GoogleCheckout Vs PayPal
After PayPal decided to hold my $5,000 hostage for six-months for no apparent reason earlier this year, I was forced to switch to Google-Checkout for Premium Membership payment processing. Of course after I got the attention of PayPal they gave me my money back, apologized, and re-activated my account – but since I (understandably) could never trust PayPal with any significant sum of money ever again, I’ve stuck with GoogleCheckout.
Now that I’ve been using Google-Checkout for about 5 months I think I’ve been able to get a pretty good idea of how they operate and where their strengths and weaknesses are when compared to PayPal.
Fraud Protection: GoogleCheckout beats PayPal hands-down. Since switching to Google Checkout my chargebacks have dropped to nearly zero. Using Paypal for the same amount of time I would have had many, many more chargebacks.
Fees: Google Checkout is cheaper.
Payouts: GoogleCheckout automatically deposits your funds into your bank account each business day and does not hold a balance (except over weekends and holidays); Paypal on the other-hand loves you to run up a balance and requires you to ‘withdraw’ your funds. Paypal also reserves the right to freeze your account and hold ALL of your balance hostage for 180 days whenever they feel like it (read the fine print) – leaving you with virtually no recourse to get your money back. No other institution that you give money to (i.e. a bank) could legally get away with this, but since PayPal is not a bank or S&L, they are exempt from all the banking laws and regulations that have been put into place over the last 150 years to protect against this exact sort of thing.
Services & Options: Paypal supports ongoing subscriptions, GoogleCheckout does not.
Up to this point, I would say Google-Checkout is overall better than Paypal – except in one, fairly major way – what looks like might just be Google Checkout’s Achilles heel:
Customer Service and Support:
- PayPal has phone numbers, that if you find, you can call and speak with a human about your problems or questions. PayPal responds to email requests usually within 48 hours. Paypal actually went above-and beyond when they realized how they F*’d-up and banned me for no reason by contacting me via phone to let me know they were giving back my $5k, and then again to let me know they were UNbanning my account several weeks later. Paypal has contacted me by phone in the past more than once to confirm what they thought was suspicious activity on my account. Overall, as much as I now dislike and distrust PayPal, I would say their customer service & support is not bad – maybe even… good..
- GoogleCheckout has no telephone numbers that I can find anywhere that will let me contact a human being. Google Checkout’s preferred method of support is via their mostly-worthless online-help. Google Checkout’s preferred, or only method of contacting customer support is via email.
So far I have had only one reason to deal with customer support at GoogleCheckout. In attempting to refund the one chargeback I’ve had in the last few months, the system was incorrectly calculating the amout I could refund to the customer, virtually preventing me from submitting the refund. I received an email from GoogleCheckout regarding the chargeback that indicated I had until yesterday to issue the refund or they would do it for me, and screw me for an additional $10. I replied to that email (checkoutcbb@google.com) not once, not twice, not three-times, not four times – but FIVE TIMES over the course of two-weeks – each time asking, then begging, then pleading for them to fix their system so I could process the refund, or give me guidance on what I was doing wrong. After the 3rd email, I also started CC’ing the chargback ‘help’ address at checkoutchargebackinquiries@google.com. Did they respond? NO! 5-emails over two weeks went totally ignored – So now my deadline for refunding the customer has come and gone, Google-checkout will now do the refund and gouge me for $10, all because THEY have failed to make their refund-system work, or respond to my five pleas for help. It’s not the getting screwed out of $10 that bothers me as much as the fact that a company as “good” as Google can not manage to do something as simple as pressing the ‘reply’ button.
So Google Checkout, if you read my blog the same way the PayPal people do, YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS! Oh, wait, it can’t suck because GOOGLE CHECKOUT DOES NOT HAVE ANY CUSTOMER SERVICE!
(but i’d still rather use google checkout over paypal)
Isn’t that just typical of google? They do the automated things well but suck at manual stuff. Automated fraud protection works well but human powered customer service sucks.
I use Paypal pro and I am about to head over to Google to see if they support this as I found Paypal Pro to be a nightmare in teh fraud department which in one of my businesses costs me thousands in chargebacks.
Paypal don’t want to know of course and just take your money.
Paypal is good in their support – ok you don’t always get the answer you want to hear but you can always speak to someone,who knows what they are doing, within a few rings. Not too bad there.
Email support only – sucks. At least have a live chat or something if they have this phobia of talking on the phone!
Interesting article. I have been using paypal primarily but have also started to use a little bit of Google Checkout. It does suck though that Google has their hands in everything nowadays, but what can you do. As far as Paypal is concerned, there are countless complaints on the net about them and their “procedures” in handling accounts, so it would be very wise of them to shape up quickly or have problems down the road..only time will tell.
I just used Google Checkout for the first time when I had yet another customer that couldn’t use his card to charge with my Paypal account.
The one thing I DO like about Paypal is how quickly the funds get to me. As soon as a charge is made, boom, it’s on my debit card, ready to spend.
With Google, I could be waiting a whole week before it’s in my bank account.