HN Explorer

TELL HN: Stripe STOLE OUR $159k

56 points by neginbringshop ↗ HN
We built a marketplace called bringshopper.com where we bring shoppers to newly started businesses. We had a call with their sales team and as they suggested we used Stripe Standard Connect and direct charges. When we bring shoppers successfully we charged higher application fees to cover our costs and there was no upfront costs

We even built feature to cover negative balances of connected accounts by cutting their ad budget

And one day Stripe blocked our account, and disabled all our connected accounts and said they WILL NOT RELEASE OUR FUNDS AND WILL USE TO REFUND ALL CUSTOMERS. Now there are multiple things: 1) They didn't refund anyone as we are a platform account we have no charges under us to refund 2) They didn't release funds either

They TOOK OUR FUNDS, $159k to be exact They can't refund customers of all connected accounts and use our funds as they advertise in stripe.com/connect/pricing that Stripe Standard Connect is not responsible for losses, disputes, refunds of connected accounts

There is no charges to be refunded or disputed and they simply took our funds

How is this even legal? Anyone had similar experience or anyone can help? Our company is struggling here due to this

44 comments

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batch12
Pedantic, but maybe we need a "Help HN" tag or something.
neginbringshop
Yes, this is destroying our business. Stripe is not responding to support anymore either
batch12
Yeah, it sucks that people have to come here for short-circuit support. I just hate to have this flagged for not being a true "show"
graderjs
Maybe change title to Tell HN, that's what these normally are, I think.
neginbringshop
I just did but they flagged it. Stripe stole my funds and HN just silenced our voice
neginbringshop
What is true show? Our business will be destroyed soon and I want to show what is going on to Hacker news
ge96
"Show HN" is for demos, I've seen Tell HN before
neginbringshop
Oh I didn't know. I was thinking I can show Hackernews what is going on and they might help
Sebb767
It sucks for everyone involved, really, including HN.
rebelcoder
Tweet this as well, somebody will catch it and hopefully tag somebody that can help.
sgc
What was their reason for doing this?
neginbringshop
They said this: "unauthorized charges" it is a template they send. But in reality we have no charges at all as a platform
pirminj
I understand your frustration, that sucks.

On a side note: Is this kind of business relation the result of unequal partners where one-sided benefits are incentiviced? Is building a product the new product?

neginbringshop
Both sides get benefits. We basically bring new shoppers to your ecommerce store. You get new users and if they come back and pay again, we only charge ~1%, if they paid the first time, we charge higher fee depending on our costs. So you benefit by connecting your Stripe account to ours and gaining new shoppers, we benefit because we charge percentage of transaction as a fee and generate revenue
pirminj
Sorry, I meant between you and stripe
neginbringshop
We increase volume of other stripe accounts connected to us. When there is high volume, Stripe makes higher revenue
oneepic
How do these kinds of negative Stripe stories keep coming? It's like there's a new one every month with a massive loss of profit followed by the support team not responding. (That is, until the Hacker News support team shows up.)

Stripe's fault? Competitors doing evil shit to make Stripe look bad?

neginbringshop
I am hoping someone can reach out and help. If A lot of stories coming it means those things are happening and keep happening to many people
Sebb767
Stripe has a lot of customers and probably a lot of scammers sending exactly the same messages as actual unhappy customers. Plus, it seems quite known by now that they respond on HN. So there's probably a bit of selection bias going on.
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bsuvc
Stripe has a lot of “restricted businesses” for which they don’t want to process payments. https://stripe.com/legal/restricted-businesses

This one jumps out to me as a possible reason, if your business is helping new businesses acquire customers:

> Sales of online traffic or engagement

It could be any of those though, it’s hard to say. Basically Stripe is trying to protect themselves from being hit by a bunch of chargebacks.

You also say that “they can’t refund customers of all connected accounts”, but I’m not sure I understand this. They could refund the charges to the original payment method, no?

For $159k, I guess you’re going to need to get a lawyer involved. If Stripe does intend to refund the payments, they are probably waiting for some period of time in case you appeal their decision. They wouldn’t be able to undo the refund, so they want to be sure first.

Aside from that, you’ll need to shop for a more flexible payment processor. If I recall, Authorize.net had fewer restrictions for example, but I am sure there are many others.

neginbringshop
We are not selling traffic, we advertise for them and it is supportable business model as we had a discussion with their team. They can refund to original but original is in connected accounts not us, we are using direct charges. Even they refund they can't use our funds as I explained, Platform is not responsible for refunds of connected accounts if platform is using Stripe Standard Connect and direct charges
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edwinwee
Edwin from Stripe here. I’d like to dig more into what happened — could you email me at edwin@stripe.com?
neginbringshop
Hello Edwin Our team did from support@bringshopper.com 2 days ago. Subject is "Urgent not getting paid"

Did you find it?

Our account id is acct_1K7t9JC4s1I9dR5f

edwinwee
Ah, yes—sorry, I remember now. And I see the team did re-review your account after that and we sent another email with the results of the investigation. I can't publicly share details of a Stripe account on HN, but that conversation we had in our email thread still stands—I'm afraid the way you use Stripe Connect and your business model are unsupportable.
neginbringshop
I understand but how could we get our funds released? Can you at least email about this?
WinterMount223
Honest question: do you not determine that during onboarding/account signup? Or do you do warm onboarding wherein essentially everyone is accepted and some vetted later on?
neginshoppers
Whatever they do is not working, we built feature to make sure stripe is not losing money by covering negative balances from as budget automatically but they blocked us and didn't pay
neginbringshop
I understand Stripe can't support our business. However, I want to learn when should we expect our funds to be released?
spacemanmatt
So when Stripe doesn't like your business model, they keep your money? AWESOME. Can't wait to be treated like Russia.
alphabettsy
When was the account blocked?

Can we at least get an exact quote of what explanation was provided?

neginbringshop
That's the problem, no explanation other than unauthorized charges which doesn't make sense as we are a platform and we have no charges
ykevinator2
What is the ratio - $159k / x ? In other words what percent of your funds did they freeze or seize?
neginbringshop
$159k was all in the account, they didn't release anything. However, before they block I think we had additional 80k they released
LASR
One bit of advice for your post: Talk a bit more about your business model - where the funds are coming from etc. It is coming for your customers (other businesses) or their customers (the shoppers)?

I understand Stripe is keeping money you believe should be released to you. But hard to form an opinion over something with very little context.

"Unauthorized charges" seems to imply that Stripe believes you've not commnunicated to your customers what you will be charging, and charged them anyway. Did you?

What exactly is in the "Unauthorized charges" email?

neginbringshop
I can explain with all details: Let's day you are an ecommerce store and you have your own Stripe connect. Now you need customers who likes to buy shoes, you signed up from bringshopper.com and we worked with you and started to bring shoppers you targeted through our dashboard. We did Fb ads, Google ads. When those shoppers come and pay from your website, it is your Stripe account that does transactions not ours. Our Stripe account takes application fees from your transactions due to us bringing all those shoppers. So we are not charging anyone, you connect your Stripe account to ours via stripe standard connect and we take application fee if we brought you shoppers you targeted. Our funds are coming from application fees we took from each transaction. If you check our Stripe account, it has 0 charges as we don't charge customers. So we have no charges to be refunded/disputed, additionally if you look at stripe.com/connect/pricing you will see Stripe Standard Connect platforms that use direct charges are not responsible for refunds/disputes of connected accounts. Which means, if you as a store did something wrong and Stripe should refund your charges, or you get disputes, this has nothing to do with our services, we are not financially responsible to cover your Stripe account
syncerr
if you’re enabling fraud, stripe will shut you down.
supernovae
Several red flags and this is nothing against you.

* New domain * no phone contact * lack of information * No seo data, inbound links or domain score

merchant companies will hate this kind of stuff and quite honestly 159k in charges in 3 ish months probably set off red flags too

if i understand your marketing materials it sounds like you run a browser plug-in

all very sus to be honest

neginbringshop
We are not transacting $159k ourselves, we had connected other stripe accounts collectively generated $159k. Our business is B2B. For example, if you use our platform and your business makes 1M in a month, we will make similar amount
supernovae
How does a business make 1M in a month if you make 1M in a month?

Retail margins aren't that high