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Paypal Grinds To A Halt
BillBrasky writes "After a 'Monthly Software Update', it appears that PayPal started having problems. There were reports all weekend of troubles, and as of Monday night here, I can't access it at all (connection time out). One user even reported that his PayPal Debit card was getting refused!" A message on the site now says the site is expected to be back at 8:10 PM PDT, not long from now.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6228586/
msnbc also has an article about the outtages
I recieved a message that they were unavailable about 1 this afternoon. I was able to get back in a few minutes ago but it was majorly slow. Glad I didn't need to pay for anything today.
Profanity - The sign of a small mind trying to express itself.
http://www.paypalsucks.org/
RBC in Canada crashed for a good week. :)
By the way, don't trust PayPal's message that the site might be available at any specific time. They've been giving specific times all day today but for the most part, it's inaccessible through any interface... web front-end, payment processing back-end, instant payment notifications, debit cards don't work, etc.
You can read more about the trials and tribulations of this weekend's major outage from a developer's point of view at the PayPal Developer web forum. There are a lot of unhappy campers there!
A service which houses 50 million people, has billions of dollars flow through it, and is the primary payment service for the largest auction site in the world? Sounds pretty newsworthy to me, people.
Regardless, we accept Paypal payments for our business. Didn't work all weekend...and today I kept getting errors (I think it was 30004) telling me to "retry" or "return to main page". Took a few retries, but I did get stuff done....such as transfering money out for payroll on Friday. Auction and storefront sales were down from lack of a payment service though. Debit card had activity over the weekend, so that worked fine.
Maybe I'll luck out and get the "Superman Bonus" where all the fractions of a cent are placed in my account. You'll know I did if I drive to work tomorrow in a yellow Ferrari :)
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Here is the link to slashdot's coverage on the RBC computer glich
CIBC (another Canadian bank also had computer gliches this summer as well.
Goes to show that any institution (or industry) can be susceptible to computer problems.
Paypal has a really neat tie-in with USPS. It's a small handful of clicks from accepting the payment to printing out a shipping label (with postage!). I think it's worth it for a smaller scale business. It's VERY easy to use.
;)
You can use a Paypal debit card to get cash out of your account, although there is a daily limit. Maybe once you surpass that limit you should consider getting your own merchant account though.
According to a quick telnet...
I hope that isn't true. That release is 2 years old. As per Apache's web site: "We consider Apache 1.3.31 to be the best version of Apache 1.3 available and we strongly recommend that users of older versions, especially of the 1.1.x and 1.2.x family, upgrade as soon as possible."
See: http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/Announcement.html
In the US, New York State and Louisiana have imposed some regulatory requirements on PayPal.
If you lost money with Paypal between 1999 and 2003, there's a class action settlement.
Can someone tell me why it is that a business should end up using paypal for payment services as opposed to getting a merchant account through a bank with Visa/MC/Amex?
We run both, because some customers seem to prefer paying us through paypal with the credit card for whatever reason. This is as far as credit goes, the bigger reason is below...
They might advertise lower cost but from my e-bay experiences, it's a nuissance to have to open up a paypal account in order to pay somebody online.
Unless you want to pay for something with cash and you don't have a debit card(yes, some people still don't). So they use paypal to send cash. Some people, like us, will NOT accept personal checks. We tried that and the first and only 3 checks we ever accepted were bad. Screw that noise. And money orders will take several days to a week, during which time, you the buyer, will be waiting because we ain't shipping a thing until we have our money.
Ontop of that, if you sell something and receive payment by paypal, there really wasn't a way to cash out other than to use the money in the paypal account to buy stuff in other auctions.
That isn't true at all. You can transfer funds directly to your checking account with paypal. We do it all the time. Very simple and painless.
For all the hassles that I have to deal with service fees in my small business, I'd rather take the money deposited into my bank account route than have to navigate whatever maze that paypal forces one through.
Do you really run a small business online? Getting cash from customers is a lot easier and more painless than dealing with money orders, or God help you, checks. This is the main reason we accept paypal. We do have our own merchant card account and in general people will use that over paypal for credit purchases, but for cash purchases, paypal is the most painless way to go. For us and our customers. They can pay us on the spot, and we can ship on the spot. Rather than them getting a money order and waiting a week for us to recieve it and then we ship it.
Sounds like you were caught without a backup plan. Go ahead and shift the blame to Paypal. Nevermind the fact that nothing is up 100% of the time.
I was finally able to send money about 30 minutes ago, but now I have several people sending me money orders I do not want. Bah! I hate Paypal.
Here is a comparison of the traffic levels.
Karma: -2147483648 (Mostly affected by integer overflow)
I have no sympathy for these losers. They and their servers can burn in hell.
/rant
/rant
Paypal ripped me off of $500+ around 2 years ago.
[Rant Alert]
Story goes something like this. I sell a laptop to a buyer on ebay for $1100. He pays from a _Verified_ paypal account.
I had 300+ positives and he had 6, but thats besides the point.
THREE FUCKIN' MONTHS after the sale paypal sends me an email telling me the sale was paid for with fraudulent funds.
They reverse the charge, take the current balance of my paypal account, and freeze the account, which is now at negative $600.00.
I of course filled out the requisite "paperwork" with the USPS tracking numbers etc to which I shipped the laptop to the _Paypal Verified buyer_ at his _Paypal Verified Address_
Of course after THREE FUCKIN' MONTHS, USPS no longer has records of the package sent. And I as a seller have no legal recourse to pursue.
They continued harassing me via email and by phone. I explained politely to the customer service representative on the phone, the situation.
The conversation went something like this:
CS Rep: "Our records indicate that you owe the
amount of $600."
Me: "That is incorrect, my records indicate you
owe me $500."
CSR: "I have records of a chargeback of $1100 due
to the buyer using fradulent means of
payment"
Me: "I shipped goods to a buyer verified by you,
and I shipped to his paypal verified shipping
address, here's the USPS tracking number"
CS Rep: "The customer in question paid via
fraudulent means, you owe us $600"
Me: "What? you verified him, then informed me
3 months after the fact and you expect me to
to pay you $600 after you've already stolen
$500 from me?"
CSR: "Our records indicate an outstanding balance
of $600 on your account."
Me: "Give me my laptop back and we can maybe talk
about this $600 I supposedly owe you."
CSR: "Would you like to set up a payment plan?
otherwise we'll have to take this to
litigation"
Me: "Would you like to eat a dick? I'll see you
in court.."
*click*
Granted this was before eBay bought them, my
lesson was learnt. I will never again use Paypal or for that matter let anyone I remotely care about use their shady ass service.
So, you contend that Federal Reserve regulation is effective in preventing server deployment fuck-ups?
They do try.
My last job before the sigified one was managing MIS Operations for a regional community bank. Now, this was during Y2K preparation, so it was somewhat atypical, but there is certainly a lot of FSLIC regulation in place to prevent, as you say, fuck-ups, be they server deployment or darn near anything else.
Now, the bank I worked for was also atypical (top in its class as far as compliance), so I don't know exactly how "effective" it really is industry-wide, but as I say, they *do* try.
On the other hand, if eBay/PayPal is getting socked with Sarbaines-Oxley (which I doubtless just misspelled) requirements, they may well have to jump through the same sort of hoops the FSLIC and FDIC put real banks through. I got out of the bidness altogether before SOx, so I can't speak to that authoritatively.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
oh, and one even worse quirk to my story... AFTER they negative-ized my balance, someone sent me a payment, which PayPal refuses to release to anyone until I pay them. So they have stolen money from someone else trying to legitimately buy something from me.
Yea! That just means that it will be harder for them to rip people off for a while......
You're probably correct. Paypal is especially grateful to you since you agreed that you gave up almost every right. Your only recourse is arbitration if you think there's a discrepancy.
I know that I thank God every day that Paypal does not have to follow any of the banking laws in this country. I feel a whole lot better because of it.
Paypal is literally like a group of strong arm thugs. You either pay and play, or you shut up and leave. You don't like it? Too bad.
On the one hand I'm mortified that I clicked the link before I recognized the name as being that of the data aggregator I've scraped off so many computers, on the other i'm fascinated by the relative levels tracked.
I think this sort of problem was one of the major issues in the class-action lawsuit that PayPal is in the process of settling now (it was litigated this summer).
I'm not sure if your problems were in the right timeframe, but this probably applies to *someone* reading this.
Check here to see if it applies to you.
If you use their money market account option, your money isn't insured... but if you just have a regular PayPal balance, it actually is FDIC insured... in a way. Basically, they keep your money in a pooled account in a real bank, and you get "pass-through" FDIC insurance because of that, up to $100K.
They explain this in detail in a link off the homepage.
It's not as good as putting your money in a bank (because your protection in case of PayPal's insolvency doesn't seem totally assured, just in the case of the *bank's* insolvency), but it's not totally unprotected.
In all seriousness, for those of you not familiar with the problems, PayPal has a history of locking and seizing money on both sides of suspicious transactions. If someone uses a stolen credit card/account to pay you, and you don't get your money (all money, not just that transaction) out in time, you run the risk of losing all of it. Worse still, because they're "not a bank", they're not subject to the same laws as banks, and your chances of getting all of the money in the end are very, very slim.
Video Phone Blogs send video messages straight to the web.
Read all about it here
The site that scared me enough to take all my money out of paypal and never use it again. They're not a real bank and they're not held up to the same standard as real banks. Just read some of the horror stories in their forums.
--Smutt
The Information Revolution will be fought on the command line.
It looks like they purchase from UUnet and Level3. Most of the time, my requests over the Level3 pipe were getting through, though very slowly. My requests over the UUnet pipe did not get through at all while the extended outage was going on.
Go to BJ's, Sams, or Costco, get a membership, and sign up for their small merchant credit card processing. It is cheaper than Paypal and is MUCH more dependable.
If you have a business and you make more than a few charges per day, you have NO EXCUSE for trying to use paypal. Even if you're just an individual and you are very active in online auctions as a seller, you'd be better off with a REAL merchant account rather than paypal's broken crap..
Paypal recently relocated their stuff to Omaha, Nebraska. Why Omaha? Something like 60% of all VISA/MC transactions pass through First Data's bunker at 72nd and Pacific and a good portion of the other 40% goes through First National Bank's facilities downtown.
A fellow who used to work for me spent less than three months at Paypal as a Windows server admin. I forget the exact details but he said they wanted him to complete something like thirty projects a quarter and his impression was that eight projects of the sort they were asking would be a reasonable schedule.
I have heard that Paypal is pretty much a madhouse. Omaha isn't big enough to have a huge pool of IT talent and if they're grinding people into the dirt word will get around quickly. I predict you'll see lots of monster.com job posts for them as they poison their reputation here.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
PayPal will shut you down if they don't like your politics.
:)
Actually so will banks. Barclays shut down the British Nationalist Party bank account fairly recently.
Maybe swiss banks don't care
This is the "Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act", commonly known as "Check 21". Basically it allows a bank anywhere along the path from where the check is first deposited, to its arrival for payment at your bank, to replace the paper check with a front and back image scan. The law provides that your copy of this substituted check must be treated like an original check for the purpose of things like using it as a receipt to show you paid. For example, if your landlord failed to record the fact that you paid the rent, but deposited your check anyway, the law requires this substitute check image (printed back to you by your bank) be accepted as proof the check was deposited just as the original would be.
Banks are not required to do the image scan of checks, but they are allowed to do so. Banks are required to accept the image scan in place of those checks when the image scan gets done. If PayPal is allowing you to write checks against your account (but they would BE a bank if this happens, I'd think), they would have to update their software by October 28 to comply. More likely, if "Check 21" is an issue here, is that they may be adding some software to allow them to image scan checks made as payment to them. But the more they do like this, the closer they become to being a real bank.
When an image scan is done, the check can be processed much faster because it can now be sent to the account holder bank electronically. This is where the "float" many people depend on can start to disappear. OTOH, your bank may be able to get funds into your account for checks paid to you that you deposit equally faster. There is a possibility that PayPal was doing things that depend on the "float". Many business and people have been doing that for years. Practices will now have to change.
For more information:
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
1. write ultra-scalable jsp application
2. It is too slow. Add a separate database server.
3. Still to slow. Add several http web application servers.
4. Add synchronization talk between web application servers to make sure no two different servers talk to one customer.
5. Add synchronization talk between database servers to make sure they all use the same database.
6. Release to public.
7. Something doesn't work. Switch on debug output and logging to full level.
8. Watch as all servers talk to each other over the underdimensioned intranet connections:
"Hey buddy, I feel so bad, so much load could you do this for me?"
"I'm sorry I've got too much work myself, but here, have some debug output."
9. Watch the intrusion detection system randomly switch off nodes because they showed unnormal traffic patterns.
10. get mentioned on slashdot. There's no such thing as bad publicity!
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
It's worth UK PayPal users remembering that paypal.com/uk *IS* subject to UK and European regulation. Any problems through the UK site and you would have recourse through your bank, your card issuer AND the Financial Services Authority.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Works a lot better when I use https://www.paypal.com - in fact, I can't get http://www.paypal.com to load at all, but the secure version comes up fine.
I noticed they've added a powered by sun graphic at the bottom of their page, which is loading INCREDIBLY slowly.
Coincidence, or did the sun manage to melt them, putting the bomb in dot com?
From what I've heard in the past, post-dating a check is merely a formality. Banks are not bound to honor the date on a check, if it is post-dated. I believe it goes back to the comment previous to mine about a check not being a line of credit but a voucher for funds. Basically, since the check was written, it must be able to be cashed immediately (legally speaking). The date is important once its in the past, for various reasons. I have not done any research on this, so I may be completely incorrect. But I thought I'd share what I had heard a few years ago.
- Ghent