Any normal user would be screwed, because the normal support methods result in a "screw you."
But in that thread a Stripe user chimed in, gave his personal email, and now the guy will probably get it all back.
I've seen many other situations like this. Is it normal to have to hope for employees to help here? Or to get the public eye by being upvoted?
What exactly are you asking? Does it happen frequently? Yes, somewhat. Should it happen frequently? No, I don’t think so.
Some companies only understand the language of bad press. Apple is another example—but far from the only one—often dragging their feet on issues until someone calls them out publicly and the complaint gains traction. If you’re not an “influencer” with a large following, your chances are considerably lower.
I fear it will only get worse. Online (and increasingly offline) outrage is so fleeting that you can disconnect for a few days and never become aware of otherwise major scandals. Eventually companies won’t even have time to make something right before everyone has forgotten about it and moved on.
Bigger companies (e.g. Stripe, Google) also have more users and the number of false negatives is also extremely high - if they make something like 0.01% false negatives, that's a lot of mistakes every day.
The bigger companies are likely to have dealt with the far end of malicious users and may have some convoluted SOPs or detection systems in place. That's why you get weird rules like Google Play banning all free games with the word "free" in the title.
But like a CEO of one such company told me when I complained, the official support routes are usually even faster.