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.
PayPal is easily way to paid but not working in egypt !!
It is not too time consuming to log in to PayPal once per month. The only issue would be forgetting to do so on a timely basis in order to have no service interruption. If there was some way to get a monthly reminder 48-72 hours before the date of renewal it would definitely not be too much trouble to renew manually.
U guys rock..paypal sucks…make sure u can process US AMEX please
PayPal is easily one of the worst companies on the planets. Tech support and customer service is a joke.
Hello StatCounter.com customer service person, I am assuming you are not a bot,
The issue of whether or not to use the StatCounter service is one of paranoia…
You write something in your blog about bengal cats not wanting to be spayed, someone from a cat society (TIBCS) responds foaming at the mouth in your Comments on Blogger.com’s service & you don’t know which cat society or exactly who was the foamer…Some lady…Ok, so you hunt & find statcounter & notice it is free…You subscribe & put up the code & track your visitor…Then you block her…While you are doing that you feel very empowered…You become addicted to tracking your visitors…You put statcounter code on all your sites, blogs, forums…
Later, when so many people visit your sites, probably just to see your statcounter code button, you upgrade because now you NEED to follow visitors…It multiplies…People like to be noticed & tracked…It becomes a game…The statistics became art…Math…
When I put a Paypal button on my mac built website it crashed my system & I lost my whole website…What happened was that in order to get the power to put a PayPal button on my iMac iWeb website, I had needed to buy an upgraded iWeb package…When I loaded the package onto my Mac computer, yes, I got the PayPal button onto my iWeb website, but at the same time, all my other systems crashed…
Why? because the software needed was bundled into a package deal by the Apple Store at The Eaton centre in Toronto, Canada, & the store was so busy when I went to buy the upgrade, nobody checked with me whether my Mac could handle the upgrade…Turned out the Paypal HTML capability was fine for my computer, but the other parts of the bundled package upgrade were too high for my Mac computer…So, my other systems like iMOVIE crashed…Nothing else really worked…
So with Apple care, I did a full erase & reinstall as fast as I possibly could, to get my systems working again…In the process I accidentally erased my entire iWeb website…I had not been able to save it before erasing & reinstalling systems…The Apple care people did not bother to check with me whether I had saved my iWeb website or not somewhere else…Why? Because they were in a rush…Why were they in a rush? because they were in a rush to help me…Their rush caused me to rush, like a panic…Panic causes people to rush…
So I lost my whole iWeb website, carefully crafted over a few years…Just because I coveted a PayPal button on my iWeb website…
At various times, between 1999 and 2006, I was either a Gold or Platinum Powerseller on eBay and doing ten of thousands of dollars a month through Paypal. Paypal without doubt is the most unresponsive company I have ever dealth with. Over the years I have come to realize (know) that Paypal is plagued with security and fraud issues and therefore treats anyone and everyone as a crook and guilty of some criminal activity (until proven innocent).
Paypal is a “third-party payment processor” and therefore has no reason to protect the buyer or the seller. In fact it is to their advance for a transaction to “go sour” in some way, as they charge fees for problems.
I find Paypal purely hateful and suggest avoiding it at all costs. Unfortunately they are just about the only gave in town, so in many ways they are unavoidable. I hope some day they get taken down.
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I too have not been notified of payment and need to check each day. Is this a policy problem or a mechanical problem?
I have been using paypal but I have been recently looking at other options
I had an issue with Paypal, not using them for my Ebay, but selling traffic instead. I immediately got it taken care of by reading, and following through with this thread. Now whenever I have a problem, I have a name and direct number to contact to get everything taken care of. Here is the link to the thread: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1877781
Hope this helps!
Nah…StatCounter still offer paypal as a payment method. Statcounter is to small to ditch PayPal. So does everybody else. Don’t get mad. It’s the truth.
I wholeheartedly agree Paypal sucks, it is always something with these guys…
I am currently trying out a new upcoming pay service, they are just in the beta stage, but I thought it would be worth trying out. I like it that they sort of pay you for being a beta tester. It’s called Paybox (www.paybox.me ,no affil.link)
Maybe it gets better…
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I had the same thought: Only small guys like myself are treated like dirt by Paypal. But it seems they treat everyone like that..you guys should find a more reliable alternative to Paypal.
Amazing. Paypal even treat bigger guys like dirt. I thought only small guys like us had these kind of issues.
Paypal customer service is terrible and is not getting better. Sooner there is another player the better.
I don’t know whether RyanAir give them lessons or the other way round.
Good luck with your attempts to resolve your issues.
My suggestion is to ditch PayPal. Doesn’t World Pay offer these options that you are in need.
I run a non-profit and we use PayPal but this has opened my eyes to a potential problem that my non-profit could have. Thank you for sharing this. I do know PayPal’s customer service is horrible.
I also suggest you get this blog on blogger or out more on the internet. The squeaky wheel gets the grease as they say.
For the customers who have gotten blown off, make sure you dispute it with your banks. Tell them this is the fault of PayPal and not the fault of StatCounter. Also report it your Consumer Protection agencies and the Better Business Bureau (if in the US) and/or your Attorney General (if in the US) or equivalents.
I am sure StatCounter is not the only company going through these issues.
First of all: This seems to be a major issue for you guys and I hope you will find a good solution.
I had been using Paypal for some time until they decided to freeze my account and steal my money without supplying a plausible explanation in the first place. And without any way to send an objection. It is a widespread strategy they employ and a lot of people are complaining about it.
Paypal is offering services like a bank but they are not officially a bank that is bound to federal/ eu regulations. The customer service of Paypal is a joke and buyers protection as well as protection for merchant is non-existant. It was inevitable that you guys would run into this problem.
What is even worse is, you offer a digital product/service. And that enables any buyer to say they didn’t get what they paid for and file a complaint that will ruin your reputation. Even if it is not true. Paypal is not helpful at all. Also, you will have to find a creditcard processor that is accepting high risk businesses. And that means they will want a share of upto 18% of the revenue just for offering their services.
Despite this challenge: MY ADVICE IS TO DROP PAYPAL!!!
Second advice: Send them a message that you will sue them and that you will inform the federal financial authorities in your country. It helped in almost all cases i have heard of. Paypal will then try to rollback the transactions or refund you and the buyer.
Third advice: Keep up the good customer communication.
Looks like enough people have already declared how bad PayPal is, but I’m so passionate in my hatred that I feel compelled to post anyway.
I had a dispute with eBay/PayPal. I’d sold an item, gotten money, then the buyer tried a chargeback without cause. They gave me a negative balance at PayPal and threatened to go to collections even though I’d done nothing wrong (and in fact, I have 100% feedback at eBay).
The only resolution? I paid them via my Amex, then I disputed the charge through Amex, and Amex agreed with me. Case (finally) closed.
I must reiterate: PayPal will try to screw you over every which way to Sunday. STOP USING THEM!
statcounter.com is down this morning. can’t even connect.