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.
You know, I discovered a problem with paypal recently and found them unresponsive. It affected several orders and definitely caused me problems. As far as I know, the problem was never looked into and is still ongoing. I use them to process credit card payments from customers, have for years, but am going to look at alternatives this week. I say… Dump them altogether for new subscribers. Finding alternatives is work, but ultimately, if you can find the alternatives, they deserve the business more. Shoddy customer service has an inevitable result.
Good luck to Harry and Kate on the Royal Wedding!!!!
To be honest, I refer Paypal to all my customers, but it’s that people who work there have often been counter productive for me and my customers quite a few times…
Join the club. I reported a problem where I got payments but no descriptions in them at all… I had to contact over 1000 customers to know what they ordered… No reply from their customer’s service except ‘all ok here’. Well, it was not all ok here! This lasted for 1 month after which it suddenly was corrected.
Paypal have been working great for everyone, it is a known name for online payment processing.
Paypal has alternatives ..
– Alertpay
– Moneybookers
– Liberty Reserve
I think payment via above processors should be considered, and paypal should be removed if it is causing the problem and taking your time.
Nowadays the unique visitors are going down to paypal account need alternative Solution to resolve this method
The Payment option really hurts everyone, the visitors to paypal account users are moving down
Am using paypal account, and its my favorite payment website, but now am gonna change my payment option to other network.
You guys are smart, and have provided a great service for years. Thus, my suggestion is…
Launch a site that competes with Paypal.
Obviously, somebody is going to replace Paypal, given their notorious reputation. Why not you?
Perhaps you could focus on the subscription niche? Do one thing, and do it well.
If that’s too ambitious, how about an All About Paypal forum, where conversations like could be continued? Would give you more leverage with Paypal, and given the topic, the Adsense income might be sweet.
This probably won’t work, but honestly, what’s so hard about mailing a check? Your customer gives you their postal address, you send them a nice little package, which includes a stamped return envelope. Everybody pays per year. Simple, and fully under your control, no new technology needed.
Paypal will continue to terrorize the Net so long as everybody keeps using them. I cast my vote for dumping them, like everybody else above.
I thank you for making this thing public. I learned a lot regarding telekinesis.
i have had a bed experience with paypal payment gateway. one when i was making a payment with paypal my machine got stuck. there after when i checked my account, i saw that money has deducted from my account..
Hi there,
I have not had the pleasrure of using statcounter as of yet as I am only getting my website off of the graound. However I have worked for PayPal in multiple depts within the company and rememebr that it is the loader you shout the sooner the issue is resolved. I suggest you email and call you account manager every day and let them know how disgusted you are with the service and potentially threaten legal action. That should get them moving.
Also I have worked as a project implementation manager in Visa Europe with multiple third party card issuers and acquirers throughout Europe and would be the manager for the new internet services Visa that they would implement such as VBV real time scoring etc… I would strongly recommend Omnipay as your provider. I always found them highly professional and always put the customer first.
I hope this helps. If you require any further information on this or any other related issue please do not hesitate to contact me.
Kind Regards
SG
Paypal doesn’t care who’s wrong or right… if there’s a dispute, they’re happy to sit on your money for as long as legally (and in most cases, illegally) possible. In our case PayPal ‘locked’ our entire account – thousands of dollars – over a single $80 transaction.
From hiding their phone numbers to refusing to answer to ANYONE, PayPal’s been shattering laws and banking regulations for almost a decade now. It’s like they couldn’t care less about their customers, and their best course of action is to stall, deny, and in most cases ignore anything that you might bring to them.
We happily ERADICATED PayPal from all four of our retail sites a few years ago. It’s been smooth sailing ever since, and I wish the same for you guys over at StatCounter! Best of luck to you.
We had an experience similar to Ryan’s. Paypal doesn’t care who’s wrong or right… if there’s a dispute, they’re happy to sit on your money for as long as legally (and in most cases, illegally) possible. In our case PayPal ‘locked’ our entire account – thousands of dollars – over a single $80 transaction.
From hiding their phone numbers to refusing to answer to ANYONE, PayPal’s been shattering laws and banking regulations for almost a decade now. It’s like they couldn’t care less about their customers, and their best course of action is to stall, deny, and in most cases ignore anything that you might bring to them.
We happily ERADICATED PayPal from all four of our retail sites a few years ago. It’s been smooth sailing ever since, and I wish the same for you guys over at StatCounter!
The Paypal / Ebay monopoly sucks. I will never use either again. Statcounter doesn’t need Paypal and we don’t want to use them! Paypal users beware!
VERY Nice Post. I am glad i found it.
Let me share my recent experience with those guys. I subscribed to a software service 2 months ago .First 7 days was a free trial and afterward $ 145 a month if I didn’t cancel within 7 days through PayPal.
The software company contacted me a day after and apologize for the fact that their sales page was hacked and in fact I set up a monthly payment to a hacker and not them . They asked me to contact pay pal immediately and software company guaranteed to repay me any damage and offer 1 month free usage of software. (not bad!)
I contacted the PayPal and they said cancel the subscription and change your password. I was confused and ask them if the wanted do anything about this fraud ! They just said well you haven’t lost any money! They didn’t even asked what the transaction number was !
That is the company that we are doing business with! Am I supposed to feel OK?
StatCounter Team,
I would just like to say that, as one of thousands of webmasters who has been banned from Paypal without any legitimate reason, it is refreshing to hear from a company in the Alexa top 200 who publicly criticizes the horrible evil thing that is Paypal.
You guys have the opportunity to start a micro-revolution regarding payment processing, as you are one of the top destinations for webmasters around the world. Please, please, please, we beg you to help us change the payment processing scene.
I don’t care if you throw your support to AlertPay, or ProPay, or WebMoney, or MoneyBookers, or whatever (I would say AlertPay, who is from Canada, if you can get them to lower some of their fees a bit… I’m sure they would be ecstatic to negotiate some sort of referral deal with you), but please do something, as there are thousands, if not millions of us, who are strongly behind you.
It is tell-tale that Paypal can’t even get their act together for a company of your size. It is disgusting and maddening, especially knowing that they have the US Congress in their pocket to avoid all banking laws and maintain their non-bank status.
Kind regards.
Google Checkout is an alternative to PayPal http://checkout.google.com
Hello Guys
I think Paypal is huge right now, before it was very good and reliable method payment but as they went huge their quality standars went down big time, i got some problems with them filing complaits against people that i got scammed from and they never have resolved towards me, so since that i try not to use them anymore !
Paypal has become necessary, and it is very strange that a competitor’s ideas, given the size of business dela payments online.