Stripe like paypal is not to blame in this story. The problem is the credit card payment standard. Transactions can be charged back up to 180 days. This means that by giving the merchant the money right away, Stripe runs the risk that a transaction will be charged back and that the merchant wont have fund to cover it.

Stripe like any other processor runs an algo to determine the risk profile of each transaction to decide if you get the money immediately or not. If you have a sudden high ticket transaction, the odds this will be charged back are much higher. This is why they freeze that money up to 180 days.

It sucks, but it is how the credit card system works. Someone has to cover the chargeback risk.

the solution isn't to blackhole your customer for 180 days.

it's to provide a human being to talk to or ask for clarifying information

I guess the argument then becomes one of scalability.

If you can't scale customer support, you can't scale period.

Temporarily freezing the funds is understandable, just long enough to ask for clarification or documentation from the merchant. Instead they decided to go the Google route of ignoring your customer because "algorithm said no".

Sounds like they also closed the account as well.

First thing I thought. PayPal is known to pull this kind of moves, now it’s Stripe’s turn to steal some money “for security.”