- Joined
- Jun 14, 2013
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So, here is an incredibly horrible experience that I just HAD to share with all of you. Some of you may enjoy it, or even relate to it. This is my experience with using Stripe over 1 week...my negative Stripe review
As many of you know, I've been selling web traffic online for the past 15 years, and I've used a lot of payment processors over those years, including Paypal (don't get me started on those a**holes!), Skrill (useless), Payoneer, Payza, Paxum, ePay, SolidTrustPay, etc, blah, blah, blah....
So, when I was looking to add a new one I thought I'd try Stripe, as my traffic selling competitors also use them. I contacted their sales team first to ask if my website was ok by their terms and they replied TWICE that it was fine. So far, so good. So, I signed up and spent HOURS myself creating checkout pages and adding their payment links on my site and I had my first sale with them right away and it went through without an issue. Still good.
Then, the day after, I got an email asking me to clarify what I sell so it isn't against their terms. I told them I sell web traffic, just like the other traffic sites that use the Stripe payments service. Then the next email I got said they CLOSED my account because it was against their terms with a link to their prohibited list, which I read carefully and nothing applied to my site. I asked them to clarify what it was, specifically, that was a problem. Then I got another email with the same vague answer with a link to the same page. UGH!! I was starting to get frustrated....I wanted a straight answer!!!!
I then contacted the originally sales rep and he told me AGAIN that my site was fine, as long as I didn't allow the "Sale of Twitter followers, Facebook likes, YouTube views, and other forms of social media activity", Well, good thing I DON"T sell that!! I told them I just sell web traffic and advertising, but not social media stuff, so I should be good, right? Wrong!!!
Here's where it gets stupid & unprofessional. After appealing and responding to each email they sent asking for specifics, I finally got an email saying they "are unable to accept payments for Online Traffic Sales/Website Traffic, as mentioned on our Restricted Businesses list" WHOA!! WHAT??? I read EVERY word on that restricted list 3 times over and there was NO mention of even the word "traffic", and now it magically appeared??
And so there it was...3 little words added to the end of the sentence "Sale of Twitter followers, Facebook likes, YouTube views, and other forms of social media activity and online traffic". It wasn't there before, it wasn't there when I signed up and read the terms, and apparently their own sales team isn't aware of it, but it was conveniently added for my benefit.
Now, don't get me wrong, I fully realize they can add whatever the hell terms they want, but to waste my time after telling me twice that everything was fine and then trying to gaslight me into thinking I didn't see the terms that were "clearly" there is unprofessional and disrespectful to a small business owner. Small entrepreneurs like me are all just trying to get by in these difficult and expensive times to live and survive, quite literally, and not having a decent & supportive payment processor means lost sales every day.
What hurt the most was not getting a straight answer right from the beginning and knowing they are still processing payments for my competitors while my own site takes the hit. It's BS and obviously not right.
Empathy & humanity seems gone as we get knocked down by these faceless tech companies, but this is not the end....stand up for yourself!!!
As many of you know, I've been selling web traffic online for the past 15 years, and I've used a lot of payment processors over those years, including Paypal (don't get me started on those a**holes!), Skrill (useless), Payoneer, Payza, Paxum, ePay, SolidTrustPay, etc, blah, blah, blah....
So, when I was looking to add a new one I thought I'd try Stripe, as my traffic selling competitors also use them. I contacted their sales team first to ask if my website was ok by their terms and they replied TWICE that it was fine. So far, so good. So, I signed up and spent HOURS myself creating checkout pages and adding their payment links on my site and I had my first sale with them right away and it went through without an issue. Still good.
Then, the day after, I got an email asking me to clarify what I sell so it isn't against their terms. I told them I sell web traffic, just like the other traffic sites that use the Stripe payments service. Then the next email I got said they CLOSED my account because it was against their terms with a link to their prohibited list, which I read carefully and nothing applied to my site. I asked them to clarify what it was, specifically, that was a problem. Then I got another email with the same vague answer with a link to the same page. UGH!! I was starting to get frustrated....I wanted a straight answer!!!!
I then contacted the originally sales rep and he told me AGAIN that my site was fine, as long as I didn't allow the "Sale of Twitter followers, Facebook likes, YouTube views, and other forms of social media activity", Well, good thing I DON"T sell that!! I told them I just sell web traffic and advertising, but not social media stuff, so I should be good, right? Wrong!!!
Here's where it gets stupid & unprofessional. After appealing and responding to each email they sent asking for specifics, I finally got an email saying they "are unable to accept payments for Online Traffic Sales/Website Traffic, as mentioned on our Restricted Businesses list" WHOA!! WHAT??? I read EVERY word on that restricted list 3 times over and there was NO mention of even the word "traffic", and now it magically appeared??
And so there it was...3 little words added to the end of the sentence "Sale of Twitter followers, Facebook likes, YouTube views, and other forms of social media activity and online traffic". It wasn't there before, it wasn't there when I signed up and read the terms, and apparently their own sales team isn't aware of it, but it was conveniently added for my benefit.
Now, don't get me wrong, I fully realize they can add whatever the hell terms they want, but to waste my time after telling me twice that everything was fine and then trying to gaslight me into thinking I didn't see the terms that were "clearly" there is unprofessional and disrespectful to a small business owner. Small entrepreneurs like me are all just trying to get by in these difficult and expensive times to live and survive, quite literally, and not having a decent & supportive payment processor means lost sales every day.
What hurt the most was not getting a straight answer right from the beginning and knowing they are still processing payments for my competitors while my own site takes the hit. It's BS and obviously not right.
Empathy & humanity seems gone as we get knocked down by these faceless tech companies, but this is not the end....stand up for yourself!!!
