Google checkout must die

[Jeff Schnitzer]

Seriously, this is ridiculous.

We've been trying to enable billing on our sandbox/demo appid for the
last two hours. We have a customer waiting for a demo and we can't
give it.

Please, PLEASE do something about this abomination. I love appengine,
but the billing system is retarded. It makes the Phone Company look
high tech.

Every time we enable billing, it says "ok" and status goes to
Activating Billing. After some random amount of time it goes back to
Free mode with no error messages. Trying to enable it again emails
a nastygram: Comments from Google Services: "This inactive
subscription has been canceled" ...and goes back to Activating
Billing. Round and round we go.

Appid is voosttest. Yes we've filed a request at the billing form.

Put this in context. I can walk up to a janky ATM in Guatemala, put
in a card, and get money out of it immediately. I can whip out a
credit card in nearly any store in the world, buy thousands of dollars
of merchandise, and walk out with it. And yet the most technically
sophisticated corporation in the world needs 30+ minutes to process a
simple sale - when it works at all? I struggle to imagine what could
make this so complicated.

Jeff

[Stefano Ciccarelli]

You are blessed!!!

I agree with every word!!!

-- 
Stefano Ciccarelli

Sent with Sparrow

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[Albert]

+1

[doright]

+1 

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/google-appengine/ug3wkV4-1cw

during my 4 hour production outage last night - during Easter Bank Holiday weekend, my clients busiest so far this year - I had plenty of time to think of analogies.

here's my favorite:

Google is the NASA of tech firms.  They sell space-travel to us mortals.  That's all good, space travel they can do.  Trouble is they employed the dumbest bouncer in the world to let people onto their high tech spacecraft.

me: "um, but I've been using your spaceships all year, and have been very happy. You have my credit card, and I have important clients here waiting. I've spent over a year telling them how good you are at Space travel, they are willing to pay, please let me continue to have access to the universes riches"
bouncer: "***  off I don't like your trainers"  (being an automated bouncer his actual words were "A charge has been issued to the billing administrator. (You will be able to make changes to your budget settings again once the outstanding payment is processed.) "

:(

[Daniel Florey]

I've also enabled billing for a lot of apps and it turns out that in many cases activating billing just redirects the user to the payment screen over and over again.

After a while billing may be activated, even though the success page is never displayed.

This is indeed annoying ... but on the other hand I'd be very happy to use checkout to pay my premier account instead of sending a checks with Fedex from Germany to the US ;-)

On Friday, April 6, 2012 9:10:20 PM UTC+2, Jeff Schnitzer wrote:

[poke]

+1
Google Checkout is killing me :( .

[Gwyn Howell]

+1. by the way, is it google checkout, or google wallet?!

[Chris Ramsdale]

Hey Jeff,

Thanks for venting, this is a vicious cycle that needs to be fixed.  We've addressed several issues that land people in the 'Free' => 'Activating...' => 'Free' bucket.  These fixes will be rolled out with 1.6.5.

Next?  Look into speeding up Checkout all together.

-- Chris

Jeff

[Jeff Schnitzer]

Thanks for making the billing UX a priority - it's not a Big Feature
Item, but it will make a lot of people very happy (or not upset).

Jeff