How reliable is Stripe? Any problems with them freezing your account?

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Hello,

I'm looking for a payment processor and Stripe seems to be the most popular here beside PayPal. I have looked up their iOS app and there are really bad reviews about Stripe in general that they just shut your account down without giving any reasons or because of chargebacks etc.
I know that it also depends on the product your are selling but this is something Stripe knows beforehand so they should not just freeze or close your account.

I wonder if these kind of reviews really reflect Stripe or if they are maybe just made up.

Here is the link to the reviews: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stri...978516833?mt=8

Here are a 2 reviews:

"STAY AWAY!! IM WARNING YOU!! PAY ATTENTION TO THE REVIEWS AND ALSO GOOGLE REVIEWS, YOU WILL SEE MANY HORRIFIC STORIES!! STRIPE IS DEATH TO SMALL BUSINESSES. THEY WILL SET UP YOUR ACCOUNT, ALOW YOU YOU TO TAKE PAYMENTS, HOLD YOUR MONEY, AND THEN SHUT YOUR ACCOUNT DOWN!!! It's a lose and lose situation. You will think your in the clear because the payments are successful, due to the length of time on the hold you figure you might as well ship out your orders only to later find out that you will not receive payout and the money will be refunded. You can always wait until you actually receive a payout, but who would want to do that as it will cause delay in your business along with confused and irritated customers! At the end of the day the only people winning is STRIPE!! PLEASE CONSIDER PAYMENT PROCESSORS AS STRIPE IS A HUGE FRAUD, NOT TO MENTION THERE IS NO ACTUAL REP TO SPEAK WITH. AS FAR AS EMAILS GO, BE PREPARED FOR GENERIC RESPONSES ..STAY AWAY !!!! YOUR BUSINESS WILL FAIL AND YOU WILL LOSE YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY !!!!"

"Brought in over 20k+ in payments and had TWO, yes TWO out of the many file a "non-authorized" chargeback. I had set up almost all fraud prevention steps within Stripe dashboard imaginable. Yet, seems it takes TWO idiots trying to abuse chargebacks is enough for them to close an account. Even when 99% of your sells are golden, with no customer complaints or chargebacks. Stripe held over 3,000$ of mine and closed my account. Tomorrow(at the time I am writing this) was in fact the day they were supposed to release the funds, WELL; logged in to see if all was well and they have bumped it back a day. No response from CS either on why the funds were bumped a day later. Beware!"

....
#account #freezing #problems #reliable #stripe
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Skip the drama testimonials and test Stripe on your own.

    What do you have to lose?

    Any legit payment processor will shut you down If you're tripping alarms like there's no tomorrow.
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    They are as good as anyone else (with better rates than most) and easy to set up. They make their money processing payments so I assure you, they have never shut down anybody's account "for no reason". They DO mitigate their risks, like all companies do, though.

    The first person's complaint doesn't even make sense. He's complaining about the chargebacks, really. That's on him, not the processing company. Of course they are not going to pay you on orders that were charged back. Besides, most chargebacks occur MONTHS after the order, so them holding onto money for a couple of days before it is released from customer payments has nothing to do with his chargeback problem. I guarantee you there is more to the story than he is willing to share.

    The second person's complaint might definitely be a reason to shut down an account or at bare minimum, hold onto a healthy reserve. He doesn't disclose the amount of the chargebacks or the reason for them. Their TOS states that anything over a 1% chargeback rate could get your account shut down. If those two chargebacks were more than 1% of his business, it could very well have done it. 1% of a dollar volume of $20,000 is only $200, after all. Their TOS also states that you need to respond to chargebacks in a timely manner - something we do not know was done.

    My biggest concern with them would be that there is ZERO phone support.

    That said, we use Stripe for the majority of our 50+ eCommerce websites, have never had a problem with them and certainly never had our account shut down.

    Of course, the real solution is not what processing company will let you get away with more chargebacks before shutting you down. It is eliminating chargebacks through your own due diligence or using a fraud detection service like NoFraud.
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    • Profile picture of the author enigma2k
      Thanks for your thorough answer, I'll sign up with them! The problem with chargebacks, however, is that if you offer a 30 days money back guarantee, sometimes people who are over the 30 days just try to get a chargeback. How can you handle this situation if customers do this on purpose to get their money back? This is especially likely if you are selling a digital product.
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      • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
        Originally Posted by enigma2k View Post

        Thanks for your thorough answer, I'll sign up with them! The problem with chargebacks, however, is that if you offer a 30 days money back guarantee, sometimes people who are over the 30 days just try to get a chargeback. How can you handle this situation if customers do this on purpose to get their money back? This is especially likely if you are selling a digital product.
        There is a difference between standing behind your word and issuing a refund and NOT doing what you promise and waiting for a customer to initiate a chargeback.

        And seriously, you either have some very crappy products or you are basing your business model on the behavior of something one out of 500 people will do.

        If you are offering a guarantee, you have to honor it but you CAN make it a little more painful for people. You can add verbiage to your Satisfaction Guarantee that the customer needs to return the item with all original packaging materials, pay for shipping the item back to you and also pay for your actual costs of shipping the products to them, whether they got "free" shipping or not (free shipping is only for people who KEEP products). Or, you can say that there is a 25% restocking fee on your guarantee page (to cover the cost of shipping and handling) and that they have to pay the cost to ship the product back to you.

        Most people are not going to go through the hassle and expense or they won't have the original packaging - especially when they also have their refund reduced by 25% or whatever you say the actual cost of shipping is.

        If you are dropshipping from China, it doesn't matter. Just have them send it back to you. You'll still not be taking a loss because of the 25% restocking fee and you can always try to resell the product at a big "ONLY ONE AT THIS PRICE" discount on your website to get more money back for it.

        It all comes down to your Satisfaction Guarantee and how it is worded and the fact that most people are lazy and won't go through the trouble to return things (even if there is no additional expense to them). This is the very principle that those rebate coupons stores issue are based on. They know that only a fraction of people are going to go through the trouble to get their rebate, so they end up really giving very little away with their great rebate offers.

        Digital products are another story. Yes, there are going to be a-holes out there but your cost was zero to "deliver" the product and zero to make the individual product they bought. Give them their refund and move on. It's not worth getting a chargeback. It's just the cost of doing business and with digital products, your cost is practically nothing. If your digital product is good, there will be far more who don't want a refund than those who do. Don't base your decisions on the relatively few that are looking for a free ride.
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  • Profile picture of the author newbieleoling
    So far I don't have any problem with stripe. I suggest you just try it out yourself. All service will have bad reviews.
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