As a developer and entrepreneur I have extensive experience with the Paypal API and I couldn't agree more with the words of Michael Arrington in his post about the closure of Edgeio and the future of the TC Job board.

However I can go much further, not only is their API total crap but their support is the worst support I have ever come across in the tech sector.

To give you an example, I have a small problem with the language a user is presented with when he arrives at Paypal after clicking on a buy now, on Safari the user gets Paypal French, on Firefox is presented in English.

Obviously something is a miss so I contact their support on 2007-10-13 asking for an explication, no less than one month passes and on 2007-11-16 I receive this nonsense reply:

"Thank you for contacting PayPal by email. We apologise for the delay in responding to you.

We value your business and we want to address all your questions in a timely fashion. If you still have a matter outstanding, please either re-send your email or, if you would prefer to speak with a PayPal representative, contact us at 0870 730 1895".

"No Shit" that was it no help. So immediately I wrote again explaining the problem yet again, then 3 weeks pass and on the 2007-12-03 I receive the following reply:

"Upon reviewing your account, I can confirm that if you have any difficulty
in integrating PayPal on your website, open a Merchant Technical Support
ticket following the steps below:

Please let me know if you need further assistance."

What a lot of nonsense. I would have expected that a competent company that looks after our money, could have (at least) simply forwarded the question to a real tech support person who was in the 'right' department. Alas instead they like to wait a month then 'apologise' for their inconvenience yet again. This is total bullshit. If you display total incompetence with regards support, god only knows how in hell we can trust them to look after our money?

There are many issues with the Paypal API, I don't want to list them all here as embarrassing as they are, for fear of boring the hell out my readers, however, having a language selection option on the landing pages would probably be a good idea Tech support guys!

Edit: after popular demand I will elaborate on the other little issues that wind me up with the Paypal API.

OK,

1) First thing is their sandbox, where you can test their api (before you go live), you are forced to open an account with an email address like you are a paypal customer, with a unique password. It stores the passes, and will not allow already registered paypal accounts/emails, so you have to have a few real emails to get going, not to mention waste 20 minutes setting up the account. God forbid you ever forget the user and pass as you will find yourself at it all again with yet another email account. Advice REMOVE THAT.

2) In the sand box you get like 100 pound to spend before you have to recharge the credit card? WTF, this process does not work (for me), hence you end up either setting up another account or fathing about yet further to figure it out. Advice REMOVE THAT.

3) In the sand box you cannot check the AUTO RETURN to merchant function, this is when your shopper has paid for their goods you want them auto returned back to the shop to update the db with their sale details. If it's virtual goods they need it now, not when you get back online. So how do you test it really? This is further aggravated by the fact that the real API does not let you dynamically set up a return path (URL) when in the AUTO RETURN to merchant mode. Further the problem with the AUTO RETURN function is that you can only set one URL, (ideally I would like to set this return path dynamically like you can when not using the AUTO RETURN function. Still further aggravated is that the IPN data is not sent in the same format on AUTO RETURN, so you have to set up yet more complicated systems to get the same data.

4) Don't even bother trying to work out their IPN system it's a complete and utter mess. There is a free 'third party' PHP class called Paypal.class that actually makes the whole process workable. You don't need spend 2 days working out how to configure their variables as this class sets it all up and in a n hour you can be in business. ADVICE, link to that PHP class from Paypal!

5) They claim that you can select the language you want the customer presented with, (this don't work) in the preferences, however, I have a property related site, aimed at France and English speaking, if you present it in any one language kiss goodbye to others. STRONG ADVICE, put a language selector on the merchant landing pages (like you do on the homepage).

Thats it for now, but as you can see they are not small issues, and really are basic to the success of any business incorporating and servicing their clients.