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.
Yep Paypal can go!
Help us build a new and better payment processor!
That answer is just plain silly. You sound like the Meg Witman for Governor commercials in California
Sorry Nicky, the last comment was not intended for you. It was intended for Sally above.
I use Pay Pal and have had no problems with them. They make it easy for me to do business. You need to look at this from your customer’s point of view rather than your problems and I think you should continue to offer it as an option. I use PayPal in my business because it is good to let customers know that they don’t have to give their CC information to a vendor if they don’t wish to. I also prefer to use them for Payment and don’t really like working with companies who don’t (partly because if you wnat to cancel a CC subscription it’s more difficult to do so, whereas with PP it is very easy to do).
Some are still very leery of giving their CC info to vendors. If CC options are offered then those who wish to use them can do so if they wish. If you wish to provide a manual login when payments become due then ensure that you don’t cut off service if customers are a few days late and you should still ensure PayPal is an option for payment along with Credit cards.
As alternatives there is World Pay and 2Checkout. Why not offer those alongside PayPal?
Try using Moneybookers. I’ve used them on my websites for over 18 months now and no problems.
Paypal blows. I support any decision to drop them ASAP and would be happy to pay with Visa, MC, Moneygram, Western Union, or by a pack of swimming donkeys carrying pennies on their back…. I HATE PayPal.
Best,
LIA
I need to be able to pay with either Paypal or Amex.
Sincerely,
william mcdonnell
moneybookers are good and very big in europe
unfortunatly for companies outside the USA PayPal is the only viable solution. Credit Cards are in Europe not so customary, besides the obviuos security risks involved…so I’m stuck with Paypal…
I have never had any problems with PayPal (have been a member since before they were PayPal) and I get paid through them and pay all my bills with my PayPal debit card. Since 2000 I’ve only had a couple of issues with them. They were quick and courteous and a representative even followed up with me by phone a week later to make sure everything was still proper. I’ve used subscription services in the past and have never had an issue.
I think going with manual payment would be the best option. I find that people aren’t all that excited about subscription type things to begin with. They like to control when when they pay. I had better response with non subscription type payments.
百度上掀起了搜索“省钱知多少”的热潮
I operate several web sites. Today, processing payments in general is, surprisingly, still a problem. I am very concerned about Pay Pals very poor service but most concerned to get my money of my account, the charges, the low level of educated staff… For instance transferring money to my own credit card is not possible. I have used Mals Ecommerce for a very long time because you could process payments off line, but Mal has also sold to Pay Pal and is now resting on Spain’s beaches, and the off line processing is labor intensive. There is an enormous opportunity for a good payments processor, one that accepts that the money that comes into the account belongs to the person or company that owns the account, and where it is freely possible to handle most of the current payment methods.
Gerard
visa, mastercard, worldpay, etc all is fine.
I can’t recommend Google Checkout enough.
PayPal is evil.
xxxooo
Beverly ;-*
I’ve also been having problems with paypal on my site, nice to know there are alternatives, thank you
Go with WorldPay and/or 2CheckOut!
Paypal has a serious lack of customer service. I’ve never managed to get anything from paypal but canned responses and links to their support pages. But there is no alternative to Paypal for most people!
Did you call them? If not, here is their phone number:
(402) 935-7733 ask for operator
or
Sally
(402) 935 2246
Too bad and there is not much I can add, only the suggestion to try 2CHECKOUT.COM as a payment gateway,
They even accept PayPal!
Best of luck and best regards
lili
I use Paypal for my business and thankfully haven’t experienced problems, but I know that others have. I am in Australia so credit card payments are my best and cheapest option.
In my case there was a problem with Pay Pal.
There was a problem with AMEX, who understood that in my business transactions with PAY PAL I was making money from with my credit card which, for the AMEX, is prohibited.
Of course I canceled the cards amex.
But I agree in number, gender and degree that the PAY PAL support is poor and depressing and I have been defrauded by people of bad faith, which sold me software that does not work via PAY PAL and that did nothing to defend myself.
I’m in Brazil, and the best payment option for me would be “pagseguro” http://www.pagseguro.com
Or the simplest way to pay, directly by credit card.
I always liked the services of StatCounter, although my doubts about the accuracy of the system, that looks like to underestimate the visits in my sites, but I recognize that this may be a excess of expectative in relation to my sites.
By the way, I’d like to turn back to have larger logs to better analyses, but pay pal doesn’t show me responsibility with my money and this is too bad.
I appreciate your efforts to improve your service and if you could deal with pagseguro I’ll be the first one to get back to your paid services.
Kindly regards, excusing me about my tribal english,
Claudio Santos de Souza