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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.