Richard Bendelow’s Post

We're feeling the love 💚 So far we've had some great feedback on Deploy.Dev Register for the beta to get access to all features free. https://deploy.dev/ (No card details needed. Limited to first 100 users)

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We are extremely proud to announce that our Lead Developer, Michael Price, will be speaking at this year's Laravel Live conference 🚀👏 It’s no secret that the Aero platform harnesses the power and flexibility of Laravel, providing agencies with an ideal foundation for crafting bespoke ecommerce stores. That’s why we are extremely excited to participate in this year’s Laravel Live conference and look forward to hearing Michael’s insights during his speaking session. For more information about the conference, visit: laravellive.uk

How Stripe almost killed my startup and may definitely kill yours. The gif attached shows us at Aithor sitting and waiting for 45 days (!) for half of our revenue to be unblocked by Stripe… Here is how it happened: #Feb 26th. We (Aithor) got a notification from our payment provider Stripe. 50% of our ongoing revenue would be blocked until April 11th due to our account being considered a high risk, hence these funds will be held to cover disputes and refunds. Historically we had a relatively high dispute rate, up to 0.8% which was a concern indeed. At the same time, we were progressing really well, growing our customer base and revenue by reinvesting the earned money. To put it politely, Stripe’s decision was a shock to us. It didn’t make any sense because the amount required to cover disputes and refunds was not even close to 50%. We needed this money to keep our business growing. So the journey has begun. The next day (Feb 27th) we tried to reach out to the support team to see what could be done from our side to proceed. The answer was: ‘Nothing, it’s a final decision’. We didn’t give up. 4 weeks later we made several improvements to our website and integrated the сhargeblast.io service, which helped us to reduce the dispute rate to less than 0.3% (!) In the meantime, about $300k was frozen in our account. Despite these improvements, our repeated pleas to Stripe’s (3 chats & 3 calls!) regarding the dispute rate reduction was a complete waste. We questioned whether at least some funds could be released since the large hold was unnecessary, but were met with their favourite response: ‘Sorry, but it's a final decision.’ We tried asking directly: did the team understand that this decision could kill our business? The answer was the same. We requested to connect with someone who could change the decision, but their response was clear: we cannot. It was a polite for ‘sorry, we don't give a fuck’ Our funds were on hold for 45 days, and… #Apr 11th. 80% of $452K blocked funds were finally released. A few days later, the remainder was unblocked too. Guess how much was actually used to cover disputes and refunds? Less than 5%. As silly as it can get. After all, how did Aithor survive? Well, we are blessed to be backed up by SKL.vc which covered our cash deficit. Lessons learned? We’re now searching for a new payment provider. We earned $630K in March and surpassed $2M in total gross profit, yet Stripe still doesn't have a personalized support / account manager for us. The feeling is they simply do not care about the businesses of our size. Be cautious. Stripe can easily kill your business. And yes, my vibe is definitely killed.