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.
My experience of Paypal is awful – it worked fine for years until one day there was a problem – they never replied to any messages or took any action to deal with the problem. The grim reality was that customer service did not exist. I stopped using them. For me, direct payment by Amex or Visa is fine.
All those services are concerned only with what they will earn and not what their customers will. It looks as if this is a common practice by the bigger internet services. If you don’t pay them, they cut you off immediately without warning but should they be obliged to offer you assistance for what you pay them to do then you are up for a tug of war.
My advice is to be on the lookout for alternative methods.
I would happil dump Paypal for just the same reasons as you, however as web developement is not my core business there payment systems are very easily incorporated into a web site. However if you want to dump PayPal, please do, I’m happy to pay with Visa or Maestro.
Oops… I meant sells volume.
Like yourselves, I have grown tired of the crap that PayPal dishes out. I too have dropped them from all my websites. Although we did receive some email slack about it right at first, it has made no lasting impression on our salves volume.
PayPal, like Ebay are a thing of the past. All their rules, exaggerated fees, and poor customer service have helped us in our decision to say goodbye to PayPal and selling on Ebay as well.
Since I get paid through Paypal, it’s easiest for me to pay my bills through Paypal – so while I hope it gets resolved at Paypal for you, I probably couldn’t do continuing services with StatCounter without it.
Since I’m stuck relying on Paypal until something proves itself better, I prefer working with vendors who accept it.
PayPal has 220 Million account holders throughout he world.
This means that they are the biggest bank in the world.
Much much bigger than you can imagine.
I have 2 accounts with PayPal and recently had an issue with only one of my account. First they limited my account that already had £480.00 as balance
and they asked me to add more money in order to settle some refunds.
I added £300.00 more and I had £220.00 in my second account.
Paypal limited my second account too mentioning that it is a related account, meanng this account also belongs to the same person having problems in their first account.
I am fed up with PayPal but there is no substitute to PayPal and we are compelled to use PayPal for the only reason that its the Safest and Quickest media to send and receive payments anywhere in the world where PayPal exists.
Even though I am having problems with PayPal, I will still stick to PayPal for my Financial Transactions until I find some other company equally efficient and effective.
Try NOCHEX, never had a problem with them in the past.
Good luck! Paypal are an Ebay Company and Ebay is a law unto itself. I don’t like Paypal and only use them because they’re there. My biggest issue is the fact that if I sell something on Ebay, the buyer can fraudulently claim that they have not received the item and then Paypal take the money from my account (immediately without question – treating me like a criminal) until I can prove that the item was sent. This involves faxing postal receipts and other information. So far I have had all my payments returned as I keep all the records, but it’s an inconvenience and they are just so rude and “matter of fact” to deal with – no empathy.
Visa have started an alternate payment system, I don’t know if it can handle all your requirements but would be worth a look, www.payclick.com.au or there’s paymate, but they don’t take amex either.
Good luck with your stand!
Regards
Jon
Our user name is consultantes. We like Pay Pal and get about 20 percent of our business there. We are in Costa Rica, so our options for payment are very limited. We use Pay Pal and, at times, the debit card that is linked to our Pay Pal account. I suppose we could use our international credit cards from our banks here.
That being said, they are high-handed. They halted a $70 payment several months ago from a company we have done business with for years. There was no information on why they did this. We jumped through a few hoops and eventualy the money was unblocked. But there still was no explanation.
In their defense, there are a zillion new rules on processing money due to the U.S. anti-money laundering regulations. Even in Costa Rica reputable busness operators like ourselves are summoned to the bank for hours long sit-downs to explain where our money comes from.
Please keep us updated. We will stick with Statcounter.com no matter what you decide.
Jay Brodell
editor, A.M. Newspapers
covering the Heart of the Americas
As a Brit living in Japan, paying for goods/services from abroad can be problematic and so I have to say that Paypal has been useful for me. However if you can accept payments from me via Amex or Visa that will also suit me fine. Hope you sort out whatever is vexing you!
PayPal is a necesaary evil and we do NOT like them, but because of the volume of business we do on Flea-Bay, we must use them.
They operate like a bank without any of the restrictions imposed on banks.
If you want to really see their warts go to www.paypalsucks.com…please be seated while reading this and make sure that you have a good supply of oxygen near by!!!!
We have found that if we contact them by phone and exert “gentle pressure” we have achieved some postive results.
We are going to look into Pro Pay as a supplemental resource.
Don’t think you need to accept PayPal; other options, including Visa/MC are available.
I have no problems paying with other options. VISA, MC or possibly with Amazon.com’s option. I use Amazon for several different vendors.
Hate paypal… Lose them…
This is just typical PayPal. I use them for my websites but don’t like that I have to.
I don’t think you “need” to accept AmEx for the US, or echecks, or Discover. Thanks to the prevalence of debit cards, virtually everyone on the planet has a Visa and/or MC they can use.
If you were selling goods or services to the general public, you would need these options. But since you’re selling services to an already wired and tech-savvy segment of the population, you won’t lose much business (any website owner who has to pay with an echeck…well…)
If there are some folks who are paranoid and insist on using PayPal because they don’t know you, I believe that an explanation of why you won’t accept them, with a link to this post, should sway them. It also makes a huge difference that you have a free option, since try-before-you-buy is another great way to engender confidence.
I think it’s great that you are taking a stand. So many companies (http://www.adrianbold.com/rants/thomson-holidays-online-booking-problem) just seem to ignore customers and support is laughable.
PayPal is a very convenient payment processor but they clearly rely on their market dominance to cover up lousy support. Clearly they are not alone and too many companies gloss over customer service.
In terms of payment options, I’d be happy to use a CC as an option and only use PayPal for the couple of seconds it saves.
Paypal is a convenient and easy payment option, for me. Its my preferred payment method for online transactions, purely because of the speed the cart works at.
But I’d be happy to pay for renewal of my statcounter service by debit card on the phone or by card online, or whatever method was required so long as it was secure. Even a cheque in the post.
Having said that, I already know and trust statcounter, but If I were a new customer, I might think twice without the paypal option. for what it’s worth.
I dont comment on blogs as a rule, not even for “SEO” purposes, and did so here because Statcounter invited me to, and I hope these comments are constructive and helpful.
Regards
Kevin
Hi I use paypal for all my sales and purchases, for both my customers and supplier. as it integrates smoothly with my account, online shop and my cards. I’m afraid for me that is the one and only option.
Mark
Hi Folks,
You may want to try AlertPay, which I did not use for many years, but have been using it lately.
Thanks,
Leslie Frey
We agree with you about the difficulties inherent in working with PayPal. We’ve also had a number of problems with them in running our business. However, we are inextricably involved with them and so would appreciate it if we can continue to pay you using PayPal.