Quite unbelievably, despite reporting a problem to Paypal on 26 August, we have STILL not received confirmation that this problem has been resolved. Here’s the background…
-
On 26 August we identified a serious problem with Paypal.
StatCounter members who had upgraded in the previous few days had NOT been appropriately upgraded as the Paypal system stopped sending out subscription payment notifications. In fact new subscriptions were no longer created at all and payments received were not linked to StatCounter accounts.
In short, we were receiving hundreds of Paypal payments which we couldn’t link to any StatCounter account. As you can imagine, this caused serious difficulties for us.
We reported the problem to Paypal with as much supporting evidence as possible to assist them in quickly identifying the problem… but, as we have come to expect, the first response from Paypal completely ignored the information we supplied and denied the problem.
It’s now 5 WEEKS since we reported this issue to Paypal and we have STILL not received confirmation that this problem has been resolved. We feel we have been more than patient at this stage and remain astounded that any company can treat its customers with such disregard.
While we understand that ALL services can have problems from time to time we find Paypal’s habit of ignoring its customers to be abhorrent. We are particularly upset that Paypal’s poor behaviour can and does impact on you, our members, and also unfairly reflects on us.
Our Position
As a result of this Paypal problem, we had to manually examine hundreds of payments, attempt to link these to StatCounter accounts and where this wasn’t possible we had to contact the payees individually to request their StatCounter usernames. As you can imagine, this had a high cost for us in terms of time and resources. Further, although these problems were caused by Paypal, StatCounter has absorbed all the costs of this problem. We also felt it was only right for us to offer all affected members a free upgrade for one month to make amends for the problems. Paypal, of course, offered us (their customer) absolutely nothing by way of assistance for the trouble they caused us.
Unfortunately, we have been here before… At that time, we decided NOT to remove Paypal as a payment option for new subscribers. This was because we highly value each of our members and, despite OUR poor opinion of Paypal, we have to cater to what YOU, our members want. However, we are now again considering our position in relation to Paypal…
Your Feedback Please
Due to the problems outlined above, Paypal has been suspended as a payment option (for NEW subscriptions) on StatCounter since 26 August and remains so. We can’t possibly reactivate it until such time as Paypal confirms that the problems introduced in August have been fixed… but we have no idea when that will be. In the meantime, we’d like to ask you, our members, for your thoughts on this.
Both problems we have had with PayPal have been with their subscription payments. During this problem and the last one, regular Paypal manual payments appeared to be functioning normally. On this basis, we are wondering if we should STOP accepting PayPal subscriptions and accept only manual payments instead? Manual payments *would* require our upgraded customers to log in to Paypal every time a payment falls due… so perhaps we will have to restrict Paypal upgrades to quarterly or yearly – logging in every month to pay could be a bit too time consuming! We’re not sure about this idea, so do let us know your thoughts!
We’d also love to know what alternative payment options we can introduce to cater for your payment preferences.
Here are our initial thoughts…
- We need to accept Discover cards – if you can recommend an acquirer for a European company, please let us know
- We need to accept AMEX for USD payments – currently we can only accept AMEX directly for EUR payments
- We need to accept echecks – please let us know if you can recommend any echeck processors
Note that we already accept VISA, Mastercard, AMEX (for EUR payments), wire/bank transfer, EUR/USD checks/cheques.
Please post below with any other card or payment method you think we should accept and feel free to share any comments or suggestions you may have. Thanks folks.
UPDATE: Please note that existing, active Paypal subscriptions are not affected by the suspension of Paypal on StatCounter – this affects NEW subscriptions only.
I m trying to use PP less every week that passes, moneybookers is another option which I m trying.
Up to now moneybookers only issue is that they dont let US customers to pay via Moneybooker Money Request everything else is much better than paypal.
If you change to MB then I think it will give a good example to everybody else using PP thinking, false, that they dont have any other option available.
you can drop paypal. i prefer to pay with credit card.
Paypal is terrible when it comes to helping their clients. I don’t mind using different payment options.
Some businesses are switching to Amazon Payments. Maybe their customer service is better?
You can drop paypal. There are better payment options.
é裳å°åé衣丽衫æä¹°æéï¼æ¬¢è¿æ¨çå 临éè´ï¼
I really don’t care. I don’t have any issues with Paypal but it wouldn’t affect my Statcounter relationship one way or another.
Paypal is easy payment got world users, I suggest it
What can I add? I’m a check/cheque and money order gal. A good online payment service would be great…I haven’t found a perfect one yet, mostly due to the fact most online businesses I want to purchase from only accept PayPal (such as Spoonflower.com) – so I don’t purchase unless there is a traditional currency option.
Though I would love a good online payment system. Last I researched, I liked the sound of MoneyBookers.com (which is international) and I was still researching AlertPay.com – Google Checkout won’t work well for me as I am a Canadian, and Google is starting to get too big as well. I will adamantly not be supporting Google Checkout.
Only time, experience, and trend setters will tell who is the best. In the mean time, it might take accepting payments by more than one competitor – all ones eggs in many baskets is much safer.
Good luck StatCounter – I hope you do decide to drop PayPal in the long run; PayPal isn’t worth supporting.
I use Paypal but am currently making far to much money for them (I deal in a lot of very small amounts) and am looking to change my business model. Problem is that the public seems to trust them so, as someone said earlier what is the alternative?
As for Statcounter – whatever floats your boat – I would be more inclined to increase my log size if PayPal were an option. Convenience.
I stopped accepting Paypal long ago, their service is as poor as it can go and have no regard for THEIR customers. Wave goodbye, if we all did that Ebay and Paypal would have to change
We use paypal for our subscription services and they have all been working fine and still are.
The only thing that is not working at the moment is the dashboard on Paypal that lets you view your recurring payments but that isn’t essential.
Paypal ARE sending out subscription notifications and they ARE processing payments, so if your system isn’t receiving them it’s either :
a) a problem specific to your account with them
b) you are not processing the payments correctly
Have you checked your server logs to see if they are calling your notification page?
Want a faster, safer, and more convenient way to shop online? Google checkout is one option.
Statcounter, do you have an update on this issue yet? Just wondering if you’ve managed to get any sense out of Paypal…???
5 Weeks with no solution is not a joke…
PayPal sucks 🙁
Give a thought to Moneybookers. They have really nice gateway service.
Pay Pal and eBay can both suck it! You cannot get a hold of eBay. PayPal pretends they aren’t affiliated with them. Also, Wachovia sucks!
In response to the people that suggested that you can loose out on business if you do not accept paypal, well i have found this not to be true i find if you are reassure the customer that vosa and mastercard is just as safe they are fine and sonce dropping paypal i can only recall loosing one customer because i would not accept a paypal payment and if you weigh up the pros and cons of the disruption paypal have caused to my business i am still a hell of alot better off ditching them, I hate them ! x
I quit using paypal a long time ago, now I use alertpay:
just follow this link: http://kvepp.com/apay
Hundred times better customer service.
I used to have a Merchants account with a firm called WorldPay. They were fine and took all cards. Worth a look I’d say.