I've been fighting with PayPal's Website Payments Pro API for the last week at work. If you're considering using PayPal for anything more than accepting basic payments through their website, here's my advice to you: kill yourself.
The documentation is disorganized, incomplete, and full of errors. The page numbers in the Website Payments Pro Integration Guide aren't even correct. Good luck finding chapter six on page 83; there is no chapter six (although there are two chapter fives), and page 83 is just a few pages after page 56 and a few pages before page 105.
If you're dumb enough to actually try to use the PHP SDK PayPal provides, you'll quickly discover that it doesn't work. At all. Until you completely disable error reporting, that is. And even then, chances are it still won't work because the documentation doesn't provide instructions on how to use it correctly and the one example (which is mentioned nowhere, and can only be found by manually poking through the directory structure of the downloaded SDK) doesn't even work.
I use PayPal's standard payment system to accept Jetpants subscription payments and it works fine, but for godssake, do yourself a favor and stay away from their so-called "professional" API. There's nothing professional about it.
Comments
http://Ivorysunfinishedthoughts.blogspot.com
Every time I open the paypal website I want to either hurl myself off the bridge into the quarry (this is my chosen method, should the need for death ever arise) or just start shooting people from my living room window, but then again, I live in what I call, The Hood, so gunfire would probably go unnoticed for the most part, but then again, I am a white girl so someone might catch on! When a simple task such as changing ones last name goes completely undone because it is just too difficult for paypal to understand the concept of people marrying, it doesn't really say much for the rest of their highly-complex system. Paypal has me so confused I don't even know what my name is anymore! Their business is based solely on mocking their customers/users and making them think they should be trusted. It's definitely a fine line they walk!
Here! Here!
Paypal is owned by the eBay devil-machine. Funny story: After realizing that their 'business' accounts take a fee for every transaction (even non-credit card ones) I downgraded back to a generic account. Enter eBay: I was selling things and then eBay threatened to kick me off cos I am not allowed to advertise that I accept Paypal if I cannot accept ALL forms of payment (the damn credit cards) through paypal. Thus the eBay devil-machine guarantees they get not only my listing fee, but the closing fee and then the fee they charge through paypal to accept any payment via their business/premier accounts. It's a complete conspiracy to ruin my eBay livelihood. Bastards. Rage Against the PayPal machine my brother, RAGE!!
BTW: Khrysten above sent me to this lovely little blog and I lurve it. I also lurved your Firefly fan film, but not as much as she did.
Paypal Sucks
I REFUSE to use PayPal. They are the devil incarnate. Please read www.paypalsucks.com for more details.
Professionalism
Maybe you're right, but I'm just too persistent to getting it to work the way I want it. The SDK is quite professional, but you really need to put a lot of effort into it.... too bad. PayPal doesn't suck, there just isn't anything better and they make (not very good) business decisions...
Erik de Bruijn
http://www.BudgetDedicated.com
Yes, I agree, paypal IS a health hazard
Well, I worry one day I will log onto my account, my funds will be GONE, and I will suffer from a heart defect. They have strerssed me out so much over payments in past year or so.
They have held back payments made by ebayers, just becuase the ebayer was not pleased with their item, and I got no warning! Even when the money (£351) was returned to my account, the took a bloody 5% chunk out of that!
Good god, not only my standard transactions they are eating, but money holding as well.
I think paypal is THE most disorganised banking "firm" I have ever used, and would love to consider scrapping my account, and setting up an anti-paypal campaign. But hey, my customers use paypal, so I'm kinda screwed...
Advise - close any Paypal accounts you have!
On June 5th, I received all kinds of transaction confirmations from various online gaming sites. Seven went against my credit card and approximately 20 others were against my checking account. Luckily, I was alerted to this almost immediately. My wife works at the bank where my accounts are and I had her put a freeze on the account. I also called and cancelled my credit card. No funds were ever transferred. I was lucky - these transactions totaled just over $900.00. I am still dealing with Paypal to close this account and remove all of my personal information from their systems. My wife tells me that almost every customer at the bank that has had some type of fraudulent activity against their account has initiated from a Paypal account. Man, I wish she had told me this a long time ago. I also wonder why this type of information has not spead like wildfire through-out the public.
Same experience here
Having the same exact experience with Website Payments Pro and the PHP SDK -- extremely convoluted, nonworking product out of the box and the documentation for the PHP SDK is all but nonexistent. After nearly a weekend invested tinkering with it and trying to reverse engineer it thanks to the nonexistent documentation I already am considering moving on to a more professional, robust solution.
fuckers
I hate you fucking Paypal ... go fucking die........bitches,assholes... always make troble bitches.... son of bitches....
No title
dick head...
sssucks
i hate paypal, everytime i try to make a payment i keep getting page error, it sucks! its been going on now for a while.i cant make any orders
Do I have to get a new credit card just to make a f%$^ing payment online?
I am really pissed off. Paypal are just useless. I set up an account probably 5 yrs ago. Being a student i’ve moved a couple of times. The whole set up for paypal is really only designed for American phone numbers anyway. I would had to have ‘created’ an Australian phone number the same length as an American number. Of course I can’t fucking remember what that is and because the pricks are so useless there is no ‘secret question’ or anything that can help me recover and update my details. So I can never use my credit card number via paypal again. Why is it all so fucking hard!