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. I’m using Moneybookers as my merchant account for years now without any problems. Paypal gave me similar troubles 3 years ago after that I completely abandoned it.

    Moneybookers is accepts AMEX, Echecks discover cards.

    As for google checkout its not accepting cards from every country.

  2. Paypal will randomly suspend your account. Happens to me and my friends before. And when you ask why, they simply ignore you or give you a freaking canned reply which makes no sense. And there goes thousands of dollars in your paypal account.

    Which is why everyone should switch to Google Checkout!

    Paypal’s a bitch.

  3. Im coming across a trend where people are looking to alternatives to paypal. Websites who sell digital don’t like that users can just reclaim their money even if they have received the goods. But I guess people have been threatening to leave for years and paypal still continues! Complaints and moans never seem to amount to any action.

  4. I added Google Checkout as an option for my customers. During the past year, more and more are opting to use Google Checkout and I have been very happy with them.

  5. We use eWay at work, but I’m not sure if it supports ALL those payment options you’ve listed.

    Wont hurt if you enquired about it though.
    http://www.eway.com.au/

  6. I would recommend you check out http://www.cdgcommerce.com – They have great rates, and a great recurring subscription tool/interface.

  7. I have had similar issues with Paypal and only use them when necessary. For my business I use Google Checkout. I am unsure if they accept all forms of payment that you are looking for. It has some issues, but it is free to have an account and they do a relatively good job of processing payments.

  8. Just wanted to let you know that I, as a new user of your service, like your service very much and I do NOT like Paypal. I am signed up to use it due to the requirements of the company that I do business with that owns Paypal but I do not like it and use it as little as possible.
    When I upgrade my service here with you guys, I would prefer to use something other than Paypal to pay you.
    Thank you for the services that you are providing. Another of your users recommended you to me.

  9. The question is why what are they so afraid of, have they been cooking the books are they insolvent and can only keep going by freezing customers accounts withholding their funds and using them in order to keep trading.

  10. My apologies this should have read

    “They were beginning to be regulated in the UK so in order to circumvent that they registered in Luxembourg where the FSA” has no jurisdiction.

  11. My Paypal account is also frozen for no apparent reason and they will not give a reason. Well they call it restricted but in reality it means frozen and they get to do what they like with my and your money.

    From what information I can gather from the Internet this is a very common occurrence horror stories abound in fact there are websites dedicated to exposing Paypal and its many scams and underhand business practices. One employee (now ex-employee)of Paypal actually testified in court restricting accounts was looked upon as an additional source of revenue.

    No one knows for certain how many of Paypals 26,000,000 accounts are frozen at any given time but it is estimated to be over 1,000,000.

    There are hundreds of thousands of court cases filed against Paypal most of which seem to get settled just before going to court.

    Paypal tries every trick in the book to wriggle out of getting regulated by any government financial regulators or from coming under any sort of regulations at all except their own terms and conditions where they are the sole arbitrator judge and jury. They were beginning to be regulated in the UK so in order to circumvent that they registered in Luxembourg where the FSA

    The question is why what are they so afraid of, have they been cooking the books are they insolvent and can only keep going by freezing customers accounts withholding their funds and using them in order to keep trading.

    One thing is becoming very clear it is about time Paypal was regulated its business practices investigated and the practice of freezing customers accounts withholding their funds and not even allowing them to return the money from where it came abolished. It is not even possible to close your account when it is restricted.

    I now have an account with Moneybookers so far the experience has been positive.

    Ok enough of all that back to the original post I would suggest you get a merchant account that way your money would be paid directly into your bank account and not into the hands of a bunch Robin Barstewards.

  12. Paypal shut us down even though we were assured we were in compliance. Lost a lot of customers, and chargebacks took my company from $800 in the positive to almost $800 in the negative. Could not fill orders. They blocked me 2 other times… apparently 3 strikes and they completely lock down your account. I couldn’t get payment info, or emails or addresses…

    Almost ruined my business.

    I got “legit” and got a credit card processing company. Can accept almost all forms of payment including checks, amex/visa/mc/discover, and I think even wire transfers. If not I can do that through my bank.

    Good luck, and I love your service. I use it for 5 or 6 sites. I guess its time to stop using the free service and start sending some cash your way! You guys deserve it!

    Craig Patterson
    eCigMods.com
    Electronic Cigarettes and Accessories

  13. People use PayPal because it is easy, but you hear so many horror stories. I am currently considering other payment options for my own websites…

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