Paypal bug costing users "thousands"

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 27 May 2008 at 10:24

A Paypal bug is costing web merchants thousands of dollars in lost revenue, as newly registered users cannot make international payments.

"We have already lost thousands of dollars," claims a post on the Clicky blog, a web startup which has been affected by the Paypal bug, "and we are not happy."

The issue is down to a problem with a drop down box in the registration process, where a user must select their country of residence. Whichever country is chosen, the page refreshes and reverts to the country in which the invoicing company is based.

This represents no problem if both the buyer and the seller are located in the same country, but makes international payments impossible.

Paypal acknowledged the problem, albeit a week after it was first noticed by users, announcing on its developer community site that, "Our technical teams are working diligently to resolve the issue."

However, nearly one week on, no fix has been offered by the company.

"As a web developer, I know how easy this problem is to fix. It's a drop down box. This problem could be fixed in a matter of minutes," claims the Clicky blog.

"It's absolutely unbelievable for a company of this size, that so many internet businesses rely on to collect money from their customers, has had a problem of this magnitude for 10 days and counting."

Paypal was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.