PayPal… you may never void a transaction
It pains me to blog about the same topic straight after a previous post but, I just couldn’t let this one go.
I tested a live transaction today and went in to the paypal account to void the purchase. I was presented with the following screen:
Yes… you are seeing that right. There are two cancel buttons at the bottom!
What would be your best guess as to which button would void the transaction? And, what on earth is the Edit button for?
It was my guess that it was the button on the right. This led to the following screen:
Wow! I got it right. So, as instructed I clicked continue. At this stage it says the transaction has been voided. In my opinion it would be perfectly acceptable (and expected of most users) to leave at this stage or click something else without causing a problem.
To my amazement… clicking continue leads to this screen:
Wow! Yes I’m back at that first screen again. In fact, clicking the cancel button on the right is an endless loop. Clicking the Cancel button on the left finally led to this screen:
Given that there is actually hard cash at stake here this sort of logic issue is simply unacceptable. For a company that has almost unlimited budget there’s no excuse for it.
It would appear that this area of the site has been worked on by two separate developers in isolation, possibly wearing blind-folds.
The culmanation of technical issues and poor customer service we have experienced of late would make PayPal a very difficult service to promote with any level on conviction.
Comments
Keir
said on 14 May 2008I’ve watched PayPal systematically (not programmatically) destroy my good friend Tom. He’s a shadow of his former self. Shame on you, PayPal, shame on you!
Tom
said on 14 May 2008Fear not Keir. I am merely injured, not destroyed. I shall fight another day. Or failing that, I’ll see if I can get a job at PayPal and help them sort their shit out :)
Tom
said on 14 May 2008P.S. Touche on the use of systematic/programmatic!
Tom
said on 16 May 2008More PayPal related problems with their API. This time related to subscription problems.
http://www.paypaldeveloper.com/pdn/board/message?board.id=basicpayments&thread.id=21367&view=by_date_ascending&page=1
Mark
said on 18 May 2008I used to love Paypal, simple, straightforward millions of users. Lately though they seem to be diluting their offering and in the process starting to look really bad, with customers losing confidence big time. The worse thing that can hapen to you if you’re dealing with people’s money - is for them to lose confidence.
Bye Bye Paypal, we know you don’t need us, but now we know we don’t need you either. (C’mon Google, sort it out)
Phil Wilson
said on 21 May 2008I don’t think you got it right first time. From the screenshots it looks to me like they’ve got a normal “ok, edit, cancel” button setup and just changed the text on the first one, although it still performs the OK function, which is what you wanted.
Although that’s no excuse for it being incredibly stupid.
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