StripeStripe closed my 6 week old lodging business citing risky payments. The "risky payments" were declines its own risk system generated on my verified guests. Full dated timeline + what I'd do differently. **One lost $750 chargeback led to my payment processor closing my six week old lodging business's account, holding my guests' money past its own written deadline, and then telling me it couldn't release funds it had already refunded. Full timeline, and what I would do differently.** **TL;DR:** Six week old lodging business. One $750 deposit chargeback lost on an AVS mismatch. Four days later an automated risk intervention was added on top of the normal fraud screening. The normal screening had already caught the real fraud on its own. The intervention blocked only verified guests, one of them about fifteen times, and nothing else. Stripe refused in writing to override it, then closed the account citing high risk activity from those blocks. Pulled a service member's already paid out booking back from my bank, missed its own written refund deadline by six days, refunded the day after a BBB complaint, then sent a formal response saying it could not release funds it had already released. Same day it closed my direct application, it approved the same business through [Booking.com](http://Booking.com), and that account is still open. Never a human in the loop. Not on MATCH, which is the one thing that went right. Lessons at the bottom. Short version: turn on AVS decline, never charge deposits, keep two acquirers, and do not build a small business on a rail that can be revoked by a model and appealed to a queue. I am a Navy veteran and I own a small guest house in Tampa, Florida. Five rooms. I launched in mid June and take bookings through Airbnb, [Booking.com](http://Booking.com), Expedia, Vrbo, and directly. I used Stripe for the direct and Vrbo side. **July 17.** A guest who had stayed for five nights filed a chargeback on her $750 security deposit. I contested it with f…
