Recovery playbook
When to bring Stripe support into a recovery
Most recoveries never touch Stripe support — reversals are your API calls, made on your authority, against ledgers you control. A few situations close the API path entirely: deauthorizations, closed accounts, suspected platform faults. Knowing what support can actually do in those cases — and writing the case so triage rewards you — saves a week of hoping followed by a form letter.
Can, and cannot
Can: investigate platform-side errors (a webhook that never fired, a mis-recorded transaction), advise on account states and restriction causes, escalate genuine Stripe faults through engineering. Cannot: create a reversal on your behalf, force a deauthorization to undo, recover funds Stripe does not hold, or override network dispute outcomes. Asking for the second list wastes the ticket and your credibility with the next one.
Writing the case
One screen, structured: timeline of events with object ids (ch_, re_, tr_, po_), exact amounts, the calls attempted with verbatim errors, environment notes, and one specific question. Triagers reward structure proportionally; sagas get sorted into the eventual-form-letter pile regardless of merit.
The deauthorized special case
Freeze automated actions on the account immediately — every further call fails anyway and clutters the trail. Preserve findings as evidence. Then pitch reconnection to the seller with their own incentives: their payout history and your reconciliation records both live behind the connection, and disputes go smoother with the data attached. Some reconnect; the rest become legal-or-write-off decisions that were always coming.
Expectations, and what FeeGuard contributes
Response times run in days, not hours — another quiet argument for real-time detection over month-end discovery, since support-latency compounds discovery-latency. FeeGuard findings carry every id a case needs and the append-only audit trail exports as the case timeline, so assembling the one-screen structure above is copy-paste rather than archaeology.
Common questions
Will Stripe reverse the transfer if we ask nicely?
No. Platform-initiated reversals are platform API calls. Support’s superpower is investigation and escalation, not execution.
The connected account closed permanently — any path?
Only future-volume recovery if it ever reopens, which usually means the write-off policy applies. Say that plainly internally and move on.
How fast do cases resolve?
Days is the honest band, varying by complexity. Budget the expectation into recovery timelines instead of discovering it mid-case.