Stripe canceled my account for reasons I don't understand - what are my options?
Ok so long story short, I got the following email from Stripe:
------ Start of email -----
"Thank you for completing our verification process. Unfortunately, we still won't be able to accept payments for GoWFH[dot]com moving forward.
Stripe can only support users with a low risk of customer disputes—after reviewing your submitted information and website, it does seem like your business presents a higher level of risk than we can currently support."
------ End of email -----
Some quick facts:
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I started GoWFH[dot]com in April
-
There have been 0 chargebacks/disputes on this account
I don't understand why the account was suspended. I asked Stripe support but couldn't get a specific response. Has anyone been in this situation before? What are some good alternatives to Stripe?
Thanks for your time!
I hate these sorts of stories. We've been a Stripe customer for about 6+ years now, and up until very recently, zero chargebacks or cases of attempted fraud, but we have had a couple in the past month or so as our volume gets huge.
Makes me think it is a high risk when companies like Stripe, Paypal, eBay etc. just shut down your account with minimal communication or avenues of recourse.
Makes me vow that in my startup, customer will always get to talk to me directly to resolve issues. I will never go down the road of just pulling out the rug from under a customer with a faceless email.
Unfortunately, these payment processors are a necessary evil, unless you want to handle PCI compliance yourself.
You can't transfer away from their platform either, so they own all your subscribers, which means you pretty much have to start your business from scratch.
What a scary thought.
You nailed it! While it's easier to migrate if your business is based on one time payments, your entire business is jeopardized if you have a subscription-based service powered by Stripe and they decide to shut you down.
Hi timusk, What ended up happening?
I built stripe into my current projects and was going to release, but I am rethinking all of that.
Did they help you out or do they still ignore you?
It lead to nowhere basically. I kept getting the automated message and had to ultimately switch to another payment processor.
Did they release your funds or make you refund the clients ?
@timusk — could you email me at [email protected]? I'd like to take a second look at this.
@edwinwee Hi Edwin, I did send you an email on July 9th at 1:50 AM Eastern. Subject line: "Fwd: Your Stripe Account for gowfh.com"
@edwinwee It has been more than a week and I still have not heard anything from Stripe support.
Try using Paddle.com , it's what I use for my projects.
@Mundia Thanks for the suggestion! What does their pricing structure look like? I can't find details on their website's pricing page. Thanks for your time again! :)
Yeahhh... This type of thing really spooks me.
I have 0% disputes/chargebacks too after hundreds of payments.
By the way, I've seen people getting faster responses from Stripe support on r/stripe, so you might want to try your luck there.
That said. r/stripe is so full of horror stories just like this.
Sigh. I wish that were the case. Unfortunately, the moderators on r/stripe aren't that helpful either. Someone else shared their story there a few days ago (which I also latched on to): https://www.reddit.com/r/stripe/comments/hmcx11/account_shut_down_and_payments_held_in_reserve/
You might notice how the moderator gets quite defensive rather than acknowledging the issue. While I understand that the current global situation with COVID-19 has impacted all businesses, including Stripe (and their customer support), I don't think it's fair to all those businesses who get wrongfully shut down because someone at Stripe made an error during the review process.
I'm very interested to see the resolution to this, and I hope you get your account reinstated.
I wish I could be of more help.
I've seen people making as much noise as possible, like Kinsta making a blog post on why they're dumping Stripe, and because they had a big-ish audience, Stripe responded really quickly and reinstated their account.
It's weird . I already got same message too bro
@AshleeLogan What did you end up doing? Are you moving to another payment processor?