Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

PayPal Experiences Link Bug… and Blogs about it.

Scott Guilfoyle, PayPal’s senior vice president of platform services, is reporting a pretty significant but seemingly easily fixable bug on the PayPal blog this afternoon.

“Early this morning, we made a change to our site that caused some links to PayPal from Web sites such as eBay, merchant sites, blogs, forums, and others to be broken. Though you may receive an error message instead of the intended PayPal page, this does not in any way affect your ability to send and receive payments. You can still use PayPal to pay on eBay and at millions of merchant sites around the world.

As a merchant or owner of another site that links to PayPal, there is nothing that you need to change on your site to resolve this issue. Rest assured that my team has all hands on deck to resolve this matter. We expect the bug to be fixed later today.”

Yes, I know it’s not good news and yes, I realize it is highlighting a technical glitch rather than an accomplishment but the fact that the issue was proactively blogged about from within is fairly significant. Most companies, eBay Inc. included, will prepare one-two sentence positioning statements in instances like this and reactively provide them to media when – and only when – prompted to do so. As a result, you’ll see online influencers / bloggers fielding user comments and calls complaining of a glitch that will in most cases result in speculative posts that contain inaccuracies and perpetuate uncertainty and doubt – all because the only official word from the company is a one sentence statement filled with generalities and vagueness (not to mention the gasoline fire that Twitter can represent in instances like this).

All of this is negated with one word – transparency. PayPal identified a problem, communicated it publicly, and got back to trying to fix it as quickly and as seamlessly as possible.

I read something that touched on this just last week in response to Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, and his continued frank and honest public discussion on Twitter and on his blog. The post, focused on communicating lay-offs through corporate blogs, Finding a Human Voice through Social Media, attests that “executives personally sharing bad news is not only more heartfelt than canned press releases, but also keeps away rumor mongers and controls backlash. In practical terms, speaking out about cuts before the media can weigh in allows a company to simply get in front of what’s obviously a sensitive topic.”

Baby Steps. That’s all it is. But as someone who is all too familiar with them at home right now, it’s nice to see them taking place at the workplace too.

Cheers,
RBH

Tagged: bug fix, ebay, PayPal, paypal blog, Tony Hsieh, twitter, zappos

(9) Comments

9 Responses on this post. Click to add yours.

Dave WOn November 11, 2008 at 2:50 pm Said:

Maybe, just maybe this will begin something that is long past due. RBH hit it out of the park with this one TRANSPARENCY is a must!

It is a move in the right direction and I applaud PayPal for the step forward, keep it up!

Aaron BurcellOn November 11, 2008 at 3:05 pm Said:

Disclosure: I know Richard, and I even like him. I blog about big brands that let me down. It’s rare to see someone this honest on the inside of a big company. It’s helpful to people. Nice work, Richard, keep it up.

BobbyOn November 11, 2008 at 3:36 pm Said:

Hi Richard,

I think it is great PayPal is being out in the open about this glitch.

BUT, why did PayPal not make a general announcement about the other recent glitch? The one where echecks were marked as cleared and and needed to be “claimed” by sellers, but it turned out that the funds were not available in our PayPal accounts. THAT problem went on for several days. I, and many others were not pleased.

Richard Brewer-Hay On November 11, 2008 at 4:29 pm Said:

@BOBBY It’s my understanding that there was a post made to the general announcement board that addressed the echeck issue: http://announcements.paypal.com/us/

Admittedly, the post was late going up but it appears that with that post – and with the blog post that went up earlier today – communication is a priority.

Like I said, as long as it’s not a one-off occurrence, and if we can encourage more of this in the future, everyone will benefit in the long run.

Cheers,
RBH

DaveyOn November 11, 2008 at 7:03 pm Said:

I would like to see a continued push for improved site issue announcements. It would be good for each site to have a dedicated bulletin board for this purpose, so we don’t have to check numerous outlets and external forums like Auctionbytes, and also so it is easier to link to the known bugs when it comes to explaining to buyers why we’re delayed in shipment of their orders, for example.

As others have intimated (and has been ebay’s history), this has been a traditional sorry function for ebay. Given the exponential increase in site glitches (I can name more than a half-dozen this week–none in favor of sellers), this is VERY important. Many of these bugs have the potential of directly affecting DSRs, and sellers need to be able to avoid wasting time discovering if they’re experiencing a known bug, and instead use the time to synthesize strategies that mitigate potential DSR hits.

Most of us would have a lot more confidence in our individual outcomes if ebay hadn’t established such a poor reputation for customer service, communication, and an atmosphere of fear in place of the community we used to have. Ebay recognizing their issues and coming clean would do a great deal in restoring seller confidence in their marketplace, and discredit the theorists that Mr. Donohoe would like to get rid of us sooner than later.

My parting word for the ebay management team is to get your own site working and other glaring issues fixed before you introduce even more disruption to the code base. This disruption is not innovation. Software bugs have been around for years and are not novel.

Richard Brewer-Hay On November 12, 2008 at 3:33 pm Said:

@DAVEY “I would like to see a continued push for improved site issue announcements.”

Couldn’t agree more. I’ve been doing an analysis of all of our existing bulletin board-like sites that we have to see how I can consolidate for folks.

I’d like to set up a module or subsite for Ink (similar to the You Say / We Say modules on the homepage) that automatically updates with any official announcement, regardless of business unit, that readers could subsribe to.

Maybe something similar to the http://ebayinkblog.com/news site that would have the latest announcement front-and-center with all others listed to the side in chronologicial order.

There could be one master subscribe option and possibly even individual business unit subscription capabilities (PayPal, eBay, Skype, StubHub, etc.) depending on your wants/needs.

Thoughts?

BOBBYOn November 11, 2008 at 7:22 pm Said:

@Richard

The more important issue is it wasn’t until auctionbytes.com contacted PayPal that they admitted publicly there was a problem of sellers not being able to “claim” their money.

Paypal rarely admits BIG glitches that hold up other people’s money, until, of course, they are challenged by someone OUTSIDE of the eBay infrastructure (sellers and auctionbytes).

Funny how that happens isn’t it?

And what feeds the “us” againgst “them” feelings most sellers have today is that these glitches create a “Float” that yield interest revenue for PayPal, ie Ebay.

Bottomline is this: PayPal ducked the issue for several days. And to add insult to injury, the PayPal reps I talked with on the phone told ME to contact my buyers for the shipping delays caused by PayPal’s glitch.

GailOn November 12, 2008 at 9:32 am Said:

Richard ~

The fact that PayPal admits there is a bug is a tremendous step in the right direction. This does mitigate the frustration and build-up of anger caused by denial.

There’s nothing worse than being told ‘this is the first time we’re hearing about it’ by PayPal or eBay Customer Service. This is especially true when the boards have hundreds of posts about the same glitch.

Why not just be upfront and acknowledge technical problems, so we at least know we’re being heard. Making an announcement that there WAS a problem only after it’s been fixed is too late. We need to know that PayPal or eBay is aware of a problem and is working on it. Do you see how much anger that would prevent? People get so angry when they feel like they’re banging their heads against a brick wall.

AmberOn November 12, 2008 at 2:38 pm Said:

Richard,

That VERY late announcement about the unclaimed payment glitch should have also been posted on the eBay system board–since so many ebay sellers were affected.

We shouldn’t have to go hunting for a Paypal announcement buried somewhere. Heck, they could have directed an announcement HERE and more people would probably have seen it.

The other point? With forced Paypal only this season, these glitches are causing REAL financial harm. Each and every one of them cause buyers to leave the site and go elsewhere where the checkout actually works.

With all of the increase in fees Paypal is getting since the new paperless payment requirement hit, maybe they should direct a little towards fixing this increasingly glitchy product.

(And eBay is effectively Paypal only for most small and medium sellers as Propay is too expensive and merchant accounts don’t work well for hobby sellers).

DaveyOn November 12, 2008 at 4:35 pm Said:

Richard,

I’d take these announcements in a standard place–this blog, or anywhere.

Up until now, Auctionbytes was the defacto reporter of ebay system issues that was anywhere near timely. Isn’t that a source of shame for your company? I don’t know of any other company that ebay that wouldn’t be running to fix this and at least try to put a fig leaf on the emperor’s new clothes, to cover his privates.

I’d rather these announcements be posted on the ebay main site, but if ebay won’t do what is right and instead you pick up the mantle, at least that is a step in the right direction. Be prepared though, to get lots of bug reports coming to you if you take this on, though.

How about someting more along the lines of the spirit of this blog, and have Mr. Donohoe post on how much of this bug communication problem he is personally aware of, and what HE plans to do to improve the situation. And, what goals he is setting for improving the increasingly buggy product he’s offering to the world.