Google Checkout Sees Poor Customer Satisfaction

Aryabhata writes "Ars Technica reports on a survey by investment firm J.P. Morgan Securities, stating that Google Checkout has had a relatively quick and modest market penetration of six percent since its launch in June of 2006, but lags behind in customer satisfaction vs PayPal. On the customer satisfaction front, only 18.8 percent reported having a 'good' or 'very good' experience with Google Checkout, while 81.2 percent indicated a fair to poor experience customer experience compared to PayPal's 44.2 percent reporting good experiences. Some users have reported anecdotally that Google Checkout mistakenly canceled sales without warning or that the checkout process took too long."

Re:Google's touch

[gravesb]

Earth and maps are doing pretty well, I think

Re:Horrible Experience with Google Checkout

[ecuador_gr]

Sorry my friend, but it seems that Google's fault here is to have added Ritz Camera to its Checkout service. Why am I saying this?
1. Did you notice that Ritz Camera has a 1.37 reseller rating? http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Ritz_Camera_7 [resellerratings.com]
2. On the above link there is at least one story similar to your own where Ritz had to admit it was their fault (that customer apparently did not take their BS) and even offer a $25 gift card!
3. It should have been obvious to you that for a system, especially from a company with such an excellent track record in online applications, it would have been a little hard to send an event to the end user without receiving an event from Ritz Camera. Similarly, when Ritz send the cancellation event, Google Checkout send the cancellation message as it should.

But thats just like microsoft...

[imsabbel]

They just bought keyhole and put their own nametag on the keyhole viewer.
I know another software company that happened to drown in money and used it to just buy everybody and everything they might find usefull...

Re:C'est la vie.

[SephirothInferno]

Say what? Nearly every US merchant I've come across ships internationally, and I've never come across one who wouldn't accept a non-US credit card.

I don't think so. I live in South America and the selection of stuff that you can send over here is very limited. Basically, you can only buy music CD's (are people still using those?) or books, and there's also limitations on those. On top of that, there are sites that limits the buying process to US billing addresses, so, no international credit card support. There are a lot of stuff that should be done in that particular case

Re:My order was abruptly cancelled

[slashkitty]

uhg, the Buy/Google integration is pretty bad. I've had problems with 3 google checkout orders. The main problem is that after you place the order, there is not a good integration with the order process system. This is fine for smaller companies, but for Buy.com, it's a disaster. For example, to cancel or return an item, it takes much longer to get a response through the google checkout than through the regular process. I'm still waiting for an Xmas gift replacement that was ordered in early Dec.. Two other items I've never gotten, they were canceled. With one of them, I only got partial credit.

No Bank Acount ties.

[goombah99]

Google checkout has two things Paypal does not.
1) no ties to your bankaccount so they can't freeze your assets
2) a trustworthy company that actually has contact information.

Re:The world is bigger than the US

[Przepla]

I have billing address, shipping address and owner's address in Poland (EU) and Google Checkout works for me.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I hearing correctly? You are blaming the company that tried to protect you by black-listing your account for fraudulent use?
They are not your bank who you can call, give them your account number and password and have things sorted out with your account. That is why it took you so long to find out what is going on.

Re:Google's touch

[appavi]

Google Blog Search - far behind Technorati

According to Hitwise [hitwise.com], Google Blog Search traffic over took Technorati's traffic in December.

Re:Won't touch PayPal, not even for simple payment

[ScrewMaster]

Fortunately it was fairly simple to go in and delete the credit info.

Remember the Iran Contra hearings. Don't you know that just "deleting" something doesn't necessarily make it go away? Particularly in the case of a Google, which replicates data continuously to multiple datacenters.

Re:Won't touch PayPal, not even for simple payment

[smoker2]

Well nice try FUD man.

Here [headru.sh] is the first page customers get when using Paypal as a payment gateway.
Is it so hard to find the non paypal account option ?
Also, notice the writing at the bottom of the page - Authorised and Regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the United Kingdom as an electronic money institution.
Just for completeness, here is the second page [headru.sh] you get to if you choose non paypal. Oh, seems like that's pretty straightforward too. Maybe you're just a troll.

Re:Huh?

[Tacvek]

There are two different levels of integration of Google's checkout service. One of them is more minimal, and easier to integrate. You need to use google's order management system with this. You are also FORBIDDEN to use this integration level if you accept any type of coupon code on your web site.

There is a more complicated system that allows more features and allows you to integrate this into your normal invoicing system. It requires some significant programming, and it requires you to be able to inject information into your invoicing system. It looks like some companies find it easier to setup a second invoicing system then trying to inject the information int their main system. This is not acceptable and WILL cause problems. This is the sort of thing that causes orders to be cancled for no valid reason without alerting the buyer.

Basically the API is very complex and if a merchant messes it up there will be problems, and the user experience will be less than satisfactory.

Re:PayPal: Adversarial and tricky.

[BiggerIsBetter]

If there were an alternative that got anything like the audience eBay gets, I suspect a lot of users sick of their BS would switch over very quickly.

Chicken, meet Egg.

Spam!

[seebs]

I bought something through Google Checkout from a vendor I've been buying from for years, never had any trouble with them.

Despite my clear indication of the "don't spam me" preference, I started getting regular, frequent, promotional mailings.

The "stop getting mail from this merchant" thing didn't work.

Google's support desk didn't respond to queries.

The merchant couldn't do anything about it, since they have no control; they can forward mail to Google for "our customers", but that's it.

Google's only "unsubscribe" option is "prevent any messages, whether they're order-related or not, sent by this merchant, from reaching me."

Pretty much never gonna use that again, believe me. They don't allow you to opt out of purely promotional bulk mailings without completely severing all contact. If you later use their system to buy from a merchant, then you are immediately back on ALL the promotional stuff for that merchant, because you were never actually removed from the list; they were just blocking mail to you from that merchant. You can't have a way to communicate, without being spammed.

Will they fix it? I don't know. After multiple spams and heroic efforts to get anyone in the checkout group to do anything, I did eventually stop receiving mail, but so far as I know, they have no plans to fix the underlying system.

Re:Huh?

[avdp]

Hum... The package handling and (mis-)delivering parts, how does that have ANYTHING to do with Google Checkout? All they do is process your credit card. The shipping and handling is still (mis-)handled by the merchant. And then, a carrier of the merchant's choice. Google has absolutely nothing to do with any of that.

Re:Huh?

[hobo sapiens]

were I in your shoes, I would say the same thing. However, when I called the merchant, they (mis?)informed me that Google actually chose the shipper. Unless I am confused and Google also has some shipping service, it was Google checkout. At any rate, the merchant laid the blame at Google's feet.

non US cards

[bbn]

Some won't accept non-US credit cards

I think I have once had this happen to me. Since all I was buying was an ebook, I simply entered a random US address that I pulled from a website. This worked fine.

So in reality, they accepted non-US cards just fine. They did not accept non-US addresses - even for a download able item.

I have observed a few things about my european VISA card on american sites: All they are able to verify is the card number, expiry date and the 3 digit security number. I am able to enter completely random information for all other fields, including the name field (the one they always ask to be spelled exactly like on the card).

In fact, I often have to enter wrong information, as my address include non english characters, and many american websites are apparently still made by people that live in a 7 bit ASCII world.