Stripe hold for 23 Months - despite being told 90 days.

Stripe has been a holding the funds in my account for 23 months*

I am trying to close down my Stripe account that was terminated 23 months ago and I have not been able to. With every email to Stripe asking why or when I will be paid the money, I receive a boiler plate email that says "We have no information to report at this time, we will let you know when there is an update."

The part that makes this situation unique is, I was told by email from Stripe that they would give me a few extra days of service at the time of cancellation. The email is as follows:

"As noted above, your service will not end immediately—we understand that moving away from Stripe can take time. To help with the transition, we are able to provide you five additional days (beginning today) to switch to a new provider. Because of the elevated dispute risk here, your account balance will be placed on reserve for the next 90 days, the industry-standard period during which most payments are disputed. During this time, the reserved funds will help cover any disputes or refunds on your account. The remaining balance will transfer to your bank account at the end of this period[1].

If you need an alternative payment processor, we recommend considering PaymentCloud, which works with businesses with a higher level of risk than we're able to support: https://paymentcloudinc.com/stripe.

We're sorry that we can't offer you ongoing service and wish you the best of luck with your business."

I accepted that Stripe closed the account and I was grateful that they allowed me five extra days of service. Furthermore, I was under the belief that I would receive the funds from the additional 5 days of service after the 90 day hold.

During the 90 day hold there were customers that requested refunds, as I offered a refund policy of 90 days for all purchases.

Side note: all businesses should offer a 90 day refund policy, as 90 days is the minimum guarantee to all customers of MasterCard and Visa by way of charge back.

I message Stripe to ask them how I could offer a refund to my customers with my account being closed and received this email:

"During this period where you cannot process refund in your end, the reserved funds will help cover any disputes or refunds on your account. If there will be remaining balance in your Stripe account, these funds will be transfered to your bank account at the end of 90-day period[1] where your funds are held for reserve."

There was no way for me to process refunds to customers, which made matters worst as the only way these customers could receive a refund is through a charge back, which would not have happened if we could process refunds.

We were told that we would receive the fund multiple times after 90 days. This never happened after the 90 day hold, and I assumed that maybe it would take 120 days, as some counties have a longer charge back period for credit cards. After 120 days, I assumed 180 days and so on.

Now we are almost at 2 years from the time the account was closed and we receive the same boiler plate message. The only way to receive the same boiler plate response is email them again from the account page.

I looked into the terms and conditions which have been altered many times since November 2019 and things seem different now then the time I was promised the funds to be released.

There was an option to use an arbitrator, but the cost of the arbitrator is close to the amount of the funds that are not being release by Stripe after 23 months.

I know many people have had their accounts closed by Stripe, but is a 23 month hold unheard of?

Stripe, when will this end so I can move on with my life?