Google Checkout Sees Poor Customer Satisfaction

Aryabhata writes "Ars Technica reports on a survey by investment firm J.P. Morgan Securities, stating that Google Checkout has had a relatively quick and modest market penetration of six percent since its launch in June of 2006, but lags behind in customer satisfaction vs PayPal. On the customer satisfaction front, only 18.8 percent reported having a 'good' or 'very good' experience with Google Checkout, while 81.2 percent indicated a fair to poor experience customer experience compared to PayPal's 44.2 percent reporting good experiences. Some users have reported anecdotally that Google Checkout mistakenly canceled sales without warning or that the checkout process took too long."

Comments

Huh?

[ecuador_gr]

This is very weird. I used google checkout for more than 15 checkouts so far (and about a similar amount of paypal checkouts - mainly ebay - for the same period) and I was impressed by how much faster google checkout was.
I admit I only tried google thanks to the amazing $10-$20 off promos, but it really did seem to me way better than paypal. I guess if I had an order cancelled I would complain - but in such a case do we know for sure it is google's fault and not the merchants?
Forgeting about ease of checkout, I always hoped for a paypal rival, since paypal has a severely bad track record of not paying or at least widtholding amounts with absurd excuses etc.

Re:Huh?

[Liquid-Gecka]

Yea same here. I have had several purchases go completely south with Pay Pal. Money got locked up and I couldn't get refunds until the problem was completely resolved. I have never had any problems with Google Checkout merchants so I have not had a chance to see Google react to a bad purchase, but the TOS for Google Checkout seems much friendlier for both Buyers and Sellers (See the disputes section here. The ability to do dispute resolution actually seems nice compared to PayPal's hit or miss resolution and that makes me trust Google a bit more. Then again, it helps that most Google merchants actually have some screening done on them, where paypal allows anybody to anybody money transfers.

Re:Huh?

[LordKronos]

I have heard people complain that some merchants had poor integration with Google Checkout (GC), and that it was taking a lot longer to get orders processed and shipped. If that were the case, I could see how orders get canceled. If the integration is poor, then by the time the merchant loads the GC orders into the system, the products could be out of stock, already being sold to customers using the stores native payment method. If that's the case, its hardly Google's fault (other than maybe they could have tried rolling it out several months before the holiday season to get all these kinks worked out with the merchants earlier).

I've used GC twice at Buy.com and once at Toys R Us, and it worked smoothly each time, and I very quickly got confirmation from the merchants.

Re:Huh?

[almostmanda]

I had problems with GCO from the start. Apparently, someone had attempted to pay with their adsense account with my card number, but didn't have the name, expiration date, or 3 digit security code. This was still enough to put my card on their internal blacklist. So, because someone else unsuccessfully tried using my card number, it was forever untrustable in Google's eyes.

It was a hell of a time getting that information from Google, though. I got about three mysterious "order cancelled" messages with no indication of what the problem was. I was convinced it was buy.com's fault. It took three or four messages to customer service and 2-3 weeks before someone finally explained this to me. It doesn't make sense to me that *I* was put on their blacklist because someone had unsuccessfully tried to use my card, and there was nothing I could do to prove to them that I was myself. I did cancel the card, and my new debit card works fine with GCO, but it felt like they could have been a little more up-front about it instead of expecting me to magically know how to solve the matter.

I'd wager the low satisfaction level has something to do with this general disorganization, but also with the stores they associate with. Buy.com, the Sports Authority online, and bluefly.com are all stores that have notoriously bad customer service. People were shopping at places they normally wouldn't touch because of the GCO discount, and found out that dealing with them probably wasn't worth the $10 or $20 they saved.

Useless

[FooBarWidget]

For me personally, Google Checkout is useless until:
1. It supports merchants outside the USA.
2. It supports buyers outside the USA.

I've been looking for Paypal alternatives for years now but I've yet to find one which satisfies the above requirements, is cheap enough *and* is trusted by enough people.

Horrible Experience with Google Checkout

[tsurikomi]

I purchased a back ordered lens from Ritz Camera and used Google checkout for the $750 purchase. I realized it would take some time to get the lens and was prepared to wait. I was pleasantly suprised, one week before xmas, to receive and email saying the lens had been shipped and my CC charged. I waited a week and called Ritz Camera to check on it's shipping only to learn it hadn't shipped and this was a mistake on Google Checkout's part. Then the horror began. Many calls and emails to Google and Ritz failed to resolve the issue. Google would just blame Ritz. Ritz was obviously very frustrated with Google and told us they were trying to get them to resolve the issue because it had affected lots of customers. This went on for 3 weeks without resolution. My CC billing cycle was at the point where I'd have to soon pay this amount or challenge it as I couldn't seem to get a credit. My only option, and the option I took, was to cancel the order with Ritz. I promptly received a wonderful email from Google telling me the order had been cancelled and the money credited. I then placed the order at B&H Photo.

Won't touch PayPal, not even for simple payments

[Dogtanian]

Personally, i would use paypal.

Personally, I wouldn't. I'd already heard enough on them withholding payments on dubious grounds that I won't even consider setting up an account (which I might otherwise have considered for buying/selling stuff on EBay).

However, a while back I wanted to pay for something, and PayPal gave the impression you could do this through them without setting up an account. Yet when I actually tried paying, every step seemed to want account details, or be forcing me in that direction. I concluded that (at best) it *might* have been theoretically possible to pay without an account, but that the process was deliberately designed to make this hard, and to bully and niggle you into setting one up.

That wasn't going to happen, and I wasn't prepared to fight this nonsense over God-knows-how-many screens. Partly because I didn't have the inclination, and partly because it confirmed that PayPal were a lousy, self-interested company who didn't give a damn for their customers' interests. From what I've read elsewhere in this thread, this was the right conclusion; PayPal don't even look like a good bet for simple payments.

Half their BS "guarantees" don't even apply in the UK (where I stay) anyway.

PayPal is a deal-breaker; I won't use it, period.