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

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.

Re:Horrible Experience with Google Checkout

[ecuador_gr]

Sorry my friend, but it seems that Google's fault here is to have added Ritz Camera to its Checkout service. Why am I saying this?
1. Did you notice that Ritz Camera has a 1.37 reseller rating? http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Ritz_Camera_7
2. On the above link there is at least one story similar to your own where Ritz had to admit it was their fault (that customer apparently did not take their BS) and even offer a $25 gift card!
3. It should have been obvious to you that for a system, especially from a company with such an excellent track record in online applications, it would have been a little hard to send an event to the end user without receiving an event from Ritz Camera. Similarly, when Ritz send the cancellation event, Google Checkout send the cancellation message as it should.

Re:Google's touch

[Frankie70]

this is the first time i've heard of something touched by google not instantly turning to gold!


Hardly. Google has a lot of stuff which haven't really made an Impact
Orkut - successfull only in India & Brazil, not even close in the USA.
Google Talk - barely in the Top 10 IMs.
Google Finance - barely in the Top 50 finance sites
Google Blog Search - far behind Technorati

Lots more probably.

Re:But thats just like microsoft...

[DrScotsman]

They just bought keyhole and put their own nametag on the keyhole viewer.

Don't you mean namelabel?

Re:Huh?

[PietjeJantje]

"This is very weird (...) it really did seem to me way better than paypal"

Thank you for your anecdotal evidence, now we can throw away the empiric data on 1100 customers.