Is PayPal Dropping the Ball?
When the VeriSign payment arm of its business was purchased by PayPal last year I was immediately very worried about its future. I was skeptical that a company such as PayPal would continue to operate VeriSign payment services with the same level of support and quality of service. Until now I had no hard evidence or obvious indicator that this was going to happen, I was just going on my gut instinct. Today I’m afraid my spidey sense may have been right. As of sometime this weekend, VeriSign payment services (now owned and operated by PayPal) has been reporting of “problems” with their batch and recurring billing reporting features. So far, it does not look catastrophic or even really that bad, but it is clearly a big goof by someone on their team.
I logged into my VeriSign PayFlowPro account and all of my recurring transactions were not showing up in the searches for my recurring bills. It is not a huge problem for us because we have records of all this information on our own servers, but it is definitely an annoyance. I should also mention that this does not affect our FreshBooks customer’s transactions at all, since they do not use the VeriSign recurring billing or batch billing feature. I phoned customer support and their introductory message says something like: “if you are calling about the batch problems with PayFlowPro, we are working on the issue and it will be resolved soon”. This doesn’t exactly give me the warm and fuzzies, and even though I heard the message I decided to wait and talk to someone before hanging up. After being on hold for approximately 5 minutes, I spoke to a rep and they told me the exact same thing as the global message and I am going to simply wait until tomorrow before enquiring again.
I will report back tomorrow to see how VeriSign handles this problem. The jury is still out on whether PayPal can handle operating VeriSign payment services going forward.
has sent, it would stand taller than the 
2:29 pm
Moments after writing this post, I got the following email from VeriSign/PayPal, it sounds like it is only related to settlements:
Dear Valued Customer,
The purpose of this email is to notify you that PayFlow Payment Services is currently experiencing difficulties in settling your payment transactions.
The last successful settlement transaction of your business was on May 20 2006. We determined that the problem was caused by a Database issue. Due to this issue, some transactions were not viewable within manager and settlement could not occur until all transactions had been restored. All data has now been restored and we expect to settle your transactions on May 23 2006. As soon as the issue is resolved, we will send you a final email to confirm successful settlement of your transactions. If you need a status of your transactions during the time that your service is interrupted, please contact us at 888-883-9770.
We do apologize for the inconvenience that this service interruption causes you. Please be assured that we are working to limit these types of interruptions in the future. Payment Services prides itself on an outstanding service record that includes a 99.98% uptime average of our service. It is our goal to continue to work to spread these efficiencies throughout the process.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at 888-883-9770. Your questions can also be answered by emailing us at gateway-support@paypal.com . We value your business and look forward to serving you in any way that we can.
Aincerely,
Mina Q. Jacobs
VeriSign Payment Services
* VeriSign Payment Services, including Payflow Link and Payflow Pro, was recently acquired by PayPal, and will be integrated with PayPal’ssuite of web payment tools to form one of the e-commerce industry’s most comprehensive web payment offering. The VeriSign Payment Services are no longer operated by, or affiliated with, VeriSign, Inc. Use of the VeriSign name and logo is temporary and with the permission of VeriSign, Inc.
10:14 am
Day two of the VeriSign/PayPal settlement debacle and there is still a introductory warning message on their support line. The message says everything will be settled by the end of the day today. So far none of our transactions have settled and they are still not being reported in the Recurring Billing section.
And so, we wait…
12:00 pm
I received an email from PayPal/ Verisgn saying all transactions had been settled on 5/23. However, although transactions were settled for 5/20 and 5/23 & 24, no settled transactions are showing up for 5/21 or 5/22. Moreover, recurring billing is still not working as of noon 5/25 – 5 days into the problem, which began on 5/21 when recurring charges for that date and for 6/3 (???) went through.
12:08 pm
Ditto to W. Newell. I received the following email from them this morning and my recurring billing is still not showing up properly.
Yikes….Is anyone else strongly considering Authorize.net?
Dear Valued Customer,
The purpose of this email is to notify you that as of May 21 2006, a problem occurred while processing recurring billing transactions for your company. As a result, there has been a delay in our ability to settle the recurring transactions on behalf of your company. At the current moment, the problem has been identified and we are working diligently to resolve it.
Once the issue has been resolved and services are restored, VeriSign Payment Services will provide a final notice to you via e-mail. In that email, we will give additional details about the interruption of service and the root cause analysis. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this causes you. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at 888-883-9770. Your questions can also be answered by emailing us at gateway-support@paypal.com.
VeriSign prides itself on an outstanding service record that includes a 99.98% uptime average of our service. We know that your business relies on our commitment to this service level. Please be assured that we are working to minimize inconveniences of this type.
We appreciate any comments or suggestions that you might have regarding your service and our support of your business. Please feel free to send your suggestions and comments as well as your questions to vps-support@verisign.com or to call us at 888-883-9770.
Sincerely,
Mina Q. Jacobs
VeriSign Payment Services
now a PayPal business
* VeriSign Payment Services, including Payflow Link and Payflow Pro, was recently acquired by PayPal, and will be integrated with PayPal’ssuite of web payment tools to form one of the e-commerce industry’s most comprehensive web payment offering. The VeriSign Payment Services are no longer operated by, or affiliated with, VeriSign, Inc. Use of the VeriSign name and logo is temporary and with the permission of VeriSign, Inc.
8:12 pm
Why dont you try CSI
10:12 am
Okay, it looks like as of around 3:00 AM this morning VeriSign/PayPal finally fixed their recurring billing problem. However, I am seeing a lot of transactions that have yet to settle, so I am not sure if they are completely out of the woods quite yet.
Five days down, ouch.
11:39 am
They wrote again last night and said the missing 5/21 & 5/22 settlements were completed. They were half right – 5/21 was; 5/22 has not, so I wrote to them again. (The online chat room has been busy for two days, whenever I’ve tried it).. At least the the recurring charges for today (5/26) went through properly.
5:50 pm
Okay, so they have finally appeared to have resolved the issue. At least that is what the email below reads.
It is interesting how they try and claim that the problem started on the 24th, when everyone knows it started the 21st. Also there is no mention of the 99.98% average of their uptime, perhaps because it has gone down to 70%!
——————————————-
Dear Valued Customer,
This is a follow up email regarding the interruption of Recurring Billing Service. We first notified you of this interruption in service on May 24 2006 and would now like to notify you that all recurring billing services have been resumed. Recurring billing transactions are scheduled for regular settlement tonight.
If you have any questions regarding this service interruption, feel free to contact our representatives at 888-883-9770 or email at gateway-support@paypal.com . We want to assist you in any way that we can.
Thank you for your business. We look forward to continuing to serve your business needs.
Sincerely,
Mina Q. Jacobs
VeriSign Payment Services, now a PayPal business
* VeriSign Payment Services, including Payflow Link and Payflow Pro, was recently acquired by PayPal, and will be integrated with PayPal’ssuite of web payment tools to form one of the e-commerce industry’s most comprehensive web payment offering. The VeriSign Payment Services are no longer operated by, or affiliated with, VeriSign, Inc. Use of the VeriSign name and logo is temporary and with the permission of VeriSign, Inc.
11:13 am
After a week, finally, all the settlements have gone through and recurring billing is again working.
I received this rather bizarre response from Verisign/ PayPal. The expalnation makes no sense, since the recurring charges did go through on 5/21 (along with over 30 from 6/3 that I voided):
Hello,
Thanks for writing to VeriSign Payment Services.
Recurring billing is functioning now. The transactions did not settle were
ones that were not scheduled to be charged on the 21st, so the settlement
was haulted by design (to avoid you double charging your customers).
Please feel free to reply to this mail or call us at 888-883-9770, if you
need any more information or clarification.
Regards,
Jason
VeriSign Payment Services
Thanks for using VeriSign Payment Services.
12:25 pm
It looks like Paypal has once again failed to process settlements from 6/24, which souls have been settled overnight on 6/24. And recurring charges for today, 6/25, have not gone through. Wow, they made it work properly for just over one month!!
Their online chat is “busy” all the time, so the only recourse is email. Interesting that I got an email on Friday, saying that they had closed the support request from May, even though they had fixed it nearly a month ago.
10:57 am
W.Newell,
Why am I not surprised!
I had a close call this morning, I tried to log in around ten times and got the same error message each time indicating I should try back later. I was just about to call in and write another post when I finally got into my account.
10:59 am
I spoke too soon, I am now logged in and I’m getting the error:
“Error (4024):
An error has occurred. Please try your request again in a few minutes. If you continue to receive this error, please contact Customer Service. ”
more to come …
11:36 am
Just waited on hold for over 45 minutes. Finally got through and I was told “the engineers are working on the problem”. Apparently people are having issues logging in.
I did manage to get logged in and update one of our accounts, but now I can’t even log in again.
6:50 pm
I was able to log in after a while through the verisign website but still not able to do it through paypal.
I also canot process payments, i keep getting error 4024.
I called paypal 25 minutes hold, i was told to prosess through payflowlink.paypal.com but i got an error CSC is required even thou the CSC was provided, I guess time to look for an alternative.
10:59 am
[...] Only one month after the PayPal debacle with VeriSign payment services, PayPal is at it again. The problem started yesterday, as mentioned by W. Newell and me in some comments here. I started this cryptic error when trying to login to my VeriSign Manager: [...]
3:57 pm
I received an email message last night from Verisign/PayFlow/PayPal saying that the system had been down for one hour on 6/5/06 (I assume they meant 6/25) due to a DNS change. I don’t know how long it was really down, but it was at least from midnight when settlements failed to be submitted until at least the next mid-afternoon. Everything seems to have resumed functioning normally as of Monday, 6/26. At least aday is a lot better than last month’s week-long problems.
11:15 am
[...] Running through a few of my posts over the last few months I realize that I’m coming across as fairly negative towards PayPal (PayPal Has Dropped the Ball, Is PayPal Dropping the Ball), even though those posts are directed at their operation of the VeriSign payment gateway service, it still sounds as though I hate PayPal. One of the reasons I have had the hate-on for PayPal is probably jealousy, kind of like all those Mac users who love to hate Microsoft and PC’s. Perhaps there hasn’t been enough PayPal love-ins, so here goes: [...]
9:13 am
Has anyone else encountered log-in problems (Internal Server Error) this AM?
9:17 am
Hi W. Newell,
I just tried logging in and encountered no issues.
10:46 am
paypal is not doing too good of a job i’m getting the 4024 error now myself.
in 3 years with verisign running the software and platform I have never had any down time and never experience ANY errors.
Since paypal took over last year, all I see is down time and error pages.
Paypal should get their act together or companies like us will soon be dropping their asses!!!
3:57 pm
Try http://www.paypalsucks.com
1:20 pm
VeriSign has been doing alright after it dropped the ball, but VeriSign was extremely slow this morning to the point where it was almost unusable. Other sites were extremely fast. I hope this is not a sign of things to come.
10:16 am
Paypal – no support for Verisign merchants. Never had any problems with Verisign. Paypal has dropped the ball on this merger. Stupid voice activated phone support and webs upport that only points back to Paypal for indivuals – nothing can be found for merchant or Verisign merchants.
Soon as its in our budget to redo site we’ll get away from Paypal.
10:25 am
Thanks for the feedback Peter. I haven’t had to use support for a while, so I was unaware with what they have done there.
12:09 pm
12/15/2006: Hi Levy, your comments are interesting. I am afraid Paypal/Payflow link has bigger problems and they are not taking care of them. They are charging some of our customers multiple times and wrong amounts. I can’t get them on the phone after 15-30 minutes on hold, and when I do I get a total run-around. Some say they will call me back and never do. Paypal/Playflow Link basically sucks since Paypal took over.
2:35 pm
[...] 2nd Place: “Is PayPal Dropping the Ball?” with 25 comments. “Until now I had no hard evidence or obvious indicator that this was going to happen, I was just going on my gut instinct. Today I’m afraid my spidey sense may have been right.” [...]
10:26 am
[...] Levi, who has written classics such as, “Snakes on a Plane for Dummies” and “Is PayPal Dropping the Ball?“, read my email, took 20 minutes and wrote this post. I have to say that was not up to his usual standard, and it was my fault. You have to be inspired to write a post …or at least a post one you release publicly. I forced this one. [...]
10:12 am
It’s prsident’s day here in the US, that means a bank holiday.
I canont login to Paypal Payflow, all login URL’s give a 500 server not found error. I try to call paypal via their BS support numbers. Usual numerous phone options to push – all go to a click and then a dead line. All except option # 1 which is paid support. Recording option #1 asks to please enter support id number – which we don’t have, we came over from Verisign and have had not interaction with Paypal yet alone an option ot even buy support. Ayway this recording continues tosay that all support is on holiday except for paid support. Asmentione I don’t have a paid support – nor have I been offered a chance to buy paid support. OK so what if my customers are sitting at home on holiday and want to buy via the internet but keep getting errors. By the way why are they gettign errors? We have been on same system for years the only thing that changed is Paypal buying Verisign. Seeking new CC processor. Paypal stinks.
11:14 am
Hi Peter,
I’m able to login fine into the old version of Payflow Pro manager. I am not getting the error you describe. Perhaps try the old login page that you used to use with VeriSign.
1:33 pm
Peter,
I’m having the same problem; however, I’ve been able to log into the manager. The problem in the manager though is that I’m not able to view any reports! I too have called PayPal multiple times today only to find out that no one is working at PayFlow!! I called back to PayPal and explained the problem and the support specialist told me that they were aware of the problem and to check back in 4 to 5 hours. I started receiving emails from my customers last night around 11pm indicating they were unable to process payments on my site. Right now it’s 1:30 pm Eastern time and the problem isn’t resolved yet!!!
At this point I’m looking for a different company to go with. I can understand that there will be problems, but I can’t understand how a giant like paypal finds it okay to give all of their support staff time off at the same time!
try https://manager.paypal.com to access your manager page.
7:32 pm
Right about different login URL’s. I was given several alternate URL’s to use a couple of months ago when I was able to talk to PayPal rep.
I am at home now so don’t have but I did try those at office and was able to get into one but it was unstable. Even now I am still seeing, “Message Error: An error occurred while retrieving the information. Please try again later.”
I am not looking forward to tomorrow
12:02 am
I had problems with paypal when I reported my card lost and told them to stop the card from being used. They did not stop it and someone used it all up. Then I got an email saying someone accessed my account and changed my email address. So I stipped using paypal. Then I got an email saying I owe them $298.00. Palpal is a rip off Im trying Bidpay or money orders or checks now.
9:18 pm
I’m a web developer/programmer and have some clients with verisign.
One of them has had a live account for a year, but we’ve offered a portal
directly to paypal at the same URL. Most customers of this client have used paypal with little or not complaint. Some transaction have flowed thru verisign without any problem.
On the other hand, I’ve been working with a very large project, the client/owner of the project set up a test account with verisign prior to the
acquisition by paypal. Test transactions went well. Tech support was readily available.
Not this client is ready to go online, verisign seems to have gone to hell in a basket. We’re getting server errors and other strange message from the verisign site. Tech support is no longer available.
Attempts to call customers service get my client put on hold and on what he calls an “infinite loop” (well, he used to be a programmer himself). It looks to me like a disaster. I’ve advised him to wait a week and see if things improve before trying to go live. From all observations, it does not seem like the same company. Very discouraging, we may have to rework the system for another gateway.
8:53 pm
[...] you read our blog often, you might get the impression we’ve got something against PayPal; well, as of today, I for one officially [...]
10:20 pm
Since Paypal purchased Verisign we have had nothing but problems with the gateway. I have a busy site and do up to 200 transactions per minute.
There are time when the paypal gateway just doesn’t respond for am hour. It is really quite unbeliveable. When Verisign had the gateway, I had not one failure to connect to the server error in seven years. I get them now daily.
I am moving away as fast as possible.