Hacker News

I had stripe fleece me for 4.5k - tried to complain about them on HN - they nerfed the post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50398646

The sad part is I was one of their first customers - I helped onboard over a 70 clients for them over the years.

And my top project generated them $1.6m in pure fees revenue. I even tried emailing Patrick and John - they don't care one bit. Its sad - they used to have a soul - became a ruthless/soulless company.

Sorry you are dealing with this...

I have no knowledge specific to Stripe or your case, but do I know that the pattern you just described - a small 1 dollar payment followed by a large payment - is the exact pattern that criminals use to test stolen credit cards numbers. My bank will automatically reject anything following that pattern, put a hold on my card, and call me to confirm whether or not I have my card.

So yeah, if your business model calls for pattern matching with how stolen cards are used, that could very well be unacceptable risk to Stripe.

Yeah unfortunately this charge pattern could not have looked MORE like merchant fraud. The right approach would have been to use https://docs.stripe.com/payments/setup-intents and set it for off-session usage.

You still might have gotten a payment hold on the first transaction until someone in risk could take a peek at your site to make sure you had all the right disclosures in place, but you probably would have kept the account.

> 2. For people who've been through this: how would you structure per-appointment billing so it doesn't look unauthorized (an invoice with a link each time, an email confirmation before each charge, something else)?

Have you tried simply sending invoices via Stripe? Works for me, without a hitch. And it's pretty flexible; you can do a lot to modify terms, add notes, send email notices to multiple parties, etc.

If that won't work, there are payment processors who specialize in "high risk" accounts. Paykings come to mind. I've actually heard good things.

I would be interested to hear about better alternatives that have functional support. We ran into problems with Google Cloud and were able to migrate to options with much better customer support. Are there payment providers like this available?

I'll be first to say that Stripe is a shit company and I cannot wait to see a competitor detroy them.

Now onto main problem.

Issue is the $1 followed by large payment.

A lot of banks will flag this as suspicious, in some cases block the payment, or even proceed with investigation.

There is nothing telling Stripe that this is a potentially legitimate payment so they blocked it.

The fact they are shit company and don't explain this to you is another issue.

We're a small business that sells pre-booked appointments with homeowners to local contractors, billed per appointment that actually happens.

I imagine that's not a dissimilar transaction pattern to how escort services and similar businesses might try to use Stripe.

Obviously there's no easy way for Stripe to tell if you are actually doing what you say you are doing.

In addition, based on my having a more than passing familiarity with laws regulating construction contracting [1], I would not be surprised if there are jurisdictions where your service is in violation of the laws and regulations governing construction contracting.

Even if it is legal where you are, there's no obvious way for Stripe to know that's the only place you operate. And if you only operate locally, you can use a local bank to process credit cards...assuming you meet normal criteria -- if you don't meet normal criteria, it's reasonable for Stripe to decline your credit card processing business.

So my advice, if you want to operate locally work with a local banker, a local lawyer, and a local insurance agent. These might not scale, but scaling is only a problem once you have a going business. Good luck.

[1] The laws regarding construction contracting are an "is" I am not arguing that those laws are/aren't an "ought."

Sounds like Stripe is on the same road as Paypal.

Stripe stresses written authorization when you capture intent to pay.

I'm so tired of these big companies giving poor customer support unless they get called out on social media.

Hi, you are on the frontpage of hackernews and have reached our premium support.

The CEO or CTO of Stripe will be with you shortly.