StatCounter slams PayPal over payment glitches

Ian Lamont — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:53:34 -0700

StatCounter, the popular Web traffic counter, is blaming PayPal for a series of technical errors that have allegedly resulted in StatCounter customers being double billed and the company losing "thousands of dollars," according to the StatCounter blog. PayPal has taken action to solve some of the reported problems, but StatCounter claims that many of the major issues have yet to be addressed.

The issues apparently started on May 15 after a PayPal software upgrade, which have resulted in incomplete "payment files" for those StatCounter customers who pay via PayPal, says the StatCounter blog. As a result, the blog continues, those customers experienced a litany of problems, ranging from double billed invoices, duplicate emails, and broken subscriptions. StatCounter claims it is unable to tell if it has received payments from its customers:

"Although we would be delighted to sort out any double billing for you, in the current climate of confusion we are unsure whether WE are actually receiving the erroneously charged amounts. This means that WE are not currently able to refund any of these overpayments to you. We strongly believe that since this is a Paypal error, Paypal should rectify the situation - and leave us to focus again on our members rather than cleaning up a mess of Paypal’s making. Please do report any double billing to us and we will take action to report each case directly to Paypal."

There is an international component to the outage, reports Tech Blorge. The Clicky Blog cites additional problems, and dozens of readers who claim to be merchants have left angry comments about PayPal's response to the outage -- as well as recommendations of what alternate services to use.

In the meantime, StatCounter is refraining from issuing new invoices to customers using PayPal. It says staff repeatedly attempted to contact PayPal through email and online forums, but didn't get any response until the crisis reached a head earlier this week.

The PayPal blog has an entry by one of the senior networking staff that says there will be an scheduled maintenance outage tonight, but there is no mention about whether or not it's related to the issues that StatCounter identified. The Industry Standard submitted a request for a comment from PayPal, but has yet to hear back from the service, which is owned by eBay.

The StatCounter service was founded by Aodhan Cullen in 1999 when the Irish teen was just 16 years old. It's now used by millions of people to track traffic to blogs, online storefronts, and other sites.

(Disclosure: I use the free version of the StatCounter service for my personal blogs)

StatCounter slams PayPal over payment glitches

Ian Lamont — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:53:34 -0700

"Although we would be delighted to sort out any double billing for you, in the current climate of confusion we are unsure whether WE are actually receiving the erroneously charged amounts. This means that WE are not currently able to refund any of these overpayments to you. We strongly believe that since this is a Paypal error, Paypal should rectify the situation - and leave us to focus again on our members rather than cleaning up a mess of Paypal’s making. Please do report any double billing to us and we will take action to report each case directly to Paypal."

(Disclosure: I use the free version of the StatCounter service for my personal blogs)

StatCounter slams PayPal over payment glitches

Ian Lamont — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:53:34 -0700

"Although we would be delighted to sort out any double billing for you, in the current climate of confusion we are unsure whether WE are actually receiving the erroneously charged amounts. This means that WE are not currently able to refund any of these overpayments to you. We strongly believe that since this is a Paypal error, Paypal should rectify the situation - and leave us to focus again on our members rather than cleaning up a mess of Paypal’s making. Please do report any double billing to us and we will take action to report each case directly to Paypal."

(Disclosure: I use the free version of the StatCounter service for my personal blogs)

StatCounter slams PayPal over payment glitches

Ian Lamont — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:53:34 -0700

"Although we would be delighted to sort out any double billing for you, in the current climate of confusion we are unsure whether WE are actually receiving the erroneously charged amounts. This means that WE are not currently able to refund any of these overpayments to you. We strongly believe that since this is a Paypal error, Paypal should rectify the situation - and leave us to focus again on our members rather than cleaning up a mess of Paypal’s making. Please do report any double billing to us and we will take action to report each case directly to Paypal."

(Disclosure: I use the free version of the StatCounter service for my personal blogs)

StatCounter slams PayPal over payment glitches

Ian Lamont — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:53:34 -0700

"Although we would be delighted to sort out any double billing for you, in the current climate of confusion we are unsure whether WE are actually receiving the erroneously charged amounts. This means that WE are not currently able to refund any of these overpayments to you. We strongly believe that since this is a Paypal error, Paypal should rectify the situation - and leave us to focus again on our members rather than cleaning up a mess of Paypal’s making. Please do report any double billing to us and we will take action to report each case directly to Paypal."

(Disclosure: I use the free version of the StatCounter service for my personal blogs)

StatCounter slams PayPal over payment glitches

Ian Lamont — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:53:34 -0700

"Although we would be delighted to sort out any double billing for you, in the current climate of confusion we are unsure whether WE are actually receiving the erroneously charged amounts. This means that WE are not currently able to refund any of these overpayments to you. We strongly believe that since this is a Paypal error, Paypal should rectify the situation - and leave us to focus again on our members rather than cleaning up a mess of Paypal’s making. Please do report any double billing to us and we will take action to report each case directly to Paypal."

(Disclosure: I use the free version of the StatCounter service for my personal blogs)