To Paypal or NOT to Paypal…

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.

537 Comments

  1. Well, sorry to be a party pooper, but I have been using PayPal, as a buyer (and seller with eBay), for as long as it has been going and I have not had a single problem…..not one….(where’s that wood!). At one point I even used them as a bank to deposit dollar cheques (I’m English) as banks here charge around £5 per cheque to convert (so a £15 cheque will net me £10!).

    Sounds like I’m in the minority though (or are you lot the vocal minority?), and I do simpathise with StatsCounter having to pay out a load of money to compensate and get round PayPal’s processing problems.

  2. Davidgs says use Google. Oh good. Dump the swine at PayPal and jump right in bed with the buggers are Google.

    Way to go David.

    Now get out your dictionary. A seditionist is what?

    I’ve started a new political party. How is that sedition?

    Lookout world! David says you’re a moron if you don’t use Google.

    I think all these credit card schemes are rapacious and destructive of society. That’s what I think.

    So why be part of the problem -like David here?

    Instead of being so anonymous. really go in business. Put up a physical address and say the obviously most moral thing.

  3. Other than those that you have mentioned, they have the highest transaction fee as compared to the other payment processors.

  4. Hello Statcounter. I suggest you use PayBox, a new online payment processor currently in development and set to launch next year. Visit www.paybox.me/r/cognitelja for more info and to sign up.

  5. I know.. PayPal sucks rar rar.. the best thing about them is you get the money much faster than other payment gateways and their rates are comparatively cheap (if you don’t get scammed by them). But I have to say, we used WorldPay until quite recently (because we moved to Avangate instead), and even though their billing system was incomprehensible, we never really had an issue with them and their customer support was quite reasonable. The downside with worldpay was the yearly fee, the high transaction fee (4 percent) and having to wait a month for they money to be wired to your account. Other than that, I’d say they’re a good alternative to paypal.

  6. i am running a link directory, receiving paid links.

    from last 2 weeks, i am facing problem that my system sending me the confirmation of payments and PayPal is not sending the payment confirmation emails.

    and no payments are also coming…

  7. ppaypal will die soon because of their terrible system and strict rules and pilicies (silly sometimes) alot of big online ecommerces sites and online companies are jumping to other systems lile google checkout and alertpay (which is in my opinion far better than those suckers called Paypal)

  8. I recently received a notice from Pay Pal for a name that was not mine saying they had debited my bank account for $495.00. I tried to write them, but the mail was rejected. Unfortunately I did not save the email from Pay Pal, but I seem to recall the name was Walter Blakeman. Pay Pal was thanking this person for their payment. Now I have to watch my bank account and credit cards to make sure I wasn’t charged for something that isn’t mine. Please let me know what else I should do.

  9. My son paid out £80 for a Music Festival at Sellindge that just didn’t happen. The organiser blamed PayPal and from all the horror stories here I guess that he wasn’t totally to blame. That stlll left my son and hundreds like him with a big hole in his teenage pocket. Is PayPal a scam?

  10. They locked my account for selling stuff they didn’t deem appropriate (thought nothing that breached their terms & conditions). They froze over £300 in there and told me it would be returned to me after a year or something ridiculous. Over a year has passed and I have received no payment. When I try to log on it tells me ‘This account has been permanently locked with a £0.00 GBP balance’.
    They have simply stole over £300 from me. I say don’t use them, no one should. People need to stand by their beliefs and morals, even if it does cost them more money or prove to be an inconvenience. That’s the only way these companies will ever be affected.

  11. I have tried using PayPal for processing credit card payments and the whole system is flawed from application right through to “failed” transactions appearing multiple times in payers bank accounts – embarrassing.
    How about offering Google Checkout to your customers?

  12. http://moralrevolutionaryparty.com/

    We’ve just started. But we’re anti-credit, anti-credit card, anti-government, anti-bailout, anti-corruption, and anti-bureaucracy and we’re going to take the 2012 presidential race hands down. Why?

    Because the candidate we endorse will have as his party platform the promise to arrest, try, convict and execute within thirty-days of the inauguration everyone currently in government and a lot of these 100 million-dollar-bonus-bankers too -for treason.

    Sign-up and contribute to the movement NOW.

    OFF WITH THEIR HEADS. That’s the solution.

    We are not just talking CHANGE.

    WE ARE TALKING REVOLUTION.

    Don Robertson Co-Chair
    Moral Revolutionary Party

    1. I detest PayPal. Their idea of customer service is to say “not our fault.” That is, if they respond at all.

      Use Google checkout. Or straight credit cards to your site. I *refuse* to *ever* use PayPal subscriptions as they make it nearly IMPOSSIBLE to cancel them.

      And regarding the seditionist above? What a complete moron. If you hate this country so much, leave. We won’t miss you.

  13. I had an issue when paypal stopped working so I am back at the freebie level (I was at the 50K) because if you don’t take Amex, and you don’t take paypal, you aren’t getting money.

  14. Ok, here is my recommendation, Use Google Checkout along with PayPal. Here is some interesting information on using both of them.
    http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-201579.0.html
    I have been accepting PayPal for a while and I am getting ready to accept Google Checkout also.

  15. I prefer to pay with “click & buy”. Their support for clients is outstanding, and for customers: it´s as easy as PALYPAL.

  16. Paypal is not a Bank, it is company that sends money. Because of this they do not have to comply to strict Bank regulations. After being founded in 1998 they took off when Ebay purchased it in 2002.
    For a buyer it is good to have buyers protection. For sellers this means they are exposed to possible fraud, when he can’t hand over a proof of delivery.

    Personally I think Credit cards and paypal are a high security risk. And unnecessary. In Europe (I come from the Netherlands my self), Credit cards are used not as often as in the USA. A perfect way to pay is for example IDEAL. The buyer is re-directed to a payment-console of his own bank, where he has to fill in security codes, calculated with an bankpas and a bankcalculator which generates unique codes. The seller is certain, the buyer can’t make a chargeback anymore. Fraud has become very, very difficult as the original (or a skimmed copy) of the bankpas is required.

    Now, if you leave your wallet on the table to go to the toilet. , I could write down your Credit Card details and start using them and you will never know what happened. For Paypal you only need a password and sername, which can be hacked in numerous ways.

    Nowadays credit card companies and f.e. example Paypal give the buyers the benefit of the doubt. But I foresee that in the future sellers will not except high chargeback ratio’s any more. A system with a security check, needing the fysical bankpass, is the way to go.

  17. You guys are scaring me, I just started a new service that depends on the Paypal subscription gateway. Now, I will probably have to restructure my payment options to one time payments and hope for the best.
    As for StatCounter, I would prefer quarterly manual payments, with 1-2 weeks warning of impending payment due.
    StatCounter is a great service, best of luck to you.
    Rick C

  18. Avoid paypal. They are terrible. I concur with Chris. Been using paypal for too long and am trying to wean myself off of this service. Like Chris, there are a litany of injustices. Google checkout is another option.

  19. I am entering my 11th year with PayPal as my credit card processor and there isn’t enough room in this forum to BEGIN to explain all of the problems I’ve had with this internet dominating, mickey mouse written, fraud ridden, piece of crap excuse for a processor. But I will bet my business against a nickel that they are having NO problems processing Big Daddy eBay’s Seller Fee subscriptions… there, you got off easy with this rant PayPal… maybe because it’s Sunday lol

    ps–For those a bit more bold, try f**kpaypal.com if you want to read a bunch of tales from folks ready to “go postal” over their paypal experiences

  20. check out paypalsucks.com its got millions of complaints theres tons of people who got pretty much scammed by paypal

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