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…
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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.
Have to say that as a consumer I’ve never had a problem with Paypal, and I always prefer to use their service (or GooglePay) when available. However, having read your comments I can imagine you’re pretty cross! Hope you get it sorted to your satisfaction.
PS Don’t I remember always paying you via Worldpay?
To tell the truth I have not had any problems with PayPal, although I know a lot of people who did. There were I couple of times I thought I may have problems due to a massive download giveaway event I was hosting, but I phoned PayPal to give them a heads up on what I was doing. There is one little delay problem I still have though. Sometimes transfers can take over a week to go through. I don’t that should be with a business verified account.
Joe
if you really want to keep PayPal, one option might be to use a system like Ogone, which is basically a payment provider supporting a massive amount of different cards (see http://www.ogone.com/en/Extra%20Services/Payment%20Methods%20and%20Acquirers.aspx), including PayPal.
I use Paypal for business transaction and shopping. Haven’t had a problem. However I’m not a huge company with an enormous number of transactions going through.
For me Paypal very convenient.
I guess they have the same problems that all large and growing companies have….something goes wrong and it’s tough to resolve quickly on a big account because there is so much data to weed through.
Good luck!
Hi to all of you,
thank you for the message to leave a comment to the actual problem with Paypal. Actually I don’t care about their problems (Paypal is to big by now) but I will help you with your request.
To me it makes no difference at all how I have to pay something because I have all the means for payments on the internet. So I just choose as I like to pay or as the offering service want’s me to pay. I can see the problem other users have if the only can provide paying with Paypal.
So what about Moneybookers, I do have an account with them is well. Perhaps you can check that opportiunity.
I enjoy really having such a good partner as statcounter is to me.
Keep going – this is the right way!
Hallo an euch alle,
danke für die Nachricht, um einen Kommentar zu dem eigentlichen Problem mit Paypal zu hinterlassen. Eigentlich sind mir deren Probleme egal (Paypal ist schon zu groß) aber ich will euch mit Ihrer Anfrage helfen.
Für mich macht es überhaupt keinen Unterschied, wie ich etwas bezahle, weil ich alle Mittel für Zahlungen im Internet verfügbar habe. Also ich brauche nur zu wählen wie ich bezahlen will oder wie der anbietende Service es wünscht. Ich sehe das Problem anderer Benutzer, wenn die nur mit Paypal bezahlen können.
Und was ist mit Moneybookers, ich habe auch ein Konto bei denen und es funktioniert. Vielleicht könnte man diese Möglichkeit überprüfen.
Ich genieße wirklich welch guter Partner Statcounter für mich ist.
Weiter so – das ist der richtige Weg!
I’ve had probs w/PP also. They are very frustrating, but unfortunately have become disinterested in their clients. ?They need a competitor service. Can you find one? Maybe consult your peer groups and develop one? Good luck and thank you for the personal service!
Bill
I use paypal because it lets me control those auto-charges that vendors love and customers hate. I don’t want to wake up one morning and have to dispute a sneaky renewal charge that I forgot about.
If you’re credit card charges don’t auto-renew then I’m all for it.
Hi Wayne,
Our credit card subscriptions DO auto-renew but you can cancel them from within your StatCounter at any time before the next renewal date – the same way you do for Paypal subscriptions.
I’m sorry to hear that PayPal are a problem for you. I would have put both of you on my ‘most innovative’ list. And I recommend PayPal to nearly all people I know. I wonder if this is an Irish branch problem? After all your problem is not actually with PayPal but with someone in PayPal.
Regardless of who or what I believe you should stop using them and use any alternatives that are mutually convenient such as credit card payments.
I never have problems with Paypal. I’ll keep using them.
Hi Frank,
We’re not advising anyone NOT to use Paypal – if you’re happy – that’s great!
Unfortunately, our experience has not been good and we’re asking our members to tell us about alternatives – what other payment options could we offer to substitute for Paypal?
Thanks!
I have never had a problem with PauPal on any of the sites I have created. I will continue to use them.
Hi Debbie,
We’re not advising anyone NOT to use Paypal – if you’re happy – that’s great!
Unfortunately, our experience has not been good and we’re asking our members to tell us about alternatives – what other payment options could we offer to substitute for Paypal?
Thanks!
Just an idea on this at least for existing subscriptions. I see PayPal now sends the confirmation of payment with a transaction ID no:
What about setting up an auto responder which emails clients a day or so after the PayPal payment is made asking them to reply in the subject line with the transaction ID no:
That might help speed up payment cross reference.
I think you have the correct ideas. Amex is the best option for most businesses.
As for eChecks, there are some issues associated with fraud that cannot be reversed that can with credit cards. You may want to consider your exposure before accepting eChecks…especially using an unknown third party servicer.
I agree with Shareworld’s words of wisdom and would also be happy to send email to Paypal if that would help.
PayPal is incredibly convenient and lacks the drawbacks of a credit card (the major one being that ONLY the merchant can cancel a subscription – the credit card owner cannot and is at the mercy of a poor merchant — not that that applies to the excellent people at statcounter).
In the absence of PayPal my preferred solution would be a direct debit — an inconvenient and troublesome method but at least it is within my control.
Thank you for your excellent customer communication
I think this may be a Business Account problem because I noticed this morning that another Company who has always used Paypal has now withdrawn paypal payments. For me, the customer, paypal is so incredibly easy and I trust my details with them. It’s a complete pain in the tooshie having to go fetch the debit card every time you make a payment.
I would like to email paypal myself regarding this problem.
From a business sense, I prefer PayPal due to simplicity, but am also OK with American Express. Other non-business methods of payments would not work well.
As pointed out above, it’s nice to be let into the loop re this issue-at least someone has good communication skills.
A client whom I work for also had a serious paypal issue recently -and it took ages to sort out with paypal denying any responsibility.
I must say that as far as paypals services go, I am a strong supporter, their services offered are hard to beat, and obviously paypal as a method of payment is preceded by many.
HOWEVER, I find it’s far to often a problem these days where as companies grow, their customer service shrinks -I see this within other sectors -broadband services being a notable one.
I think part of the problem is that companies don’t increase their support arm in proportion to their business growth- this results in a very poor service whenever a problem arises.
I wouldn’t advise dropping paypal -partly because it’s convinient and partly because I don’t advocate giving up on people/corPorations.
I would love to see paypal make amends somehow for this issue – hopefully with the size of statcounter you will have the ability to put a bit more preasure on paypal than the average user would…???
Could we (statcounter users) help in any way?
We have had the same problems with PayPal last year and have removed them as a payment method. It was a difficult choice, but for businesses, PayPal is a terrible partner.
I agree that based on experience PayPal can be a very difficult company to deal with. They are a trusted brand from the consumer perspective so they the first port of call when it comes to payment solutions.
Best of luck dealing with them.
I am really terrified with services from paypal as they are giving out worst days to me. They have blocked my money months ago and i am not sure how they will send it back
I just want to say that this is such a nice honest communication to customers, I am impressed. I enjoyed getting a feel for the human element behind statcounter! I wish you the best of luck with this problem!