Indian Paypal users mostly small merchants, freelancers, independent software developers and hobbyists are dismayed by Paypal’s unprofessional way of halting transactions to India. It did not give a formal notice or any direct information to its users. This can least be expected from a company as large as Paypal.

What PayPal users wish was that Paypal could have atleast informed them before a transaction was being done or an alert to every Paypal user. However, Paypal only informed when the user was unable to send or receive the payment and later tries to contact the customer support.

Contacting customer support, one gets a canned reply as follows:

Personal Payment – Send Money for India Accounts
• India customers are no longer able to see the option to send a Personal payment on the Send Money page • They can continue to use other payment options, such as eBay checkout.
If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then you may contact the buyer and have him or her resend the payment as follows: (a) click the Send Money tab, (b) select ‘Goods’, and (c) provide a shipping address.
If this payment was a personal payment, such as a gift to a friend or family member, then we request that you find another payment method until we restore personal payments to and from India.
Although India customers are unable to send Personal payments, they are still receiving Personal payments from Non India customers.
• In order to stop ALL Personal payments TO and FROM India accounts, we have started reversing Personal payments sent by Non India customers starting today. (the only exception will be in cases where the buyer has included a shipping address – we don’t want to delay any shipment of goods)
• Emails will be sent to both sender and recipient to let them know why the money was returned and what options they have to proceed forward. (see attached for examples)
• We are also in the process of implementing a change on the website to automatically stop the payment from processing, rather than waiting to reverse the payment. We will send you additional updates as soon as we have more details.
The Personal payment option on the International Send Money page has been updated and India has been removed from the ‘select a country’ drop down list.
• If the payment was for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then the buyer may resend the payment to the seller by following these steps on the PayPal website: (a) click the Send Money tab, (b) select ‘Goods’, and (c) provide a shipping address.

Looks like PayPal was unable to resolve questions or submit documents requested by Indian Regulatory Authorities
PayPal has always been an issue for Indian users. Many Indian credit cards are just blocked by Paypal stating it is not valid when an user tries to add his credit card to the account.

A new service called AlertPay has been started which is much similar to PayPal with all its features. I guess its time to move on to another provider rather than hoping for the least concerned Paypal to resolve its issues.

Warp 9, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: WNYN), the premier provider of robust e-commerce platforms and services, today announces the findings from a six month year-over-year organic search engine revenue comparison for 2009 vs. 2008. The results:
A 72% increase in FREE revenue!
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Recently, when I tried to buy hosting space from Godaddy, I landed up in a page stating, “There was a problem authorizing your credit. Please verify your payment information or use an alternate form of payment.” after I provided my credit card information.

There was no further information on the reason this could have happened. I have been using the same card on GoDaddy and have made at least 10 purchases and my credit limit was still more than $800.

I googled this issue and found that similar issues have happened with people using paypal but not credit card. Anyone who has had similar issues please let me know.

Update: After five interactions with various GoDaddy support engineers none was able to help me out. Instead they mentioned that my credit card had an issue and to get in touch with my bank. [HSBC]

Guess what? It turned out that the issue was a Firefox issue. I used IE and the transaction completed smoothly. Please try using IE. I still love Firefox though !!

eBay is caught in one controversy after another. The latest one being the “Holiday Doorbuster’s” contest where anyone can buy from a GPS System to a diamond engagement ring for just $1.

The contest has brought in widespread interest to get those lucky give aways. Thousands of eBay users try to get hold of an item but in vain. The reason being there are a large number of automated scripts that buy those products automatically before anyone could manually purchase them. This has resulted in a lot of frustration and controversy. Continue Reading

Google has introduced a new feature for tax and shipping estimation on Google Product Search. Google Base users can now submit their tax and shipping information for their products through their Google Base accounts.

Though Google has mentioned that it is yet to make the information live to shoppers, it has requested sellers to start submitting their tax and shipping details. These details can be submitted in two ways.

1. By setting default values directly in Google Base account under the new “Tax and Shipping settings” tab in the “Settings” section
2. Tax and shipping information can also be submitted by including the values under tax and shipping attributes in the product data feeds. Any inclusion in data feeds will automatically override default account values.

This is yet another important feature Google Product Search shoppers were looking for. More accurate prices can help shoppers know upfront the total cost involved.

Google has added a new “Data Quality” tab to the Google Base account. This new tab can provide you various recommendations enabling more shoppers find your products.

In its official Google Base blog, Jessica Ng, Product Marketing Manager for Google Base mentions, “We’ve always emphasized the importance of submitting high-quality product feeds to Google Product Search. This means submitting accurate, up-to-date product information in the form of attributes, as well as abiding by best practices for formatting these attributes. Doing so goes a long way toward helping shoppers find your items more easily.”

Adding up to the importance of submitting high-quality product feeds, she further added, Today, we’re pleased to announce the addition of a new “Data Quality” tab in your Google Base account. On this tab, you’ll find a host of suggestions for improving the quality of the item listings in your product feed. For example, you can find recommendations on the length of your title and description fields, or get a snapshot of the number of items in your feed that are missing key attributes. By addressing these issues, you’ll be able to improve the quality of your feeds and help more shoppers find your products.”

Google Base Data Quality tab is a welcome initiative as most of online sellers have very little or no awareness on the importance of submitting accurate and up-to-date information. The new tab would be of great help for these sellers.