We are a small home business that makes handmade custom created pet products for people who have pet poultry. Normally my customers email me, I send them a paypal invoice, and they pay it. It was easy. Now the new system is causing me much grief....
With the new invoice system, I have MANY complaints-
-No Warning about the change, no option to use old system.
I felt like I got hit in the face today when I went to send an invoice. No warning was given to let me know that the invoicing system would change. There is no option to use the old system. Whenever big changes are made to often used internet forums or services (like gmail, yahoo home page, facebook etc) you have the option to upgrade or to continue using the old system. Paypal does not offer this. It simple FORCES its long time users to use the new system.
-I Cannot use my old templates.
I spent a long time on those templates. Telling me I cannot integrate them into the new system for MONTHS is down right absurd. If Paypal wasn't ready to integrate the old templates, they should have waited to change their invoicing system when they could integrate the old templates.
-It takes MUCH LONGER to use the new template.
This wastes my valuable time. I make all the items for my business by hand, meaning I need to spend as much of my working hours as possible sewing. If it takes me an extra 5-6 minutes per invoice to fill in all the now required info (that wasn't required before) and I have say 5 invoices to create in one day, paypal has just wasted 30 minutes of my precious time. I work anywhere between 60-100 hours a week depending on my order volume and I do not have that kind of time to waste, especially with paypal charging me to use their system.... At that point, I should charge paypal. I am SERIOUSLY considering using another method to receive payments from my customers.
-It FORCES you to input information that used to be optional.
I do not use Invoice numbers. I do not want my customers thinking I've only had a certain amount of business based on those numbers. It used to be an option. Now it is REQUIRED? Not cool Paypal... I've only made one invoice so far but I have a feeling it won't let me use the same invoice number of 0000 over and over again.
It also makes you put a date next to each item. I do not need to date each item because my items are custom made as ordered, so the wait times are varied. When I pull up the invoice via My Account, I usually copy the list of items ands paste them into a word processor (along with the customer's address once they've paid) to create a master list of items I need to make. Now it puts that **bleep** date next to each item, making my lists sloppy and harder to read.
-The note to the purchaser is now at the bottom.
My notes to the customers are very important and I had a hard enough time getting them to read it before when it was on top. I'm already foreseeing stupid emails and complaints from my customers because they did not read the note. At the bottom, under "terms and conditions" it is so easy to just skip over it.
-I do not use the Item number box.
Now that it is the main box above the item description, it looks terrible and easily gets confused with the old invoice template (Where it was a small box next to the description). For those of us that do not use item numbers, this makes our invoices look less professional than before.
-The "due" button.
Makes sense for some people, but all of my invoices are due upon receipt. and what does net 10, net 15, net 30, etc mean? I don't get it.
-My customer complained.
Already on my first invoice sent to a customer, I got complaints that the new invoice was hard to understand and that she wanted the old invoice back. That right there says a lot to me... If my customers continue to tell me how much they dislike the new template, I will be forced to using a different merchant service.
-A complaint I've always had with both systems- We should be able to save a template without entering an email address for the recipient. That way certain templates with different notes can be saved.
I seriously DISLIKE and ABHOR the new invoice system. Changes need to be made pronto if paypal in going to keep me as a customer. Paying paypal the fees it's takes out for every transaction makes sense unless paypal is costing me more money than it's worth....
