Woocommerce frustrating experience – locked account

I have been using other websites for my business before, selling through social media, or accepting in person payments. I signed up for WooCommerce after shopping for better rates compared to other payment processors. I signed up based on reliability. After setup and linking my account, I accepted payments and I directed 4 customers over a few weeks to pay through my website (each of them for orders of about 200$). Seemed like it was going smoothly. My payout to my bank was supposed to be on a Monday. The weekend before that I received an email from Stripe. That they “…will no longer be able to accept payments…” for my website and that “… refunds will be issued in 5–7 business days.”

I contacted WooCommerce and was told that my account would be closed. It seemed that Stripe decided to flag my site as “high risk.” After many back and forth emails with Stripe and WooCommerce I was told that my account was high risk and they could not share why. At this point I did not care anymore about reopening my account but was concerned about the $775.60 stuck in my site.

At this point my concern was that I had already delivered my customer’s customized orders to them. And they had paid me through my site. But I could not access the money anymore. I had to contact many times and email to receive some kind of answers to my questions Fortunately, over the next 5-7 days, as stated in the emails the refunds did start going back to the customers. I was relieved that there was movement and full refund. Thankfully my customers were understanding. It sucked contacting them again and having to explain the situation and billing them again. As soon as they were refunded, I was able to bill them via PayPal which they paid. I had met with the customers face to face and don’t understand how there would be suspected fraudulent activity or high risk. They literally paid me with the same cards that they had used before on my website.

The problem now is that 1 customer has not been automatically refunded their $200. Instead, I can see $175.60 in my website account. Which also does not make sense because it should be $200 – $6.1 (processing fees) and should be $193.90. But even the $175.60 is stuck and will not be paid out to my bank. This is because my account is disabled/rejected. I cannot even access my Stripe account because it is closed.

When I contacted Stripe, they were not helpful via emails. After calling their support line I was able to talk to a lovely representative who was able to see that I could not access my account with them. They said that “charges request are coming from WooCommerce Payments” and that “an interface within that product allows refund charges created with Stripe and refunding a charge here should refund it in Stripe as well.”

I have been frustrated so far with the whole process. But now I truly stuck in a Kafkaesque ordeal. WooCommerce tells me to contact Stripe. Stripe tells me to contact WooCommerce. Emails don’t directly answer what I am asking. At one point Stripe told me add money to my account so that I could refund 200$. That I “will need to top up account in order to refund the customer and avoid a negative balance.”

Which is frustrating because I cannot add money to a closed account. I cannot issue refunds when I cannot access my account.

And why am I supposed to be refunding this particular payment when others were done automatically? Why should I be responsible for transaction fees when I will not receive the transaction or could have known that my account would be closed without warning or transparency? I do not have negative feedback or chargebacks ever with my business.

So basically, at this point I have given 1 customer the $200 product they ordered from me based on the fact that WooCommerce and Stripe said the order was processed. But now WooCommerce and Stripe have closed my account. The customer already has their product. But I am out $193.90 I was supposed to receive. I cannot issue a refund to this customer because of my closed account. But even if my account was open, I would have to add $24.40 out of my pocket to the $175.60 to make it a $200 refund. Then I would be out of $24.40 and $193.90 for no reason except for setting up an account. So, either way I am either out $193.90 or $218.30 ($24.40+$193.90) and having given away a free product that I had worked on for weeks.

It is frustrating to be in this situation. It has been stressful having to explain to customers what is happening and chasing them down to get the payments from them. It is upsetting having to contact support and not get answers or getting conflicting answers. And it is exasperating that funds are stuck with no way of going back to the customer or me. And disturbing that there is a possibility that WooCommerce and Stripe are still linked to my bank account and might try to get more money out.

So, yeah, Woocommerce and Stripe have led to a super frustrating experience for me.