Paypal Grinds To A Halt

BillBrasky writes "After a 'Monthly Software Update', it appears that PayPal started having problems. There were reports all weekend of troubles, and as of Monday night here, I can't access it at all (connection time out). One user even reported that his PayPal Debit card was getting refused!" A message on the site now says the site is expected to be back at 8:10 PM PDT, not long from now.

effects on ebay share price tomorrow

[po_boy]

Get out your crystal balls. What effect do you think this will have on the share price of EBAY tomorrow? Will that constitute a buying or selling opportunity?

That was interesting...

[drinkypoo]

The first six or seven times I tried clicking through to this story slashdot told me "Nothing to see here. Move along." Problem in the subscription code?

Anyway this was bound to happen sooner or later. There's frankly no way to test large-scale use of a resource like that because in order to REALLY test it you have to exchange a lot of data with assorted financial institutions which will probably not be very forgiving about something like that. Paypal's never given me any trouble whatsoever and I think that not being able to use it for a day or so is acceptable. Not being able to access debit card funds could be a serious blow to someone foolish enough to store a lot of money in paypal, but otherwise it should have little impact.

All they did was change over to the new site.

[nlinecomputers]

They were down for me about one hour. Leave it to slashdot to fucking panic.....

They do have a blurb on the site about problems but I'm not having any trouble. Why can't we mod articles as trolls.

Re:Could this be a kernel error

[Andy_R]

Don't you mean 'looks like a bank, acts like a bank, but doesn't bother following proper banking practice' Panic?

PayPal and eBay constantly push the envelope

[winkydink]

Their Dir of Ops gave the keynote at the USENIX Large Installation Systems Administration Conference last year. During the talk, he described how eBAy wants so much to use industry best practices, but given their enormous size and transaction volume, they end up being the ones who constantly push the envelope.

After listening to the talk, one came away wondering how the site even worked at all. Every day, you are on the bleeding edge and every day if you have the slightest of hiccups, expect to have it covered in the Wall Street Journal the next day.

I don't know what they paid that poor guy, but it isn't enough. I'm surprised he still has all his hair and it wasn't grey.

No monopolies

[Anonymous Coward]

for infrastructure services such as PayPal, it is essential that we have competition and choices.

this is a valid use of government regulatory powers: NO MONOPOLIES, EVER

Priceless

[peu]

from the msnbc article:

"When folks go to use their PayPal debit cards, the payment is rejected, but the charge actually goes through and PayPal is deducting the amount from their account"

ebayers lost my business today

[insomnyuk]

I'm too lazy to mail a check or money order for something I buy online (online is supposed to = convenient), so when I wanted to buy a lens for my SLR, I didn't bid on the relevant auctions today, since I was not sure I'd have a reliable way to pay for it.

One wonders how much money will be lost by others taking similar actions. Not really quantifiable but definitely some kind of loss.

lost $35 bucks

[Mr. Flibble]

A friend of mine sent me $35 bucks via paypal, it arrived.. Then the other day I checked my account and it was EMPTY. I have not bought anything with paypal in the last month, so where did my balance go?

Re:Could this be a kernel error

[TykeClone]

Bank regulation is one of the few valid uses of government oversight. Without it, things like stock market crashes of 2001 balloon into the Great Depression like the 1930's. "Safety and Soundness" and the FDIC keep the publics trust in the banking system (will my money be there tomorrow?)

I don't say this lightly as I work in a bank and have to deal with it. The regulation of banks has worked well enough for long enough to migrate the impetus of many regulations away from "safety and soundess" (the two cornerstones of a properly run bank) to consumer protection and antiterrorism.

With the advent of paypal and other non-bank players entering the financial services arena, these entities need to be brought under the same regulations that face banks. Make paypal live and work under Reg E. Make insurance companies deal with CRA issues. Make Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac live up to the same standards set forth for other financial institutions.

Re:Paypal=SESDL

[HermanAB]

Hmm, if you want to send $10 with Western Union, the service charge is $27.

PayPal may occationally screw up, but they don't screw you over consistently like Western Union...

Re:How much negative....

[mofochickamo]

I've worried about that myself. I had two items sell this week and the payments from the buyers are marked as pending but will not sent. I think keeping the buyer informed is the best way to avoid negative feedback.

Re:All they did was change over to the new site.

[Capt. Murphy]

I've been trying to pay my tri-monthly hosting bill through PayPal since last night. Whenever it isn't timing out it gives me errors all the way through the process. Only once was I able to get all the way through the process, just to get an error message saying something about their credit card checking ability being down and that I could only pay through a PayPal credit card or something similar that didn't need to run the credit card number. It's far from a 'hiccup'. They have been having problems that I've been dealing with for the last 24 hours at least. I don't know how bad it was before that.

advantages of Paypal not being a bank...

[JimBobJoe]

Though a lot of posts on here are along the lines of "see...haha...paypal is not a bank!!" I for one am grateful that it isn't.

There are a lot of people, for a variety of reasons, who have been screwed out of getting a bank account from a regular bank. Because of negative reporting on chex systems, they can't get a regular checking account at all.

In tandem with a savings account (which you *can* sometimes get even with a bad chexsystems report) and a paypal account, you have essentially the same services of a checking account.

I for one got screwed by my bank (5/3rd) after fraud hit my account and they refused to take responsibility for some items. Thanks to paypal I still can have checking account like abilities until I sue my bank.

Re:PayPal and eBay constantly push the envelope

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my friends has interviewed at PayPal and Ebay for the SCM and Build Engineer role. Because of the merger, he interviewed with the same technical lead twice.

A famous question is
"How do you remove all of the directories named "TEST" from the repository?"

Understanding best practices, the answer has always been
"Can't we just hide them, version control is there for a reason?"

The head of their team then explained
"No, who would name anything TEST that they wanted to need"
For the record he clarified that the job entails removing versions and files.

Its clear that best practice at Ebay/PayPal is to fly by the seat of your pants and hope it works. We all see how well that works now.

Re:And to top it off...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is meant to be funny.. but I have a question for anyone who knows the answer. Would slashdot's traffic even make a dent in Paypal? Obviously, slashdotting some guy's DSL would be bad.. but I would imagine that Paypal gets considerably more traffic than slashdot. Can someone confirm or deny that?

The slashdot effect? Not a drop in the bucket!

[coene]

For those who say "if its already slow, dont slashdot it!", seems you over estimate the slashdot effect. Slashdot links may take a normal web host down, but anyone with an infrastructure built to serve a lot of traffic shouldn't even notice it.

A site I run has been linked by Slashdot many times - aside from the number of referrals in web logs and perhaps a few mbit spike in traffic, you wouldn't know it even occured.

PayPal is having much larger issues. I've experienced the same types of problems when doing larger upgrades - it's usually a single piece of code that went unchecked, and the odd user(s) that actually get caught in an untested (or improperly tested) segment of code are throwing the system for a loop.

Or, just bad performance planning. I'm not surprised - these things have to happen every now and then, they're quite unavoidable when you're dealing with often changes to an infrastructure with that many _DYNAMIC_ users, and so much _DYNAMIC_ data.

Regardless, it's a growing pain. I've been through a few of these on a 150 GB database with 2 MM users and 15 servers. PayPal is a lot larger, and they surely have much more difficult problems. Hell, if they have to do something such as change the way a single piece of data is stored, that means a lot of downtime (or slowtime) processing!

I'm sure they'll sort it out, unfortunately lots of people are losing lots of business in the process.

Re:hmm...

[sjalex]

And PayPal is a "Bank" when they want to be a "Bank"... and otherwise they will do as any self-respecting bank would never.

Whereas most banks will gladly take your money as long as it's legal, PayPal will shut you down if they don't like your politics.

Or so rumor [google.com] has it.

Troubling

[suwain_2]

Is anyone else profoundly bothered by this?

PayPal, which must deal handle millions of dollars a day, just goes down entirely. My real problem, though, is that they are not a real bank. (At least last time I checked) they are not FDIC Insured or anything. They could just never come back, and there's really not much anyone could do.

Not that I expect them to run off with my money. But in situations such as, say, the whole site going down, I like to know my money's in something that's insured.

Ahem...

[mcrbids]

It's not a bank, people!

Others have said similar, I merely divert your attention to http://www.paypalsucks.com/ [paypalsucks.com]....

Re:Priceless

[SamBeckett]

I've had this happen to an ATM card with a real bank.. The machine spits out an error receipt and no money. You try again, it still doesn't work. Oh, damn. What the hell, I'll come back in the morning.

Come back in the morning, works fine. Two weeks later, have a negative balance because the 1st two transactions actually went through on their end.

It's a royal PITA to find the right people to talk to, the right forms to fill out

Just My Luck

[Anime Man]

My luck never fails me. Today I ran out of clicks, hits, or whatever Slashdot calls there subscription "points". I also ran out on another website I "subscribe" to so I figured kill two birds with one stone.

So what do I do, I re-subscribe through paypal today and I did notice it was going a tad slow, but I didn't worry too much.

To be honest I thought it was a recent FW upgrade on my router I did the night before acting up. I reflashed back a version and everything seemed ok.

Anyways the issue: I was wondering why my subscription to Slashdot still wasn't showing up. My other subscription was paid within the same minute as the slashdot one, and it went through fine. Weird. As of 9:55pm PST it still hasn't "gone through" (BTW I am confident that it will be fixed and I know it's not Slashdot's fault)

After finding out about the problem, I can only wonder if the Slashdot payment will even go through. My real concern is my bank account being screwed up, I don't want to be billed for $5 in an endless loop.

Re:Just My Luck

[Anime Man]

Wow.. Slashdot work in mysterious ways.

Not two minutes after I check my subscription status I finaly get my renew subscription! It must have updated somewhere between me starting to write this last post and submit it.

The Slashdot gods must have looked down on me with pleasure after my $5 sacrifice.

Re:And to top it off...

[skraps]

Hmm. I did not realize they gathered data using spyware. Maybe that casts some doubt on the figures for slashdot -- a lot of people who visit slashdot are probably also smart enough to remove spyware. Seems like that would skew the numbers somewhat.

True story about debit card tonight

[wishlish]

Went to a Wawa (it's a Philly area convenience store) to buy a sandwich for me and my wife. Total was $11, I have $15 in the account from an eBay auction I sold last week.

Selected debit- transaction denied. Selected debit again- transaction denied. Selected credit- this time it went through. (Otherwise I was just going to pay cash.)

When I checked my account when I got home, the balance was negative- they double-debited the transaction.

Now, I'm not worried- even my bank has made an error or two like this, and a call to customer service tomorrow should clear things up. And even if it doesn't, it's $11.

But I do feel very bad tonight for people depending on the money in that account. They're in a lot of trouble tonight.

Re:PayPal can't be down!

[Concerned Onlooker]

Yes, this is funny, but if you have a moment be sure to fill out those forms with some bogus info while you're at it. There's no reason their data should be clean.

DEBIT card probably for people rebuilding credit

[rsilvergun]

if you blow your credit _really_ badly (ex., if you're a man and you divorice a woman), you're probably screwed for the next 10 years. So much so that you get stuck with services like paypal for a debit/credit card. What paypal's doing (and what they've always done) is take advange of people who aren't in a position to use a normal, legitimate business. This is why they get away with the shit they do. If you're using paypay, you probably don't have a heck of a lot of (better) alternatives.

Lots of new job postings on PayPal

[ErichTheWebGuy]

I just read the "Jobs at PayPal" page... Some of the more interesting new openings that have been updated today:

Director, Software Infrastructure Architecture
Senior Software QA Engineer
Staff Software Engineer

Sounds to me like they're cleaning house after this one :)

Possible Cause

[msaulters]

I heard a news item the other day on the radio that banks all around the country are about to begin using a new system for verification of checks and that customers could no longer count on 'floating' of check for two or three days. I'd be willing to bet PayPal was upgrading their software to support this. It's estimated this change will put $2 billion more into the banking industry each year, largely in the form of fees on bounced checks and overdraft charges. There may be more such failures in the next few weeks.

I've noticed...

[PhaxMohdem]

That when I tried to withdrawl funds from my paypal into my bank account, I couldn't change the drop down box that lets you choose which account you want to put the funds in. It always reverted to the default no matter what. I had to change my default account # to make the transfer. Hopefully this will also be addressed. I'm just glad I'm not alone in my paypal troubles. /. is the greatest for making me feel better in my misery.

Alternatives?!

[RAMMS+EIN]

You see, PayPal sucks and all that (what with them freezing accounts all over the place), but what are the alternatives?

Really. For an individual or small business, you don't want high setup or monthly fees, and if you look in that league, who can beat PayPal in terms of transaction fees and ease of use?

I'd genuinly like to know.

Alternatives to Paypal?

[FooBarWidget]

Paypal isn't exactly known as the most reliable company. But are there any better alternatives out there, that have a good reputation? Are there any similar companies that also accept money from Asia countries (such as Malaysia and Phillippines), and don't charge $30 to transfer to an international bank account (I live in Europe, not US)?

Re:DEBIT card probably for people rebuilding credi

[Anonymous Coward]

Bankruptcy is pretty much a complete joke in the US. I filed back in the spring of 98. By the end of the summer, I had credit cards again; the interest rates on both were around 18%. The credit limits were small - around $300 - but within 2 years I had ones with $2,000 limits. Around 2000, I bought a new car and zero problem getting financing. I was afraid I was going to get totally screwed on the interest rate, I ended up getting like 6%. The following year I bought a house and, again, had no trouble getting the loan. The bankruptcy wasn't even an issue. I don't remember the interest rate on that, but it wasn't very high -- something like 5% on a 30 year with no money down. Granted, my mortgage was a VA loan, but that in way guarantees that the lender will give you a loan, it just guarantees that they will get a (small) portion back if you default. Last year I bought a new car and again got financing with no problems, this time with a rate of about 4%. So far, the only problem my bankruptcy has caused me is that Best Buy wouldn't give me a credit card when I applied for one a year ago.

Oh --- debit cards don't help you credit score. Neither does pushing the "credit" button rather than the "debit" button when you pay with a debit card. They are NOT credit cards and do not go on your credit history. The only (real) difference is how they are treated when they are processed. I think, and I could be wrong about this, if you select "credit", then the credit card companies make money off of your transaction.

Re:That was interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is happening to me RIGHT NOW!

A person with a verified paypal account AND an ebay account in good standing AND a legitimate yahoo account...bought a 4th gen ipod from my wife (who got it with the her laptop for being a school teacher but since she is a lowly paid teacher we couldn't afford to keep it).

I waited for the payment to clear paypal and took the funds out before shipping, to be safe! Then 1 month later I get an e-mail from paypal saying it was bought with fraudulent funds.

The buyer claimed someone else used her account to buy it. I told paypal "how did they get into her paypal, ebay AND yahoo accounts......unless she is dumb enough to use the same password for all three.

This all happened 2 weeks ago and the "investigation" is still ongoing.

Here, however, is the clincher...I told ebay about her and they did there own investigation which came up with the decision that SHE was the fraud.

They even told me to call the cops on her.

Aren't paypal and ebay the same company? So how can ebay tell me to call the cops on her and paypal tell me they believe her story and want the money back?

The whole verified account thing is obviously bogus, and paypal needs to better inform people that they can remove your funds at any time for their mistakes!

FACTS of the case:
Payment was made with Paypal funds
Payment was fraudulent

Question:
Who is the real fraud?

......or maybe it was my fault for being dumb enough to ship to the Philippines. Either way.... -JK