It Seems VMWare Can’t Do Any Better The Parallels…. Why Is It So Hard To Order By PayPal? [UPDATED x4]
You’ll recall that I tried to order the latest version of Parallels Desktop using PayPal and couldn’t. Then they canceled my order because I didn’t pay them. Not that they gave me the opportunity to. So last night I tried to order VMWare Fusion via PayPal. Guess what? Just like with Parallels they promised that I would get an e-mail confirming my order. But I didn’t.
I really don’t get why it is so hard to order something via PayPal with either VMWare or Parallels. In either case I go through the process to order and in both cases I get a message saying that I will get an e-mail confirming my order. The e-mail in either case never arrives. Given that I can order something from vendors like ThinkGeek and Skype, and the fact that I control the e-mail server that these e-mails would be going to (and there are zero issues there), that says to me that these VMWare and Parallels have issues with taking PayPal as payment. That’s very disappointing as PayPal is quite simply a safer way to pay for purchases on line. Given that the process to order from either company looks almost exactly the same, I suspect that they have the same company handling their respective online presences. I know for a fact that in the case of Parallels that’s Digital River. VMWare doesn’t make it clear who handles their online store, but I suspect they use them as well.
So here’s my challenge to both VMWare and Parallels. If you want my business, you need to explain to to me why something as simple as ordering using PayPal as my method of payment seems to be such a challenge. You also need to fix your processes so that customers can choose to pay you guys using whatever method of payment they choose. And finally, I’d actually like to be able to order and receive my product in a timely manner. The first one to the table, gets my business and a lot of praise in this blog for stepping up to the plate. By the way, in case you’re wondering why I’m making such a big deal about this, it’s simple. If you offer a payment method, it has to work or don’t bother offering it as an option.
The clock starts now.
UPDATE: A comment was left that seems to indicate that this is a PayPal problem. Assuming that is true, it would be helpful if either of these companies mans up to it rather than stay silent.
UPDATE #2: VMWare seems to want my business. They’ve jumped in and are trying to sort out why I can’t order via PayPal. Another note, they also confirmed that they too use Digital River for their online store. Bravo to VMWare for stepping up to the plate. Now we’ll see if it actually gets resolved.
UPDATE #3: VMWare e-mailed me at 7:30 AM this morning to try and sort this out. Parallels e-mailed at 3:36 PM and offered me a free copy. Draw your own conclusions. Keep in mind I’m not looking for a freebie. I simply wanted to be able to order Parallels Desktop 6 using the payment method of my choice. So Parallels I’ll take your copy and say thank you, and I will note that in your e-mail to me that you’re going to fix things so that this doesn’t happen again. Great. I’ll be watching.
UPDATE #4: VMWare surprisingly really managed to bungle this. This is what they VMWare forwarded to me from Digital River:
At this time if the payment has not been completed, we would suggest to
have this order cancelled and a new one set up for the order.
Thank you for contacting Digital River.
So they then canceled my order. I then tried to order it again using PayPal as they suggested, and guess what? It didn’t work AGAIN. At this point, VMWare is out of chances. Parallels despite all the negative press associated with their support came through. VMWare didn’t come through. Take a guess who I am going to be singing the praises of?
Oh, for those who want to know what I think of Parallels Desktop 6, watch for a review in the next few days.
September 18, 2010 at 2:01 pm
PayPal released a statement about their IPN system. They noted that there are issues on their end. I have an e-store and had some major issues with the IPN not sending a notification to the listener on my server which would then trigger the welcome email to my customers. This caused multiple problems. I keep a closer eye on it now to manually create customer accounts because PayPal has yet to fix the issues. They did say that they’d update the post when the problem was solved.