Is PayPal Payment Pro ready for Prime Time?

I need to decide fast

[dataguy]

I've been with the same mechant services company for 6 years and I detest them. Bad service, hidden fees & bad rates are the norm, but I signed a 3 year contract and I wasn't willing to pay the fees to get out of it, and after 3 years I just never found the time to switch.

I've just recently incorporated my business, and they have told me that I need to create a new account, signing a new contract, paying all the startup fees, etc. I can't imagine doing this as they have been the source of constant agony for years.

The problem is that they are the devil I know. We run alot of payments through them each month, and we've had the time to get the bugs out of their system. But now I have to make a decision.

Is PayPal ready yet? Our servers run Windows, so I would have to use the .NET integration, which I also have a pretty low opinion of.

From what I've read, the benefits of PayPal is that their rates are low, and the biggest problems are their complex integration and the fact that they reject a lot of buyers.

Is this still true? I know PayPal is willing to work for my business, which is more than can be said for most of the merchant service providers I've seen.
Any advi ce is appreciated.

[Brett_Tabke]

I have to agree. I have been to bat for PayPal numerous times over the years. It is without-a-doubt one of the best companies and systems I have ever worked with.

However, Website Payments Pro is the first time I have been disappointed with PayPal. There are very few people who have been able to get payments pro working. No one that I know of has it working in Perl yet. There are some test scripts floating around, but it has serious limitations and doesn't include the rest of the code.

I have slogged through the mountains of documentation PP has put out. It is far to granular - contains irrelevant information, and no simple step by step implimentation guide. You literatlly have to write the code by yourself. They also fail to give you specifics like the sandbox adr to test live payments pro code.

I have been attempting to hire someone to do the programming for us. I have called EVERY company paypal recommends [paypal.com] for Website Payments Pro, and NOT A SINGLE one has been able to show me working code, sell me working code, or tell me how to get working code. There is but one person I have even heard of that has working php code, and that is one of our esteemed moderators here. I am sure there must be some usable code out there somewhere, but I sure can't find it...

The only working website payments pro setup I have seen, are through a couple of the 3rd parting shopping mals - which is of no use to me.

<added>
I see they have added some fresh meat to the recommend offerings - including pair networks and some actual code offerings for only $2400 a year ... off to call those.
</added>

[HRoth]

I too hate my payment processor and so looked into PayPal Pro. The one thing that bothered me was a post by someone who said s/he thought their decline rate was high. If the address doesn't match, it will be declined, and you can't set it to ignore that like you can with Authorize.net. Paypal assured me that AVS always worked correctly. Not in my experience. Half the time if the address is a PO box or a numbered street, it shows No Match. So I thought this was reason enough not to use it. About 10% of my sales are No Match on AVS.

[Harry]

I checked all the shopping carts that were suggested by Paypal and I would never hook up with one of them. They all seem like rank amateurs who can't even bother to put a demo that works.

I had high hopes for PP but it seems that the e-commerce payment gateway route is one unending road of disapointments.

Is there a company in the world who can provide a gateway that works and doesn't piss off merchants?

[Brett_Tabke]

I don't think that is true Harry. There are some quality companies now. Try pair web host that is running shopsite - both are quality companies. However, it is locked in unchangeable solution unfit for anyone but niche sites.

[rmack]

I switched to PayPal Pro a week ago, and I too feel it has a high decline rate. The decline messages make no sense, either.

I am disappointed in that, but so far everything else has been easy. I had been using PayPal's website payments previously, so I was used to having everything go into PayPal and I still like that part of it.