Shoddy Programming Dept: PayPal IPN Glitch Screws Web Retailers

[mandy]

A glitch in PayPal's payment verification system is wreaking havoc on some ecommerce sites that depend on the service. For more than 48 hours, the bug in PayPal's instant payment notification has made it impossible for them to process orders, owners of these businesses complain.

Making matters worse, the glitch causes credit card holders who place orders to be billed even though they are unable to take delivery of the goods or services they've just purchased. PayPal customers began reporting the difficulty on Thursday morning and at time of publication - more than two days later - PayPal owner eBay was still struggling to fix the problem...

full article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/17/..._meltdown/

[mandy]

PayPal says the issue is resolved:

More than half of payments processed by PayPal are from merchants selling on the auction site of eBay Inc., PayPal’s parent company, and a leader of an eBay merchants group was critical of PayPal’s response to the problem. “I understand that sites may have issues sometimes, however PayPal didn’t even notify its largest customers about it,” says Jonathan Garriss, executive director of the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance. “The lack of communication is the biggest concern merchants have when they are relying on PayPal for payment processing.”

A PayPal spokeswoman says the company communicated via online bulletin boards once it identified the cause of the problem, and adds, “We apologize if merchants were not satisfied with our communication around this issue, and we will make every effort to improve our communications going forward.” ...

full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=26452

In PayPal's defense, they did communicate about the problem on the PayPal Developers Board. arcasm1:

[amy]

In PayPal's defense, they did communicate about the problem on the PayPal Developers Board.

Which is the same as saying there was no communication with merchants about the problem.

[BellisimaJ.]

Boinktards! They shoud have emailed all merchants.