Google Checkout is making PayPal look good

This post is definitely off-topic for my blog, but I am extremely disappointed with Google Checkout's Merchant services, and I want to publicize the difficulty.

I have a customer that placed an order on my website and paid with Google Checkout. Her credit card was listed as "declined", so she called her credit card company to find out why. The credit card company responded that they had no record of the Google Checkout transaction at all, and there were no declined transactions on the account.

Of course, Google Checkout has no support phone number. Apparently they recently removed their support email address and online support contact form.

UPDATE: I found the "contact us" link at the bottom of the page, which allows merchants to enter an order number and request assistance, but there is no text entry box to actually describe the exact problem.



So now I am stuck with a very frustrated customer and perhaps a lost order. Worse, I have no way of fixing the situation because Google Checkout has no way of being contacted with details about the problem. Thanks, Google.


Here's some links to others who have had problems all stemming from the complete lack of merchant support.

http://www.shaftek.org/blog/2009/03/04/contact-phone-number-for-google-checkout/

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/checkout-merchants/thread?tid=1c4ddc2e27f4ec72&hl=en

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-341375.html

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/checkout-merchants/thread?tid=67e6e5c02c6f3233&hl=en