particular issue on NYE and I’m acutely aware of how painful it’s been. I broadly agree with a lot of your statements. The lack of clear communication and the repetitive requests for information during the review process isn’t good. We’re working on striking the right balance between giving good users relevant information without giving bad actors a roadmap to defraud Stripe. And we need clear channels to escalate when users need to. While I’m happy your issue was resolved, the process isn’t where it should be yet.

johnhaddock 4y ago
John here from Stripe (I lead our Risk product area). As OP noted, we try to spot unexpected spikes in processing volume, which are often associated with risky activity. In this case, that was in error — we were too fast to act and (much) too slow to unwind. In particular, we erred in not taking congruent action across OP’s related accounts. We’re working on a fix for this. I’m following up with OP to make sure we fully digest this one, so that it doesn’t happen again. Since I came onboard in Sept, the team has made a lot of progress (e.g., mistaken actions like this one are down by 75%), but we have a lot more planned to further improve. We’re always on the look out for additional examples of mistaken action - please email me at jhaddock@stripe.com so I can take a look.
- iam-TJ 4y ago
  In a former business I had several 'customer advocates' who were tasked with representing customers to internal teams. Difficult/complex/delayed issues could be escalated to the advocates by customer support. I view customer support as a marketing opportunity via goodwill and word of mouth. Accounting for customer support as a debit against the marketing budget is an incentive to prevent incidents. In another comment I asked the OP if it could have helped if they were able to notify ahead of time of expected spikes in turnover (due to marketing initiatives, etc.) that could be factored into the risk management equation.
  - Rastonbury 4y ago
    Stripe knows this, when they were smaller the founder used to reply to threads like this or patio11 who they hired (but he just wrote that he is no longer there!). Makes me wonder what's going on in there post-layoff, the business model is sound and they are market leader. No pressure too IPO quickly in the down market
- paps17 4y ago
  If Stripe doesn't acknowledge they made a mistake, one could say mistakes are down 100%. It's tough to track metrics like that.
eeemmmooo 4y ago
Thanks for your help. Especially on New Years Eve. My goal was always to try to find someone at Stripe that could help me get through the automated process churn and you were very helpful in that. It was not to slam Stripe overall because you all have been very good to us for years. Which is also why I’m trying to be as fair as I can be to both sides and also why I didn’t just jump to lawyer calling levels etc. I knew eventually Stripe would do the right thing. Just figuring out how to make that happen was the hard part.

by smca 4y ago

johnhaddock 4y ago

John here from Stripe (I lead our Risk product area). As OP noted, we try to spot unexpected spikes in processing volume, which are often associated with risky activity. In this case, that was in error — we were too fast to act and (much) too slow to unwind. In particular, we erred in not taking congruent action across OP’s related accounts. We’re working on a fix for this. I’m following up with OP to make sure we fully digest this one, so that it doesn’t happen again. Since I came onboard in Sept, the team has made a lot of progress (e.g., mistaken actions like this one are down by 75%), but we have a lot more planned to further improve. We’re always on the look out for additional examples of mistaken action - please email me at jhaddock@stripe.com so I can take a look.

iam-TJ 4y ago
In a former business I had several 'customer advocates' who were tasked with representing customers to internal teams. Difficult/complex/delayed issues could be escalated to the advocates by customer support. I view customer support as a marketing opportunity via goodwill and word of mouth. Accounting for customer support as a debit against the marketing budget is an incentive to prevent incidents. In another comment I asked the OP if it could have helped if they were able to notify ahead of time of expected spikes in turnover (due to marketing initiatives, etc.) that could be factored into the risk management equation.
- Rastonbury 4y ago
  Stripe knows this, when they were smaller the founder used to reply to threads like this or patio11 who they hired (but he just wrote that he is no longer there!). Makes me wonder what's going on in there post-layoff, the business model is sound and they are market leader. No pressure too IPO quickly in the down market
paps17 4y ago
If Stripe doesn't acknowledge they made a mistake, one could say mistakes are down 100%. It's tough to track metrics like that.

eeemmmooo 4y ago

Thanks for your help. Especially on New Years Eve. My goal was always to try to find someone at Stripe that could help me get through the automated process churn and you were very helpful in that. It was not to slam Stripe overall because you all have been very good to us for years. Which is also why I’m trying to be as fair as I can be to both sides and also why I didn’t just jump to lawyer calling levels etc. I knew eventually Stripe would do the right thing. Just figuring out how to make that happen was the hard part.