#StoneCypher
agile condor
winter knoll
instacart has, at this point, totally locked my account, and said it's because of you
i'm not even allowed to enter the "scan my card" flow anymore.
they have now begun demanding all kinds of crazy access to my driver's license, my bank account, and all sorts of other stuff that nobody would ever give when shopping on the web.
and they're blaming that on you too.
of course, i'm not going to give you my driver's license, nor am i giving you access to my bank account.
thorny ermine
👋
winter knoll
it's really startling how you two seem to think that my credit card isn't good enough, given that you've used it for literal decades without a problem 😦
but i now cannot get my groceries or my medicine because of a frontend bug in stripe.
i just want to say that i think it's unethical that dot coms are taking over payment flow and demanding monopolized access to my private information
you have no right to my bank account or my credit card, and you definitely don't have the security history for it
but i am shut out of large parts of the modern world because you don't really care
having done nothing wrong.
thorny ermine
Alright alright I understand this is frustrating but I'm trying to help so let's see if we can solve this.
winter knoll
i now have to consider moving so that i can buy a car
thorny ermine
First, can you DM me anything that would help me locate your account within Stripe
winter knoll
i don't have an account in stripe.
i am a customer of your customer.
all i know is you locked me out of my account and now i can't use 20+ services that i already paid for.
i didn't do anything wrong, i successfully completed your restoration flow, and you said "too bad."
i sent you my credentials manually and i still can eat thousands of dollars of lost subscriptions.
you, a multibillion dollar corporation, don't appear to have an actual human being ready to help when something goes wrong.
i had to find the developers on discord and beg.
this seems extremely unethical verging on dubiously legal to me.
i would like some help please.
i can't get my medicine, day nine.
thorny ermine
Slow down.
winter knoll
i've waited nine days, sir. that feels slow to me, when medicine is involved.
i'm doing my best.
i'm not throwing insults or swearing.
thorny ermine
First, while I work on finding the best solution to getting your accounts unblocked, can you answer these 3 questions if you recall:
- did you see a yellow border around your card when you tried to scan?
- did the border turn red at any point?
- did the scan complete but reject their card? What did the screen actually show?
winter knoll
-
i don't remember seeing such a thing, but it seems not impossible that it was there and i missed it. instacart has locked me out of the flow so i can't verify.
-
i don't believe so.
-
it behaved as if it did not see any card at all. as you can see from the screenshot, the photo was crystal clear.
i tried from two other machines with similar results.
thorny ermine
Okay thanks for the info. Give me a moment.
thorny ermine
Working on figuring out if there is a way to get you manually unblocked from my end. This is not something I work on at all -- I focus on API integration -- so can't give any details at the moment. Working on figuring out the process. You stated before you already opened a ticket with our Support team, yes?
winter knoll
no, i couldn't find a way without being your customer.
thorny ermine
Ah I should have clarified that yesterday (thought you had said you did contact our Support team and hadn't heard back). https://support.stripe.com/contact/email allows you to send an email directly without needing an account.
winter knoll
no they just refuse to respond.
i mean i can do it again but i really don't want to go through a new process from scratch on day three here
thorny ermine
Not asking you to go through a new process
I want to look at the status of your ticket
And see if I can help to escalate it to get this solved
thorny ermine
Okay. Please fill out the form using the above link. Put a brief description in the form of the issue and include my handle bismarck in the email. I'll then go find the ticket so that we can figure out the best path forward here. We may need email as a secure way to transmit whatever info we need to get you manually unblocked (still waiting to hear what the process for that is).
winter knoll
so you are asking me to start a new process 😦
i have medicine to buy, man. i'm running out.
none of these items fit.
thorny ermine
Just put "Other" for the reason
winter knoll
there, i opened a ticket
oh, i didn't get your handle
crap
should i open another one?
thorny ermine
Can you just give me some of the text that you put in the ticket that I can search based on
thorny ermine
Or open another one
thorny ermine
Okay I got it
winter knoll
there
thorny ermine
What did Instacart say to you exactly? Do you have anything in case we need to reach out to Instacart here.
winter knoll
they just keep saying random things that make no sense
thorny ermine
We can't unblock your Instacart account. Only they can do that.
winter knoll
i know
i'm not getting back into instacart. i have already accepted this.
i still need to be unblocked at your level to get into my pharmacy.
thorny ermine
So you mean you need to be able to scan your card with the pharmacy?
winter knoll
they use stripe.
i scanned it years ago
but i can't use my card anywhere anymore.
thorny ermine
What does that mean exactly? It gets declined?
winter knoll
i went to two other stripe holding stores and my account was immediately locked. i haven't tried the pharmacy because the stakes are too high and my trust in stripe's ability to repair this is too low.
i am currently on the phone with my pharmacy begging them to install a traditional payment gateway so that i won't die.
stripe appears to be re-broadcasting some kind of negative signal to instacart periodically without cause.
instacart, when their trust and safety team is asked to respond, sends me the tax forms for a driver, because they need to make their stats look like they responded, but they also need to bury the problem so that they don't get in trouble.
dealing with dot coms is like being trapped in a kafka novel. between shadowbanning and general contempt for customer service, you can just end up trapped in a different planet without any good reason at all.
everyone keeps telling me to "be calm" even though i've been through more than a hundred failed phone calls and my medical supply is coming quickly towards an end
thorny ermine
i went to two other stripe holding stores and my account was immediately locked.
So trying to login to accounts you have with other merchants is locked?
But have you tried to actually pay with the card somewhere?
winter knoll
no they're set up to just lock your account when you try to log in
i can't even get into the unlock process anymore
the theoretical way you're supposed to fix this is outside of my reach
either this is a defective shadow ban that's leaking information, or the repair process was just modified so many times that it legitimately doesn't actually work anymore
i guess i can't even go to the food trucks anymore
thorny ermine
Yeah sorry you mostly lost me here. This really isn't how it works. These merchants use our Card Image Verification to help validate you aren't fraudulent. Then they give you access or lock your account accordingly. We don't share this Card Image Verification data across merchants.
winter knoll
well that was what you told me yesterday too
until i gave you screenshots and then you said "wait it really is how it works, sorry"
unfortunately this part is on the phone so i can't give you screenshots
all i know is two other vendors said i got locked because stripe said my card is bad
and stripe, who said "we don't check cards" yesterday but does, is now saying "naw that wasn't us"
who was it then?
i'm not trying to be a jerk, man
i came to you with a legitimate bug
you even agreed with me
unfortunately, by now, it's been so long that the vendor in question has decided i'm a criminal
i just wanted help getting my medicine
i haven't done anything wrong.
you guys keep sending them signals telling them i'm a badguy. you could say otherwise but i guess not
thorny ermine
What you need to do is go attempt to pay with your Card. If you need to login to somewhere, and you are blocked by that merchant, then you have to talk to that Merchant. I can't do anything for you in terms of accessing logins for a merchant.
winter knoll
i mean
i literally just told you my story about doing that twice.
and besides i'm not asking you for the thing you're currently saying you can't do
i don't know why you're protesting that way? i never asked you to go modify other companies.
i'm a programmer too
i'm not that dumb
you don't have access to their stuff
i feel like i'm speaking russian
i'm asking for something very simple and very clear that definitely is within your power
and you're telling me "but i can't do this other unrelated thing"
thorny ermine
What are you asking? You have been asking that your account would be unblocked. I've stated I can't do that.
winter knoll
i definitely have not actually asked you for that
and i wish you'd stop saying that
because every time you say that i protest "no, i didn't ask for that" and then you just keep going
thorny ermine
lol okay
winter knoll
and it's making me feel like maybe you're just going to never hear what i'm actually saying and i should just bail
winter knoll
- can you please help me find out why stripe is, more than a week after the last time i used it, sending new negative notifications to vendors i can't use
- can you please help me undo the damage to my card in stripe's system
- will you please consider sending an email to instacart saying "we verified him at our end, the two later notifications were mistakes, sorry, please think about giving him a chance"
none of those involve taking control, making promises, etc.
i just want the damage done undone, and for someone to say something nice on my behalf to maybe get them to think it over?
i don't expect you to modify other companies.
just to stop sending them bad new claims about me when i'm not even using your network
something wrong is actually happening here
and i'm getting "lol okay" instead of "wow, this is actually bad, we're a payments network"
i did my best man
i gave screenshots, i was kind, i was friendly
but i'm also very sick
think it over.
<fin/>
i don't feel like this is a lot to ask 😦
i didn't say anything bad to anybody. i just want a little help with a problem that is outside my control
i would fix it myself if i could
my goal isn't to fight. i just need to buy my medicine.
this shouldn't be this hard. i didn't do anything wrong 😦
thorny ermine
- can you please help me find out why stripe is, more than a week after the last time i used it, sending new negative notifications to vendors i can't use
I stated above, we don't do this. Instacart or whomever runs a verification session using our Card Image Verification feature, we return the result. They then action your account based on the result. We do not share this result across merchants.
- can you please help me undo the damage to my card in stripe's system
See above. There is no damage to your card in terms of verification. That isn't a thing.
- will you please consider sending an email to instacart saying "we verified him at our end, the two later notifications were mistakes, sorry, please think about giving him a chance"
No we can't do that because we can't verify you. You have to work with Instacart to do this. They have a recovery process for when the cardscan verification fails. Yes, it takes providing other documents like your ID so that they can verify you.
winter knoll
you do actually do it
just like you do card verification and you kept saying you didn't do that, too
well. i guess i learned something here, didn't i
thorny ermine
At this point we are going in a circle. I do apologize that I misunderstood your situation initially. And I'm sorry you are in this circumstance. But unfortunately at this point you do have to work with these merchants directly to access your account.
winter knoll
they have no access to your records
and you're diligently refusing to admit that the system that needs work exists
even though you did that yesterday and were mistaken then too
one of the problems with programmers is that once we're certain, we tend to get bullheaded, and refuse to check. then we just shut the other person down
no matter how high the stakes are for them.
one thing i can take pride in, sir?
when someone has asked me for help
i've always found a way.
thanks for your time, yesterday and today.
i hope that at least the other bug gets fixed.
that's north of ten percent of laptops in the field now, and rapidly rising with every windows 11 upgrade.