PayPal customers will receive credits for all fees incurred on Thursday, October 28, 2004, between 12:00:00 am PDT and 11:59:59 pm PDT. All PayPal domestic payments and cross border fees will be credited, and there is no limit to the number of payments a customer can receive. To receive the credit, customers don't need to take any action. PayPal will automatically add up the fees accumulated on that day and send the appropriate credit to all qualifying users' accounts by November 25, 2004.
The offer is available only for users in certain countries. Excluded from the offer are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. See Terms and Conditions on PayPal's site for further details.
PayPal said it would give customers the free day of use to apologize for the technology issues recently experienced by the PayPal site and to show appreciation to PayPal customers for their continued business.
PayPal began experiencing technical issues on October 8 that lasted through October 12. The problems mainly affected online auctions and small ecommerce sites, but some users of PayPal's debit card could not pay for offline purchases either.
eBay-owned PayPal blamed the problems on coding changes rolled out on October 8. eBay President Meg Whitman apologized to users on the eBay announcement board on October 14 and to shareholders during a conference call with investors on October 20.
Reaction to the announcement was mixed on Wednesday. Some users posted thank yous, while others felt PayPal could do more. One poster wrote, "How about refunding all of every sellers listing fees especially for the items that where Immediate Payment Required for the almost two weeks the Paypal system would not work properly."
Immediate Payment Required are Buy It Now eBay listings in which PayPal is a required form of payment that must be made as soon as the buyer hits the Buy It Now button (http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/immediatepayment.html). Since PayPal was required but could not be used, some believe eBay should refund those listing fees.
The poster continued, "Second also remove the Negative feedback that some users received due to Paypal's problem." Frequently buyers are unaware of eBay or PayPal technical glitches and may be suspicious of the seller when things go wrong.
http://www2.ebay.com:80/aw/marketing.shtml#2004-10-27114442
