Pages

Friday, May 30, 2008

A warning about Paypal from Statcounter

I was very concerned yesterday to receive an e-mail from Statcounter about the quite appalling service response they are receiving from Paypal in relation to a major breakdown in the service for subscription payments made via Paypal.

You can read all about it on the Statcounter blog here Paypal - A Warning from StatCounter - here's an extract
On 15 May Paypal performed a site update - this is confirmed by Paypal here.

After this date numerous problems were reported across the globe:

  • The Paypal Handling Cart feature completely broke down - see update below
  • Cross border payments could not be made as the drop down country list did not work - see update below
  • Customers have been flooded with hundreds of duplicate subscription emails from Paypal - see update below
  • Payments from Paypal are no longer associated with the relevant subscriptions
  • Some customers have been and are being DOUBLE BILLED by Paypal
  • Merchants have not been receiving instant payment notifications or failure notifications
  • Merchants/customers are unable to cancel subscriptions - see update below

The main problem that we have with Paypal is NOT the list of issues above - we all know that errors happen - we are absolutely furious at the complete lack of acknowledgement or assistance from Paypal in relation to these matters.
Paypal - A Warning from StatCounter

One wonders how many other subscription services which rely on PayPal are also affected.....

Here's Michael Arrington's comment on the from Technorati blog on this topic PayPal: Ten Days And Counting To Fix Drop Down Menu Bug

This is the blog of Paypal Developer Community which at least acknowledges there's a problem.

It's not very professional is it?

If you use Paypal for any subscription services I strong recommend you check your account given the double billing issue.....

4 comments:

  1. I use gostats - seems gostats was able to avert the paypal disaster. (I like gostats better anyway)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Katherine,

    From what I've understood, the problem seems to be solved.
    I read part of the article concerning the problem, but today I only saw the title stating that the problem is solved.
    But didn't read everything.

    Kind regards,

    José

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Katherine,

    We're delighted to report that, within hours of our blog post, Paypal made direct contact with us and resolved the situation not only for us, but for all the affected merchants around the world.

    Thanks for your assistance in publicising this matter - we appreciate it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alls well that end's well.

    I've just plugged "Statcounter Paypal" into Google and see that there were rather a large number of blogs who also publicised this problem.

    It would seem as if the "long tail" flicked to rather good effect!

    ReplyDelete

COMMENTS HAVE BEEN CLOSED AGAIN because of too much spam.
My blog posts are always posted to my Making A Mark Facebook Page and you can comment there if you wish.

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.