
Warning: How Google Checkout Screwed Project Zomboid - e1ven
http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2011/04/warning-how-google-checkout-screwed-project-zomboid
======
patio11
For the benefit of the next person: don't ever sell donations. Sell
sponsorships/bragging rights/etc. _In addition to converting better_ this
reduces payment processor risk. I would strongly suggest doing this in
preference to pre-orders, too, since pre-orders are very risky. Structurally
guaranteeing that 100% of your customers have not received shipment is a bad
place to be in life! You are _not_ Valve.

Bronze Sponsor: You get a 16x16 icon next to your username on our website
_delivered immediately_ plus, as a bonus, a free copy of the game when it
comes out. $10

Silver Sponsor: As above, icon is silver. $20

Gold Sponsor: As above, icon is gold, you get listed in credits. $40

~~~
acangiano
This is a very solid idea. As an alternative, you can use a payment processor
that deals with PayPal and credit card companies on your behalf. With
something like FastSpring.com, you get paid as long as the transactions are
genuine (e.g., excluding credit card fraud). You never have to deal with
PayPal, Google Checkout, or frozen account bullshit.

------
citricsquid
As has been discussed elsewhere, they broke the terms of service
(specifically, you're not allowed to use the terms "donate" or "donation"
unless you're a registered non profit) -- they screwed themselves.

While they should be able to get a response from a human, the idea that
they're innocent is silly. It seems every small/indie developer thinks they
can do whatever and ignore their contractual obligations and get away with it.

Just because you're small doesn't mean things don't apply to you.

~~~
gfunk911
That's a joke.

A email telling them to remove the word donate within 5 days or their account
would be closed, I would totally get that. Shutting down new orders until the
verbiage is changed, same thing.

But to say that this is a reasonable action, I just don't see it. There was
clearly no deception going on. While it clearly does violate the TOS, the use
of donate in this context (a voluntary payment above the minimum that gives no
additional benefit) is perfectly reasonable.

I'm not saying that Google isn't within their rights to do this. The author
should have been more careful, fine (although I could see myself making the
exact same mistake). But this still just hits me wrong. Even if the takeaway
is just "if you make a completely innocent mistake that hurts no one, Paypal
will alert you while Google will close your account with no recourse," that's
STILL plenty of reason to choose Paypal. Who doesn't make innocent mistakes?

~~~
originalgeek
Hey, they clicked "Accept" on the TOS. Perhaps they should have read it
thoroughly first, and made sure whomever was doing the web design understood
the boundaries. A contract is a contract. It's not "let's agree to do this
until I violate it and call you a meanie"

~~~
cookiecaper
Most of the problems that people experience are self-inflicted. If we use "you
should have known better" as the only criterion to determine if sympathy is
deserved, we'd be really unsympathetic. The OP should have been more careful
and Google should have been more accommodating.

------
18pfsmt
I read the post, and decided to do a quick digging on the GC help pages. It
seems these guys are incorrect regarding the set_your_own_price idea:

"In the above example, the first five input fields are of type hidden with
predefined values while the unit price (item_price_1) field is a text field
without a value parameter.

This form will create an input field above the Google Checkout button so the
user can specify his own price as shown below:"

taken from:
[http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/answer.py?hl=en-...](http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/answer.py?hl=en-
GB&answer=64730)

~~~
lloeki
Humble Indie Bundle do 'set-your-price'+Google Checkout so there has to be a
way.

------
obtino
I've found that the problem with using Google's services is that it's very
hard to get any sort of direct, 1x1 support from them.

~~~
Klinky
This is very true. It's hard to get anyone via e-mail, on the phone or in
their forums when you have questions about their product services or when a
problem arises. This is especially concerning when money is involved such as
AdSense, AdWords or Google Checkout. They are also big enough that they don't
really have to care if they lose you as a customer, especially if you're a
small fry just starting out.

~~~
yanw
Adwords recently added phone support.

~~~
tlianza
It's the only call I've ever made to customer service that actually asked me
to leave a message and they'd call me back. Yes, really. Oh, and they didn't.

------
sayrer
I don't know why this post is surprising. Google doesn't do any individualized
customer service, because that doesn't scale. So they apply the same rules to
everyone, including this little video game, and probably legions of Internet
hucksters. There's no real incentive for Google to alter this arbitrary
policy, so they don't. They don't care if you're making an RPG about dragons
or selling Viagra.

At its best, this kind of aggregate data-driven decision making can lead to
Google search. At its worst, it can lead to those ads you click by mistake on
YouTube.

~~~
zaidf
What does it mean that individualized customer service does not scale? It does
for paypal, amazon and pretty much any other large co dealing with payments.

Perhaps one day google will wake up and realize that they in fact have
products other than search and that they may require a new attitude towards
customer service. By all means optimize so the fewest people need to call you
up - but don't leave people feeling helpless when your silly online help
doesn't cut it.

~~~
radu_floricica
It doesn't scale.

If you make a software product (without support) which will be used by 1000
people, you need 3 programmers and 1 system engineer. If 100,000 people use
your product, you need maybe 1 extra system engineer for a 100 fold increase
in usage.

To offer a product including 24/7 customer support to 1000 people, you can get
3 people working from home in shifts. To offer the same support to 100,000
people, you need a department - maybe not 300 people, but you definitely won't
get away with hiring two extra people from home.

~~~
zaidf
Yours/google's definition of scale is very narrow, which was my point. Google
only looks at scale from a software point of view. While that may work with
search, there are many industries where you must scale with humans, such as
door to door sales. Google's insistence on their narrow vision of scale may
have a lot to do with why they find it hard to make in roads with their local
strategy or say google checkout. Meanwhile paypal has little problem hiring
more people to provide phone support to tens of millions of customers. Google
isn't special. In fact, they don't even have tens of millions of customers for
most of the products that require such type of support. Sounds too much like
premature scaling and overthinking on google's part.

------
antimatter15
> First off, there was no ‘pay what you want’ option on Google Checkout, so we
> provided the following options:

I wonder how Google's Font Directory does it.
[http://www.google.com/webfonts/family?family=EB+Garamond&...](http://www.google.com/webfonts/family?family=EB+Garamond&subset=latin#download)

~~~
Prolorn
Or the Humble Bundle, for that matter.
<http://www.humblebundle.com/#contribute>

------
zhoutong
I wonder how Google is able to detect the use of the word "donate" and put so
much "effort" into monitoring account activities, scanning widgets, blocking
accounts and processing emails but not able to allocate a single human from
the support department to offer a basic response and further instructions.

Google is good at serving the crowd because that's what bots can do well
(tracking, data mining, etc). No one other than developers can really get some
direct help from Google, even if you pay them a lot of money.

I believe that consistency and responsibility are important: if you are
unhappy with your clients, you have to tell them what to do to switch to
somewhere else. This is the real customer _care_.

~~~
originalgeek
Just a guess: they don't think they can reasonably hire people from the Turk
to do support.

------
Stormbringer
Google has a legal fiduciary responsibility _not_ to hold onto that money.

You can't just take money on behalf of someone else and then say "Ha ha, you
screwed up, read the fine print, now we get to keep the money!".

------
vipivip
Google customer service is a mess.

~~~
elbelcho
I agree. I'm a huge fan of Google. I honestly don't even expect them to
support their 'free' products like Gmail with 1 on 1 customer service. I
frankly wouldn't either.

But when Google has your actual cash as in the case of Google checkout, and
you can't even get a decent reply from them? That really shakes my faith in
them as a company.

~~~
dusing
Paypal

~~~
dpcan
Why does everyone assume paypal has no support? There's a contact link right
on their homepage with email and phone support options. If Google wants to be
in this game, I believe they should have to offer the same, especially in
cases like for Android developers who have to wait a month to get paid.

~~~
Anechoic
Don't know why you got downvoted, when I had problems with my PayPal merchant
account, I called a phone number and was able to speak to a real human being.

------
Groxx
Can someone link to / quote the section in the Checkout TOS that restricts use
of "donate" or "donation"? I'm only finding this:
<https://checkout.google.com/termsOfService?type=Seller> which only mentions
"if Seller identifies ... as "non-profit" and is verified ... then Seller may
use the Service to process donations from Buyers." Which is not "may not use
'donate' or 'donation' unless == nonprofit", which seems to be claimed by a
great many comments on the interwebs.

Though I'm not _attempting_ to sign up. That's the TOS from the bottom of
<https://checkout.google.com/sell>

~~~
magicalist
I've never used google checkout from the merchant side, so I just poked around
for a bit. I'll avoid doing the whole lmgtfy thing, but this appears to be
what you're looking for:

[http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/answer.py?answer...](http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/answer.py?answer=72721)

There's also this page, which I found by just clicking "content policies"
under the merchant section (look at "fundraising"):

[https://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/answer.py?answe...](https://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/answer.py?answer=75724)

~~~
Groxx
Content policies seems to be the most-likely damning.

Mentions of donations elsewhere are _heavily_ paired with "donate" buttons,
and I don't know if they had used such a button. Cost + voluntary bonus does,
to me, imply valid use of the word "donate", and I'm hoping for something
concrete, given the number of authoritative-sounding "can't say 'donate' w/o
501.c3" comments.

------
Andrex
The most surprising part of this article to me is how popular Google Checkout
is becoming. A few years ago you'd be lucky to see a handful of sites offer it
alongside Paypal, and never in lieu of it. The explosion of Android might have
something to do with it, as the Market requires Checkout (outside of the
recently-added carrier billing.)

------
jakemcgraw
I probably don't have the skills to write a video game from scratch... but I
can knock out a payment processor integration in a day... so, why the hell do
these companies keep relying on Google and PayPal to shitcan their businesses?
Man up, get a real payment processor, where you can get real people on the
phone. I'd suggest Chase Bank. If it's about conversions, if you're selling
something people will only buy through PayPal, you're doing it wrong.

------
lakeeffect
So what happens to the money? It gets sent back to the people that "donated"
right.

