So transaction emails now come from service at paypal.com instead of the buyer's email

[hepafilter]

Please. please, please change it back, or at least make it so if I reply, it goes to the buyer's email. This has really **bleep**ed up my method.

[hugostiglitz]

Thank you! It works!!!!

[digitalsends]

This is absolutely TERRIBLE for my business, as I automatically send digital goods to the buyer's email address as soon as the Paypal email arrives, and my orders come at all hours, from many countries.

Now those who are unfortunate enough to pay via Paypal, have to wait until I wake up or return from the supermarket?????

For 10 years Paypal was the only way I accepted payments, but now it's Google Checkout time:

After talking with Paypal on the phone and getting nowhere, I immediately told my Web designer (I have my own website) to add Google Checkout to my site, which does have an established way to send digital goods to buyers right after payment completes.

Way to go Paypal!!!

Send me another survey asking if I'd recomment Paypal to family and friends, why don't you??????

[rjcalnan]

Well - then apparently for ten years you've been doing it wrong, because this has been a "known" issue for ten years, that just got attention 7 years ago, and fixed two days ago.

lol

Forget it guys ... Paypal's done with even bothering listening to us. Not that they've ever listened to us prior to this.

They want ZERO direct communication between buyer and seller (just like Amazon has, which is a nightmare for facilitating things).

Olivia's even stopped replying because it's obvious there's nowhere to go but down. Every response, except the truth, just keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper.

[digitalsends]

I had a good business on amazon, and left it when I got fed up with the Gestapo tactics.

If eBay and Paypal is trying to imitate Amazon thinking that they've discovered Amazon's "secret of success", then they're totally naive and ignorant, to put it mildly.

Amazon's success is because they're smart:

1) FREE LISTINGS THAT DON'T EXPIRE, with a nominal store fee each month. As a result, almost every store in the country sells through Amazon.

2) They sell their own products.

eBay does none of these two things, and instead, keeps tweaking their electronic surveillance...some people on eBay get paid very well just to create work for themselves and havoc for us, the people that make them their money.

So I keep growing my store on iOffer instead of eBay, because they have the free listings AND free store, and a MUCH better, faster, easier interface than both eBay and Amazon..

[sdamfg]

This latest change to the Subject Line on new orders brings our daily routine to a halt!!  In addition, any customer inquiry takes too long to find their order.  We have over 10,000 customer orders that were easy to quickly identify and access, that is now an impossible task.

It can't be that hard to copy the old code back into the program.  Given the amount of complaints I don't think PayPal has any excuses that would justify staying with an unfriendly process.  Wake Up  PayPal !!!!!

[superfuzed]

rjcalnan is right.

Might as well not waste our time.

This is all about Paypal/Ebay limiting direct seller-to-buyer communication.

Notice how after they got called out on each of their replies being bunk, they don't bother to reply at all.

The simplest solution, as rjcalnan posted is to at the very LEAST make the "reply to" line the email address so that all of our auto-responders will work.

But they won't.

Typical Ebay/Paypal.

It's nice to see them value their customers so much.

Other companies that try these tactics usually fall by the wayside. It's nice to know that I'm young enough that I'll get to see these "empires" collapse as well.

[DudleyMorton]

Hi Olivia,

Thanks for your time you take to respond to our messages.

You instruct us not to rely on email notifications because "fraudster can mimic emails" and email "relies on the activities of two (or potentially more) email servers." Fine. At the same time, you tell us that "The problem that caused the need for the change is that many customers were not reliably getting payment notifications at all."

So which is it? Are payment notifications important or not? Why did you care that some of your merchants didn't get any notification email if they are unreliable anyway? Why did you not instruct that group of people to start using Instant Payment Notifications? Instead, you made a change that affected merchants relying on this feature for many years and now we - presumably a majority of your merchants - are forced to find workarounds or  learn to use IPN. I, like many other clients of yours, am a small business owner and have neither the time nor the resources to incorporate IPN in my process. Your change impacts my business profoundly – and not in a good way.

I realize that it is unlikely you – Olivia - designed or approved this change and now you are forced to defend it even though you may even agree with us. If that is the case, please find the courage to convey to you superiors that this is an irresponsible and poorly thought through change that will antagonize your customers.

Thank you.

[ladykingel]

Paypal...i am one of your supporters, BUT THIS CHANGE HAS completely stopped my business on three sites.  Really one of the very worst changes you have ever made.  There must be a better way for us to be able to reply to our customers without having to manually address each one.  We are in the 21st century, and you have brought us back 20 years...this is a huge problem for those of us who must reply to customers continuously.

Please undo this change.

Most respectfully submitted.

l

[Nanoreef]

Allow me to add my voice to the chorus of dissent.

It looks like many of us deal in digital, downloadable, nontangible goods. And many of us use shopping cart systems--including paypal's cart system, which I might add has never been very accurate or good at managing muiltiple download products, much less sending the customer to the download page every time for a single order.

And now we have to manually dig out the customer's email address or risk accidentally replying to service-at-paypal.com, where the bounced back email doesn't even alert us to WHICH customer's email adderss returned?

This is unacceptable and needs improvement as soon as possible.

This is a HUGE hassle for merchants who deal in hundreds of transactions a day. Here is a quick summary of how my business responds to an order for a digital product:

Reply-email

In email body macro download directions and thank you.

Macro subject "Thank you for your order to xyz.com"

Send

---

You can see where the cogworks go haywire now. I now have two additional steps where I must scroll down through the body of the email, find the address, and then paste it into the reply to address line.

This would not be a problem if we had a couple to a dozen orders a day.

Our business is somewhat successful, and we have a lot more than that--in addition to selling physical products.

Olivia, please pass this on to your higher-ups. If this is not addressed in a timely and respectful fashion, you will be losing my business in a week.

Thanks.

[digitalsends]

I'm in the same boat, with my own website and digital goods that must be emailed to buyers worldwide at all hours immediately after payment. So now, I actually say on my site, that those who used Paypal may have to wait several hours to receive their digital goods due to Paypal's unfortunate change in the payment emails. I'm sure Paypal appreciates becoming known worldwide for its..."efficiency".