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mcgin parent
Can we please do something about hacker news being used for customer support? It's getting tiresome to see these appearing on a regular basis
Nevermark
If it allows someone to avoid an unjustified $250,000 loss each time … I hope they come here every time!

EXCEPT, what I really wish is that large companies like STRIPE stopped treating gross account mismanagement cases as small frequency regrettable but acceptable outcomes.

How can any of us sleep at night with these deaf capricious overlords managing our important information & services?

It is getting dystopian. Welcome to Brazil (the movie).

JanSt
It‘s interesting for HN because on this site are many potential customers. I have a finished Stripe integration in addition to app store sales but at this point I might need alternatives
cm2187
The audience of HN is also the audience who will pick what payment provider they want for their new projects. Horror stories like this one are relevant to this audience (and why they get upvoted).
blowski
I agree with the OP. Nobody should be choosing a critical dependency based on anecdotes like this, which tell only one side. If there were a post that aggregated such anecdotes with a more neutral stance, that might be more interesting.
cm2187
OK, but what is the better alternative then?
blowski
Alternative to what?
Firmwarrior
yeah man, I'm going to avoid Stripe now that I've seen this (or at least I'll treat them the same way I'd treat Paypal or an angry venomous snake)
themitigating
But it's anecdotal evidence at best and at worst this person is only telling their side of the story
JanSt
That is true, but we have heard many of these stories that could only be resolved by using HN. How many more stories are there, that we don't here about because the affected people don't know HN? At some point it becomes a pattern.
themitigating
So there's a pattern because of stories you don't know exist?
jjcon
It doesn’t matter that it is anecdotal in plenty of these HN support cases, the fact that this is possible at all is commonly what is atrocious (in other words, this should happen zero times). IE You can’t deflect a nuclear plant meltdown by saying we need to know how long it was running fine beforehand.
themitigating
You don't even know if he is telling the truth. He didn't even reveal the name of his business, why are you so sure it's true?
lucas_adlp
I'm also not fond of using HN for this sort of thing, but for a non-bootstrapped business, 250k isn't peanuts.

As much as this is a request for acutal support from Stripe, I also do hope that readers who are in a business of taking online payments will become fully aware of the risk of using Stripe, since I weren't (and now I'm in a situation of possibly losing 250k).

jacquesm
> I'm also not fond of using HN for this sort of thing

Then don't.

karlshea
Well the Stripe founders read HN and still don’t care about getting their shit together. And I’m glad I keep seeing these—I have a client that wanted to add Stripe to their checkout and I’ll now be recommending against it.
smashah
People should be encouraged to share these types of stories so we can hold these companies to account. Tiresome? Please refer to Tyler, the Creator's famous tweet if these posts are bothering you.
tasuki
Agreed. Do you have any ideas?

HN could ban posts asking for support, but then people don't get support and companies have even less incentive to create sensible support systems.

It's embarrassing for Stripe to have HN flooded with support requests, and that's a good thing.

nikanj
If you can suggest a better way to reach an actual human at Stripe / Google / etc, I’m all ears.

Sometimes you get lucky and reach a helpdesk droid, but they’re not permitted to deviate from script. Posting to HN can put you in contact with someone who actually is able to do independent thinking, and take action too

LegitShady
honestly I'd rather hear about stuff like this than not.
maxbond
As technologists we should bare witness to the consequences our way work has in the world and seek to blunt them. You can personally opt out by ignoring these stories.
lawn
Maybe if HN made their funded companies actually provide any kind of competent support, desperate people wouldn't have to?
yawnxyz
Posts like these remind us that things can and do go wrong when working with these large companies.
andybak
That's what the voting buttons are for.

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