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Report: #1025676

Complaint Review: Stripe Payments - Internet Internet

  • Submitted:
  • Updated:
  • Reported By: sierra — costa mesa California United States of America
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  • Stripe Payments 140 Second St Internet United States of America

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I am a single mother of 4 children that decided to use my
last $2000 to start a business online. I am not able to get a job due to many
factors, and I have a business with fantastic potential. Well, that all fell
apart when I decided to try using Stripe, who took $450 of my $2000 and ruined
my business before it could even get off the ground.

I was reluctant to try Stripe payment processing because of
all of the negative reviews I have read. Let me tell you, if you are
considering opening an account with Stripe, please believe that they will most
likely rip you off, lie to you about account status, and take your money. This
is a new company in the financial world that clearly is trying to lure
customers in with promises of instant approval, only to take your money and
close your account with no warning. And if you are an honest business person
who ships orders quickly like me, then you will also be out for the cost of the
product you shipped to your customers.

So here are the details of my story to back up my claims:


March 1, 2013

I sign up for Stripe and provide standard information. Confirm email address.  Because of the bad reviews I have read I decide to wait a few days before implementing Stripe.

March 4, 2013

I send follow up email:

Hello there,

I signed up last week and I wanted to check to see if the account was fully
active and ready to begin processing payments. Can you please tell me if I am
fully approved? The account is under sixxxx@xxxxxxxx.com.


Stripe response from same day (from Naomi):

Your account is fully active from the time you activate it so you're good to go with us :-)
All the best,  -Naomi


I reply the same day to double check because of the bad reviews I have read. I wanted to make certain that I
could begin charging customers. I write:


Thanks but I thought there was an underwriting process..? I just want to make sure there
will not be any issues once we start charging out customers because I have read
some bad reviews and it spooked me a little bit. Thanks for the quick
response by the way!


Stripe response same day (from Naomi):

No problem :-)

We reserve the right to review your account at any time, but you can take payments immediately once you activate your account:
https://support.stripe.com/questions/what-do-i-need-to-do-to-start-running-real-transactions


If you click the link you will also read Stripe claim:

It takes just a few minutes to activate your account by
providing some basic information about you and your business. Once you've
activated your account, you can begin running real charges immediately.


At this point I feel that enough time has gone by, with assurances from the staff that I can begin charging customers.

March 5, 2013
First succesful order charged using Stripe. I notice that Stripe automatically charges the
customer instead of Authorizing and then later capturing the funds. I am by
the book and am concerned so I again reach out to Stripe:


I do have a question though because I see that the customer was charged right away. I double checked our shop
setting in Shopify admin and we have the option checked to "Authorize
Only". We do not want to actually charge the customer until the product
ships which is best practice. I do not see any settings in the Stripe admin to change this. Any ideas...?


Stripe response:

Stripe doesn't actually allow authorizations so that setting in Shopify won't work with us.
 
Hmmm, okay this sounds kind of strange and phishy to me. I wonder why.
There would be two more orders to go through for a total of $450. I purchase the products from my suppliers to
fulfill the orders. I am trusting at this point that I will see my money from Stripe in 7 days (as they promise).


March 5 & 6, 2013
All 3 orders were shipped to customers and are in various stages of delivery.
Customers are provided tracking numbers, everything seems good, until


Received email from Stripe on March 7 (from Lucy)
-
Unfortunately we won't be able to help out with payments for openboxsavings.com,
as our banking partners prohibit us from helping with payments associated with
a business we've had to reject previously.

Sadly we have no flexibility here. It's frustrating for us to have to turn away businesses, but in this case our hands our tied.


Weird. I think that maybe they accidentally sent me this email or just made a mistake. So I reply:

I never applied before, what do you mean?

Stripe reply (from Maria):

Thanks for your email and I am sorry about this situation.

Unfortunately, you account was associated with several we have previously had to reject in one or more ways.
This might not be 100% accurate, but our banking partners require that we
follow these security procedures. You will have to find another way in which to accept payments from your users.

All the best, good luck on your business,


I like the part where she says This might not be 100% accurate and how I am wished All the best, good luck on your business. I cant help but think she is writing that in a sarcastic tone
because she knows that luck is the only thing that can save me at this point.


My response (to Maria)

What about the few charges that were made and the balance in the account? I have already paid for the goods and
shipped the orders (I have tracking numbers if you need).


Response (from Maria)

I am sorry for the trouble, but you will have to find alternative forms of payment from those customers. There is nothing we can do.
All the best,

Okay wonderful, so first you cancel my account after I made certain the account was okay to begin charging
customers. I dont have any alternative payment methods except if the customer
mails me a check. I am sure they are going to get right on that (after they
have already received their product). And wouldnt that sound incredibly scammy
for me to contact my customers and ask for a check? I give that about a 1:1000
chance of actually getting paid.

My reply:


What?! You mean you are keeping my money? You have got to be kidding me!!

Response (from Maria)

Thank you for your email and sorry for the confusion.

We are not keeping your money. We are refunding each payment to your customers.
All the best, good luck on your business,


 Wouldnt it be a good idea to inform your clients in the first our hands are tied email to explain that the  customers are being refunded? I mean, do I really need to inquire about this
and dig up the information. At this point time is of the essence because if
what Stripe says is true and they are refunding my customers, then I am now up
against the clock to try and locate these shipments before they get delivered.


They also do not acknowledge the fact that I have tracking numbers, nor do they seem to care. I still have no idea how I am going to handle this situation and my choices are to either have the product delivered and beg for a check to be sent in the mail, or try to stop the shipment before delivery, then make arrangements to ship the product
back to the supplier. In this case, the customer will not receive their merchandise, and unlike Stripe, I care. So I guess my only option is to let the product deliver and hope to get paid.


My response:

So will they have already seen the refund on their statement? Because obviously they
are not going to pay me with any other method if the charges are still showing
on their statements. Do you have proof that the refunds have happened?

Your process is completely backwards and Stripe is causing unecessary problems. You should never tell someone that they are approved and good to start charging, wait until charges are made, and then cancel/refund orders when goods have already been shipped. Clearly it is an attempt to lure in  honest business people with an 'instant approval' which really is not instant. I double checked before starting to charge customers with your company and was reassured.

Don't tell vendors they are approved if they are not. You really have no clue on your side how much havoc this creates.


Do I get a response? Nope.

So, if any others have a similar experience then I recommend writing about it. I am leaving my contact information for an attorney who is investigating a class action lawsuit against Stripe. These business practices are detrimental to small businesses like myself. As I mentioned in the beginning, I had only a couple thousand dollars to try and get this business going. I feel like it coould have provided enough money for my entire family to get by. But now, I have had 25% of this money taken from me, and have also spent 2 days trying to rectify this mess. I dont know if my business will make it now, because I need to pay my supplier for the goods before I ship products out.

In my opinion the root cause of all of this is that Stripe is trying to gain business from Paypal. They are trying to streamline the setup process and make it faster than Paypal. In my case, Stripe is pre-integrated with Shopify and the setup process was very simple. But, this is a deceitful advertising and business practice that Stripe is
doing. They are willing to wreak havoc after the fact and cancel customers if
it means that they can quickly sign up thousands of unsuspecting new customers.


My final email to Stripe:

As I mentioned before I will be posting on the websites I mentioned and will
certainly email you links once posted. I will also place comments on blogs with
this same topic and attach myself to any civil or class action lawsuit (believe
me it is coming if there isn't one already). Shame on your company for poor
business practices, you are truly showing that you are rookies in the world of
financial business practices. As you can read, I am well spoken and will share
my story with the world. I hope to pursuade as many people as I possibly can to
not use your services and I truly hope that can translate into thousands of
dollars in lost business for Stripe.

Thank you,
Stripe Enemy #1


If Stripe were a responsible business, then they would take your application, process it for however long it takes (3-5 days maybe?) and then give you a response. But because they are greedy and sneaky, they tell you that your account is fully active from the time you activate. For me this was March 1, 2013. I am just thankful that I
was smart enough to trust the other reviewers out there to not jump in so fast.
If I had starying charging my customers right away, then Stripe would have
taken all $2000 from me and I would be completely broke and shut down for good.


If you are a lawyer who is considering legal action against Stripe, then please contact me at mxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.com. If this email address can not be posted, then reply to me in the comment section and I will find you.

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 03/08/2013 01:28 PM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/stripe-payments/internet/stripe-payments-stripe-credit-card-processing-stripe-kills-new-businesses-with-deceptive-a-1025676. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
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1Employee/Owner

#11 Consumer Comment

yes please contact me

AUTHOR: Theresa - (United States)

POSTED: Thursday, February 07, 2019

I am dealing with Stripe hold funds and would like to speak to your attorney.

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#10 Consumer Comment

STRIPE THE SCAM ARTISTS

AUTHOR: StripeSucks - (USA)

POSTED: Thursday, September 29, 2016

Thats the MO that Stripe.com uses to steal money from people both the sellers and buyers.

  • Stripe will make any and every excuse to steal money from both buyer's and sellers. They will allow you to open an account, say there's nothing wrong with it and when you start getting payments, you'll get their first of many BS emails that state that it was it was the card holder themselves that called stripe and reported the transactions as not authorized. Thats a deliberate lie because (1) the buyer doesnt know that you used Stripe to process the charge and (2) the stripe email comes within 2 minutes of these payments. Thats Stripes first of many things to start ripping you off.
  • Regardless of how many times you email them, you will get the same canned response and BS replies. They will violate their own terms to steal money from you. Their terms clearly state what these aholes consider high risk and whats not, they will use the this for any account they feel like closing, regardless of what your sellling. They say that selling products xyz is high risk and then they immediately contradict themselves by saying they are an online processing company for ecommerce. Morons using that as an excuse because they know anything being sold online is considered high risk.
  • More proof these aholes steal money, is the fact that they want you to get a chargeback, when you try to refund the payments, Stripe will purposely disable the refund button to all the payments they stole. They want a chargeback to happen and try to hold you responsible. Sellers who have been victimized by these thieves should take print screens showing how Stripe themselves allowed the chargeback to happen. They prevented the payment from the customer to refunded.
  • Additionally, Stripe loves to play games with the deposit dates. Another way these scum bags steal from you is deliberately playing the runaround game. Payments which were perfectly good, will tell you on the 10th of the month it will be placed in your bank account. When the 9th comes around, you'll mysteroiusly see the deposit date moved to the next day, when the next day comes, they will move it again another day. They do this continually on purpose to steal money.
  • Stripe doesnt have the guts to face you. They hide behind email systems, 90% of the time deliberately ignoring any emails you send them because they know they are stealing money and have done everything to screw your business infront of your customers. Call their numbers and you get an announce email only to blow you off.

If you ever use Stripe stop taking them and go someplace else. File a complaint with the attorney generals office in california, contact the federal trade commission an the ic3 department of the FBI. Everyone has to do this before these agencies will take any action.

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#9 General Comment

Stripe Rips Off Everyone Same Old Con Artist Tactics

AUTHOR: StripeSucks - (USA)

POSTED: Thursday, September 22, 2016

Plain and simple, Stripe needs to be sued, anyone that has a problem with Stripe report them to the attorny generals office in California.

If you ever opened a Stripe Account here's what you deal with :

-Stripe will deliberately lie to you as a merchant. They will purposely not answer questions regarding chargebacks. They purposely set up their system to accept charges that dont have a verified credit card shipment address. When you ask them what happens if you take a charge with a non confirmed shipment address, they will dodge the question purposely. They do this purposely to sellers, they have a feature that will reject the zip code or the CSV, but the most important part is the address. Stripe will lie, make excuses, and purposely dodge this question because they know the merchant will automatically loose if a buyer files a dispute for non receipt and the seller ships to a non credit card verified address. Asked them 4 differrent times point blank and each time they gave us the run around! Scam artist scumbags.

-When you deal with Stripe.com be prepaid to have your money held 7 plus days. Once again they will lie to your face and make up more of they excuses to hold your money longer than usual, hense promoting chargebacks even more and blaming you for it. Buyer's want their items shipped immediately within 2-3 days. With Stripe you cant. They will make up more and more excuses to hold money longer than anyone in this industry. Sellers, you are not legally obligated to ship anything out until you are paid for the item. If you get a chargeback because of Stripe's bs, simply right back stating prove to us the seller that stripe deposited the funds into our bank account to make the transaction legal and final. Stripe will make up all sorts of lies once again to say, oh your high risk, your this and that, anything to put the blame on you. They charge your account any fees, dispute it as not authorized!

-When Stripe closes your account they lie to you again. You'll get a BS email from them putting the blame on your own customers. The email says, oh we received notification from all your customers that placed orders that they didnt authorize the transaction and now we are closing your account. Once again more of Stripe.com's con job. The fact no customer would know you used Stripe to process an order, nor did any customer contact Stripe or their credit card company to file a dispute. Its stripe's ongoing BS.

-Having an account for over 1 year without any disputes from customers isn't enough for Stripe.com. They will close your account over BS reasons and lie to you. Once its closed its closed for good. They will make you place 2 charges on your credit card after they make you think its going to be opened, looked at again, that is totally a lie. 20 seconds after your done validating the 2 charges, you get yet another automated lie from them, saying oh we looked at your account, your high risk your closed. Despite over 50 transactions without a single problem.

 

If your a serious seller, avoid these small nickle and dime companies like stripe. They will jepordise your business with thief tactics. They will make you look bad infront of your customers because of stripes parania make you wait over 1 week for you to get paid from a customer, they will reverse charges without notice for every single bs reason. If you deal with this company, do not ship anything out until those funds are in your bank account and make sure you ship only to a verified credit card address, Stripe will do nothing to for you whe it comes to disputes, regardless of ther lies. Stripe's word is just as worthless than money in Greece!

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#8 Consumer Comment

Deception

AUTHOR: wayo - (USA)

POSTED: Tuesday, June 07, 2016

Stripe also cause me financial loss and I'm willing to join a lawsuit. Contact me.

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#7 Consumer Comment

Same Problem

AUTHOR: wayo - (USA)

POSTED: Tuesday, June 07, 2016

They did the same thing to me by stating that I had unauthorized charges. This is their MO, because I only made one charge for $1 as requested by them to test the account. They blatently lie and cause small businesses financial loss and bad reputation.

I am will to join a lawsuit.

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#6 Consumer Comment

Stripe = Complete CROOKS

AUTHOR: Get Digital World - (USA)

POSTED: Monday, March 21, 2016

what customer service? 

 

what number can  you call? They asked me to verify my idenity and provide a credit card... The number that apeared for stripe on my credit card statement was a de activated prepaid cell phone 

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#5 Consumer Comment

Class Action Lawsuit Information

AUTHOR: Phill MacDonald - (USA)

POSTED: Friday, May 15, 2015

I think it's high time to take these criminals to court. If you're reading this we all have to get together to bring a Class-Action against this company.

 They are still running Google Adwords campaigns for unsuspecting business owners. Go here to start an investigation on this company and their theft of revenue http://topclassactions.com/

 File something and get in contact with a good lawyer, who will only get paid when you win the suit.

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#4 Consumer Comment

Just Lost $6800 Today because of Stripe

AUTHOR: Smart Tv Outlet - (USA)

POSTED: Friday, March 20, 2015

Wow I really should have read this before I used stripe. They Just supposedly refunded $6800 To my customers for products that were shipped and delivered. I even suplied proof of delivery with signature but to no avail. These people are the spawns of satan and they do not care who they hurt or destroy in the process. My business is dead now. Thanks stripe. Please if anyone has information on a lawsuit I need in. I want my money back.

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#3 Consumer Comment

Stripe is 100% SCAM!

AUTHOR: Usala - ()

POSTED: Monday, March 02, 2015

To the person who obviously works for stripe that left the comment standing up for them, you wouldnt feel that way if you ran a legitement business and after completing customer orders, they close your account and supposedly refund the money to the customers. No. what they actually do is keep the money and pocket it. I just lost $340 in business because of them, and they said that it was because I was processing unauthorized charges. BULL!! I contacted every single last one of my customers, and they said that they did not file a dispute, nor were they refunded any money. 2 of them even contacted their banks to see if there was a pending refund and guess what.... there wasnt! Thats how they survive. They rip off sellers. I have filed a complaint with the bbb and next step is lawsuit.

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#2 REBUTTAL Owner of company

I Could Not Disagree More

AUTHOR: Will Butler - ()

POSTED: Monday, December 09, 2013

Last year, my company integrated Stripe Connect as a payment solution for our customers to use for processing payment online. We work with several hundred companies and every company who selected Stripe as their payment gateway has absolutely loved them. Furthermore, their customer service is second to none and there's never been a mix-up with payments.

Stripe is definitely our preferred gateway and I look forward to working with them more as they grow internationally.

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#1 Consumer Comment

Lawsuit

AUTHOR: Anonymous - ()

POSTED: Sunday, December 08, 2013

Hello,

Stripe.com also did the same thing to me and stole over $1,000 in payments. As a service provider I have already paid out of my pocket for the orders and this is costing me in excess of $1,500+.

I am interested in a potential class action lawsuit or legal action against Stripe.com.

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