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 believe our account is currently paid be automatic bill pay through our bank. I would llike to keep this option.

  2. Paypal’s convenient for me, but if you’re having troubles, I don’t mind thumping in the cc number.

  3. I am happy with PayPal too; must admit they have never been problematic to me nor my businesses…..

  4. I recently stopped using my PayPal account and cancelled the credit card they have on my account after a couple of issues over the years and their lack of being available, accountable and solution oriented. They force problem solving to their website, which is marginally functional. When I decided to close my account, the site didn’t allow me to either remove my credit card OR close the account. Emails to PayPal were ignored. I have used GOOGLE checkout for a year or so and it is, so far, much more user friendly and accountable. It was a little hard to give up PayPal ONLY because it makes buying/selling on ebay impossible as they force use of PayPal.

  5. Hello — I’d prefer being able to pay by purchase order. Using the credit card is against the college’s procurement policy. Personally, I’ve not had a problem with paypal throughout the years that I’ve used it.

  6. I prefer to use Paypal as that way my credit card info is not floating around in cyberspace with a variety of sites who may or may not have decent security.
    Paying quarterly is not likely going to cause any issues with most website owners I wouldn’t think. The idea of paying annually depends on two things: one, whether you have the cash, two whether you believe Stat counter will be around in a year to honor their side of the deal.
    Ideally, Paypal should just write some more code, and solve your problem.

  7. I ‘ve been using PayPal for years and have never a single problem with it. It’s the best option for me as a client and as a company in Brazil. In fact, if you live outside EUA/EU, it’s an unbeatable option.

    BUT, if you need to accept other option, I suggest you consider Google Checkout.

  8. DITCH THEM! I had to CLOSE my PayPal account two years ago because of SEVERAL unauthorized charges that they refused to decline even after I’d alerted them that these were fraudulent. All attempts to resolve the situation were also declined. I’d much rather give YOU my credit card information!!

  9. Yes I agree with the point–try not to give up on people/corporations. I think it usually applies to smaller (than yourself) companies rather than the other way (I assume PP/Ebay is bigger than SC) but it is a very good sentiment that we should all consider.

  10. Problem not related to website. I forgot my paypal password and was charged US$1.95 from my cheque account. I was told to go online and log in to get a refund by quoting some code for a withdrawl on my statement. I have never had any one ever charge for recovering a lost password before.

    Needless to say I longer support paypal and have a filter that takes any paypal mail to trash.

    If a supplier insists on a paypal payment to purchase goods or services I discontinue the transaction and go elsewhere.

    It’s not the money but rather the method.

    Regards

    Andy Tribe

  11. I’ve used PayPal on our business site for over 8 years with virtually no problems, and any issue we;ve ever had was handled quickly.

    I would suggest speaking with a human being in the USA who has the authority to handle your situation. PalPal/eBay is a big time operation now, but may be going thru growing pains.

    It definitely is beneficial to accept PayPal.

  12. I think that Paypal is fine for individuals to send $ to each other, and I have used it successfully that way, but I, too, found it frustrating to use for my small business. My experience with my clients has been that they are willing to use a CC, and I also offer the option of an invoice, but then my business model is a bit different from yours, so that may not be desirable for you. Personally I feel that the risks in using a CC over the internet are about the same as using one in a bricks-and-mortar establishment from a security pov, as the transactions are unlikely to be intercepted in these days of secure transfer, and it’s the big company databases that are more likely to be targets for hackers. Any time we hand our CCs to someone to process we run the risk that they will steal the #. The major CCs, esp AmEx, are generally good for consumers with respect to charge disputes, so there is protection there as well. So… I don’t have any suggestions wrt specific vendors, but I support your need to change, and appreciate the opportunity to have a say in the process. You’ve set a great example with this process that I will use in my own business 😉

    Cheers, Kit.

  13. StatCounter is a business expense for me, and PayPal and American Express are my two corporate payment options. So as long as you have AMEX it doesn’t matter to me that you discontinue PayPal.

  14. I had my Paypal accoount suspended two times and both times was a nightmare to get it back. Also, they charge really a lot as commission especially when dealing with foreign currencies. Furthermore, is being financed by a neo-nazi. I definitely welcome any other way of payment. VISA or Mastercard is ok.

  15. Honestly, I have used PayPal for my 5 websites for about 4 years and have not really had a problem. A couple minor glitches but not bad for 4 years.
    We can always use MC or Visa but prefer Paypal for automatic payments from vendors. Good Luck!

    Please keep us advised of any change

  16. I have also had problems with PayPal previously.

    I don’t mind using MasterCard or Visa.

  17. PayPal is my only option for online payments – I do not want to use CC online and do not have any other personal solution to online payments – so, my only option to continue payments to SCounter is PayPal…

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