denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
Denise ([staff profile] denise) wrote in [site community profile] dw_news2009-04-30 09:58 pm

Oops!

As many people have noticed, we had two problems appearing in our payment system that didn't crop up during our testing:

* People who were paying to create a new account were receiving an "invalid username" error when they input their email address for the account creation code to be sent to;

* Our PayPal configuration is using PayPal's express checkout, which does require people to have PayPal accounts, rather than the option that allows people to pay as "guests".

Both of these were our errors, and we're really sorry about them. We did test those workflows, but we didn't pick up on those problems.

We've fixed the "invalid username" error now, and verified that the fix is working. If you were paying to create an account, it will work now, and tomorrow morning's Seed Account sale will work without this problem.

The problem with PayPal requiring a PayPal account is a little more complicated for us to fix, because it requires some more sweeping code changes and testing. We know that we told you guys that we'd accept credit card payments without requiring PayPal accounts, and we know that a lot of people missed out on buying a Seed Account in this sale because their payments wouldn't complete properly.

To fix this, we're going to do two things:

* We will put the second batch of 200 Seed Accounts on sale tomorrow morning, 0900 EDT, as scheduled. If you don't have a PayPal account, but you still want to buy a seed account in that sale, you can choose Check/Money Order as your payment type and send in the check or money order to us.

* Because these two errors were serious enough that they interfered with the Seed Account sale, we'll hold another sale in one week's time. We will sell 100 Seed Accounts on Thursday, May 7 at 9PM EDT (GMT -4), and 100 Seed Accounts on Friday, May 8 at 9AM EDT. This will let people who missed out on buying a seed account because of our mistake (either the PayPal problem or the invalid-username problem) have another chance at buying an account.

If you had any other errors during the payment process, we're working through our payment support requests as quickly as we possibly can, and we'll get to your request as quickly as possible.

We're really sorry about the errors!


Edit: And, the next problem identified and fixed as well. If you were having problems using the account creation code you were emailed, it should now be fixed.
eagle: Me at the Adobe in Yachats, Oregon (Default)

[personal profile] eagle 2009-05-01 02:19 am (UTC)(link)
It's unfortunately a bit complicated to fix the PayPal setup so that you don't have to create a PayPal account. It will definitely be fixed, but it won't be fixed tonight.
iadorespike: (Default)

[personal profile] iadorespike 2009-05-01 02:35 am (UTC)(link)
I have a PayPal account, and it didn't help me much.

:(
eagle: Me at the Adobe in Yachats, Oregon (Default)

[personal profile] eagle 2009-05-01 02:43 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, there have been a few reports of weird PayPal errors, such as a mostly uninformative "an error occurred" errors. For that, I suspect the right thing to do is to open a support request at http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/submit.bml in the account payments category explaining what error message you got, from what page, and what you did leading up to it.

I've had problems with paying via PayPal in other places as well. It can be a touch weird at times.
iadorespike: (Default)

[personal profile] iadorespike 2009-05-01 02:54 am (UTC)(link)
I didn't get an error message. What I got was a blank screen with this address:

http://www.dreamwidth.org/shop/confirm?ordernum=346-dz4yf7zgdxs35fk4ganp

I have two support requests in, in fact. We'll see.

:(

eagle: Me at the Adobe in Yachats, Oregon (Default)

[personal profile] eagle 2009-05-01 03:05 am (UTC)(link)
Oh! That's probably the zombie cart problem. I hit that as well. It's a known bug, but not fixed yet. The workaround is unfortunately to clear your cart and start over again, which doesn't help you at the moment since you're going for a seed account.
iadorespike: (Default)

[personal profile] iadorespike 2009-05-01 03:21 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah. Unfortunately, this info was in the announcement that hit my mail at 9:01 P.M., at which time I was already in the process of *buying* my account. What I don't know, is whether this

In particular, we know there's a bug where if PayPal times out at a certain point of the checkout process, you won't be able to get back to the cart and you'll have to make a new one. If this happens to you, you had a Seed account in your cart, and they sold out in the meantime, drop us an email and we'll help fix it for you.)--

is true...or not.

:(
afuna: Cat under a blanket. Text: "Cats are just little people with Fur and Fangs" (Default)

[personal profile] afuna 2009-05-01 04:30 am (UTC)(link)
Yup. File a support request here to bring it to their attention: http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/submit?category=accounts
iadorespike: (Default)

[personal profile] iadorespike 2009-05-01 04:42 am (UTC)(link)
Well, I actually have two support requests in, now. I don't know when they'll get to me, though. I know that they're swamped.

:(
iadorespike: (Buffy joy by lavellebelle)

[personal profile] iadorespike 2009-05-01 08:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, it was, in fact, true. Denise got to my support request at around three in the morning (bless her heart) and offered to make everything right for me. I was so heartened by this that I decided to try again this morning to purchase my account, and it went through with no problem.

It's kind of nice to be taken care of...heh.

Thanks!