gingerlime

Thanks for chiming in. I appreciate it.

That said, I don't think you're really addressing the main point on my post. There is clear evidence here of intentional fraud, yet Stripe does nothing with it.

And from what I gathered previously with my own experience, and supported by comments on this discussion, Stripe win rate for disputing chargebacks is virtually nil. I'd love to be proven wrong here if you can share your actual win/lose rate stats.

yes, until you have to walk into an air conditioned environment.

I wonder about hot environments where it rains, like tropical countries. Any tips or insights on what works best?

even if the customer claims the product never arrived?

Even when the consumer claims that they didn’t receive the product?

Yeah I totally get what you’re saying. It’s true. Still find it frustrating as a tiny merchant because it’s just too easy to get scammed and the system seems skewed against you.

Plenty of companies don't even try to fight it, because then at least you save the $20 chargeback fee.

That’s sad in my opinion. It shouldn’t be the norm. Stripe support encouraged me to file a dispute and submit evidence but next time I prob won’t bother.

I personally find it disappointing that Stripe is in a position to do something about it but prefers the status quo that clearly allows such fraud to continue.

I’d be curious too. Previous experience at a SaaS was that we never won disputes and it was too time consuming on top, so we just ate the dispute fees and refund.

I always thought things are easier with a physical product where you have a 3rd party like DHL that proves delivery was made. But at least in my tiny sample space, that’s not enough to win the dispute.

That’s news to me. Stripe always presents it as if they’re simply a conduit and it’s all in the issuing bank’s hands. Do you have any links/info for learning more about it?

if customer fraudulently claims to their bank that they haven’t received the product, the bank files a chargeback and 3DS does not protect the merchant against it.

and that’s my complaint on the blog post. They should use these data points too.

Yeah I didn’t really go into it, but I can imagine a bank prefers to take care of their own customer than about a small merchant. I’m definitely frustrated with the whole system. But I expected at least Stripe to try to protect its own customers (merchants).

if it was stolen then I guess it’s fairly standard. Disputing specific transactions is much harder though. They ask for evidence you contacted the seller etc and make the process difficult from my very limited experience on the “other end” of the transaction.

It’s sold in 20+ countries around the world, not just Germany.

If you’re talking about premium cigars, using paper is possible but kinda ugly. The glue is similar to what rollers use when rolling cigars in the factory. It works well and fits well with the cigar smoking experience.

You don’t have to buy (my) glue. You can make your own and I even share recipes on the website. Ciglue however offers convenience with the dispenser and integrated brush and glue.

(wasn’t expecting to get into details about my product on HN but love how diverse the community is)

none of the technical measures you mentioned could work with “friendly fraud”. It was a real human with a real card with a real address with details all matching, then disputing a payment they themselves made for a product they received.

Yes most of the communication felt rather LLM assisted or generated. Though to be fair Stripe from my experience always had emphatic support and well written responses. In a way they probably set the gold standard that AI support now mimics.

None of the technical measures you mentioned are relevant with “friendly fraud”. And that’s exactly the problem that Stripe doesn’t solve. And doesn’t want to help merchants fight against.

100% agree. They cannot reverse the dispute. I already lost the money. I understand.

But Stripe is exactly in a position to at least use the evidence I provided (in this case, the evidence included the customer clearly admitting to friendly fraud), and feed it into their fraud-prevention system in some way. This way, lots of signals can help protect merchants from friendly fraudsters. So yes, I see it as a pretty small and legit ask from Stripe.

What do they feed into their Radar machine learning system? surely there are lots of signals to use here. I'm not saying take only my word and ban this customer forever.

But they have my record as a merchant (successful charges, chargebacks, disputes etc), they have the payer record as a consumer (payments, chargebacks etc), when a merchant submits a dispute, they provide evidence. I provided evidence from DHL that the product was delivered.

No single piece of data is enough on its own, but Stripe is in a perfect position to use all those pieces to be able to better detect fraud.

Yet they explicitly do not use this data at all.

Agree on Stripe support. They're excellent.

I don't think Stripe did the right thing here. They can do better to protect their own customers.

Yeah. This case Canada. Not sure where to report but seems unlikely to do anything. Will happily report out of principle so any tips welcome.

Yeah, though this rule sounds a bit tricky. Like what if someone legitimately had their card abused.

The thing that gets me is that Stripe boasts about their machine learning radar rules etc etc, but somehow can't feed it actually valuable data.

Stripe support saw the emails from the customer boasting about defrauding me, they completely agreed that this is a clear case of friendly-fraud, but did nothing with this info.

Thank you. Haha, yes. My product is focused on cigar repair, but I know some weed smokers that use cigar glue (mine or other brands) for blunts.

Author here. What makes you think Stripe cannot do better here?

Happy to share their responses verbatim. It was a rather long back-n-forth. Here's a snippet from the latest email, which I think makes it clear that they do not use the evidence I provided:

    I can assure you that I will take note of your feedback and pass it to our team. Your point about post-transaction abuse detection is valid - while Stripe has robust network-level fraud detection, there does appear to be a gap in utilizing merchant-provided evidence of confirmed fraud to protect the broader merchant ecosystem. This type of feedback from merchants who have direct evidence is valuable for improving these systems.

No. I would have been far more upset about a vague response. I was still upset that they don't do anything about it.

(it took a bit of back-n-forth to get a clear answer, but I did get a clear one. Their support is still excellent from my experience and communicate well)

Yes, and Stripe could do much better to prevent it. And doesn't.

Yes. But Stripe didn't do anything to prevent the next merchant from falling into the same trap. They had all the evidence, and ignored it.

That was the point I tried to make with my blog post. And yes, if it was too easy for merchants to block consumers, that won't be fair either. But surely there's a middle ground here.

Stripe very explicitly told me that they don't do anything with such reports. It's simply ignored.

This case was Canada.

The US and I imagine Canada are known for the ease of chargebacks.

My experience in Europe is that it's a very tough process to even initiate (as a consumer)

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