Can’t Accept PayPal (Hopefully temporary) - Sat, 17 Dec 2011

I’ve been using Plimus to accept payments for Behold for almost six years now. They handle the secure purchase requirements of online sales that include credit card processing, currency conversion, charging VAT and refunds, and charge a commission on each sale for those services. They also accept PayPal seamlessly.

But something happened to the PayPal processing, almost without forewarning. We got a notice of Plimus System Update 1.34.4 via email on December 1. Usually these notices are just of some minor new feature and I don’t often pay full attention to them. Checking around, I found their original notice which I hadn’t seen before (I guess I don’t get their newsletter).

Normally, Plimus makes sure a system is ready to switch over to before they impose it on their users. In this case, only a few days notice was given before the switch was required, and the system with full capabilities was expected in January.

Something is fishy here. Something was rushed. I’m not sure what was going on.

The bottom line is, at least until their advanced system is ready (I presume if they say January, it will be February or March), I won’t be able to accept PayPal for Behold purchases.

And I posted the following comment on the Plimus blog Year in Review posting. As I write this post, the comment is still awaiting moderation. That blog is written by Charlie Born, Plimus’ VP and Head of marketing, so they should notice my comment. We’ll see if they post it and give an answer.

Why hasn’t Plimus mentioned anything, even to its users, about what has happened with PayPal? This has affected all your users.

I’ve temporarily had to put on my Product BuyNow page a note stating that PayPal won’t be an available option until the Plimus finishes converting to its new PayPal system (you said your “Advanced” system will be ready in Jan 2012).

The temporary system you put in place is not adequate for me. I don’t want to process the VAT myself and manually issue refunds and I don’t want the funds added to my PayPal account. In some countries, your users don’t even have that option, because they are not allowed PayPal accounts.

All your users have liked the system you had where you charged the purchase and receive the funds on PayPal on Plimus’ PayPal and then credited our account. And I don’t see any logical reason why you’d want to change that … unless PayPal is imposing the change on you.

Are there too many chargebacks? Is PayPal screwing around with you? Are you being mum about it because PayPal has you in a place where they told you not to say anything? The silence is deafening. Your users want to at least know what’s going on, and as long as you’re honest with us, we’ll support you and will accept the changes you need to make.

I’m like other vendors. At least one quarter of my sales are via PayPal. I’m going to patiently wait until your advanced PayPal system comes out in January. If it does not impose any extra burden on me and still allows me to do all my sales processing on your dashboard and lets PayPal purchases work just as every other purchase, then I’ll be happy. But if PayPal becomes something separate, then that is not good and I’ll have to evaluate my options.

At least, please tell us what’s really going on.

Louis Kessler
A long-time user of Plimus services
WInnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

With luck this will resolve in the next month or so. Then I’ll make PayPal a payment option again.

—

Followup: 22 Dec. They did not post my comment, but Charlie Born did email me back. He explained it was Plimus’ own belief that by putting PayPal payments directly into the vendor’s PayPal account would be beneficial to the vendor because they would get their money faster.

My problem with that is if they truly wanted to be beneficial, they should have given us the choice of which way we wanted to do it, and not force us to do it that way, and especially not force us before their system is fully in place.

I’m very disappointed with Plimus on this one.