Paypal down again? All account activity vanished

[momcqueen]

This afternoon, moments after I hit 'pay and continue' on a shipping label, paypal had a fairly substantial hiccup that saw all information associated with my account activity disappear. It still shows a currency balance but that is all. "Please try again." I also had to manually enter my tracking number as well as mark the item Shipped on ebay. 

Earlier this week, I got random captcha-type prompts that I have never seen before when logging in to print a label from the Order History menu. 

Does this kind of thing cause anyone else apprehension?

I can't help but feel paypal has had an unusual number of glitches lately. And I hope this isn't another case where they tell us weeks later that something untoward has happened.... 

Site maintenance? It seems like there is never much happening on their boards. Another place to look? Anyone know? I checked ecommebytes and saw nothing about it. 

[momcqueen]

The account activity is back and the label was purchased as it should be but paypal could not recognize the item had shipped so I had to mark it paid and shipped and upload the tracking on it. Also, I find it odd the way the paypal transaction details page says the address is Confirmed address

Toronto ON  MXG XKX
Canada
Confirmed  

but the Canada Post label purchase page on paypal does not 

Toronto ON MXG XKX
Canada
Unconfirmed Residential address

I'm the one who nixed the numerals in the postal code so as not to inadvertently identify the transaction or buyer.

[vintagenorth]

I had the same things happen to me the middle of last week.Paypal didn't show my item as shipped after I purchased a label but I did come across a line under my PayPal transaction that then asked me if the item had been shipped and if I wanted my buyer notified. I had to mark it paid, shipped and add tracking. I also got that unconfirmed residential address line in eBay and had to mark as paid. Weird, huh?

On my other ID I will need to print PayPal labels tomorrow so will see what happens then.

[momcqueen]

I was able to print postage via Paypal Shipping this morning BUT it did not acknowledge on the paypal entry that the label had been bought; I had to enter that information again: mark it shipped on paypal, plus add tracking and carrier. Again, no email confirmation that postage had been purchased.

I do not like this. Aside from it being extra steps, it also bothers me that Paypal should be as secure as a financial institution website -- without glitches or any manner of weirdness -- but no longer seems to be.

It's not like we have much of a choice on whether or not to use paypal. Plus, you know, we have MONEY there in it.

I am more forgiving about ebay glitches than paypal ones. I can understand how ebay could be very complicated to operate. Paypal, not so much. Currency conversion, okay. Postage, okay. Some merchant services, fine. But my account activity shouldn't vanish for any amount of time without prior warning there's maintenance or something. My online banking provider does a much better job communicating well in advance what might be acting up and for what duration. 

These kinds of hiccups undermine my confidence in paypal and I have always thought highly of how it's been operating until now.

Also: http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/S/S?PL&1445192044

We're not alone.

[vintagenorth]

Hi mj, same thing again this morning. I think I may have found a work-around though. I noticed that the first label I purchased I did it by going to "print shipping label" from My Ebay page. That was the one that did not show as shipped in PayPal although the label printed fine. The next one I printed from my PayPal summary page and that label printed and the item showed as shipped. I think I will print directly from PayPal from now on instead of through My Ebay. It seems that Paypal and ebay aren't talking to one another just now!

If you are here on Wed. for the board hour (I may not be, dentist appt) can you please mention this problem to Raphael? Thanks!

[momcqueen]

Will do. I should be here on Wednesday this week. I've another problem to raise with Markdowns not ending. 

[pjcdn2005]

Are you using the print label link on ebay or paypal? Last night I printed two labels from Paypal and the information was automatically transferred to ebay.

[momcqueen]

Both. Either at random. This doesn't seem to be like th elast time where paypal printed but eBay was left unaware. Unless eBay being aware means paypal is not. 

[momcqueen]

I didn't do a very good job getting this addressed. Here is the response from Board Hour.

"As a PayPal customer I highly recommend inquiring directly with them any time there is a service disruption. On the eBay side, even though we are not separate companies, PayPal is still the preferred payment platform since we are so closely integrated with their service. I can't speak to if or when we will see similar integration with other payments providers yet, unfortunately."

I think he meant to say not the same companies. 

It's about halfway down page two.

http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Weekly-Board-Hour-Session/October-21st-2015-Weekly-Session/td-p/316458/p...

[goldnideas]

I can't print shipping labels for third day.....

[momcqueen]

There are other issues with paypal that are cropping up but you should be able to purchase and print postage still. You're not running Windows 10, are you? 

[momcqueen]

This is just one of the threads that talks about recent paypal glitches and it also links to a third thread near the end. They are everywhere lately. 

http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/PAYPAL-notifications-are-MIA-again/m-p/316890#M50514

[goldnideas]

Yes, I have Windows 10 since day one, at first was not able to print labels with IE, but Mozilla always worked great. Now I can't generate labels on Paypal website, tried at work, at library, different computers at home, nothing!

Every time receive message -

"We are not able to generate your label at this time. Your PayPal account was not charged. Please try again later.

• PayPal Shipping is not available. We apologize for the inconvenience."

[momcqueen]

That particular message is a frustrating one. It is the generic one used by paypal shipping to denote an error in anything from the buyer's address to complete website failures. Let's see..... is your buyer international in this case? French with a long town name, or with foreign typographical characters? Addresses in Holland and Austria are backwards with numbers last and I've yet to successfully generate one online. The fact you're getting the same message from every computer you've used tells me it's more likely a problem with the buyer address. Is that possible? Are there other browsers to try on the different machines you've used or are they all running Windows 10?

[momcqueen]

No matter, your buyer will be upset if you wait any longer to purchase a label. Take your order to the post office and send it the old fashion way. It's better to troubleshoot in this case after the fact now that three days have passed. 

[goldnideas]

I was in touch with Paypal, they checked everything, and now blame Canada Post for disconnection. Tried Canada Post online, no luck, they have only one option to ship inside Canada, so probably it is postal service issue.

[art-in-the-making]

having very similar problems

[pjcdn2005]

If it was a Canada Post problem I doubt that anyone could print labels. I didn't have any problems printing one yesterday.

[momcqueen]

There is a whole host of What-the-Hecks at play now, and that Can't Generate a Label error from paypal Shipping means any one of a dozen aspects could have failed along the way, which makes it VERY difficult to troubleshoot the actual cause. If it persists, make every effort to contact the buyer directly to confirm the exact details of their address and then go to the postal counter the old-fashion way. The discount on service that you might have gained using Paypal to purchase postage is NOT worth the aggravation of a late dispatch. 

For more information on the outages, please see Fri Oct 30 2015 19:25:39 eBay to Email Sellers Impacted by Thursday Outage

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2015/10/1446247539.html

"eBay spokesperson Ryan Moore confirmed on Friday evening that a power outage at one of its data centers impacted its marketplace on Thursday. At this time, neither he nor a spokesperson we reached for PayPal would address the fact that both companies experienced a data-center power outage at the same time....."

[pjcdn2005]

The complaint in the last few days on these boards seems to be about Paypal shipping, not the whole Paypal site so that might be totally unrelated to the ebay/Paypal recent outage.  As you mentioned, the error message can cover a few different problems so it is impossible to know if it is a browser problem, an address problem...or a problem that can only be fixed at paypal's end.

I totally agree that if a seller cannot use Paypal, they should buy postage through Canada Post or at an outlet. It doesn't make sense to make the customer wait an extra day or two. Of course it is frustrating to have to spend more but I don't think that the customer should have to wait because of a problem with Paypal shipping.