back to article SagePay's monster wobble... On the third day of sale week, UK retailers start to weep

What started as a Saturday afternoon nap for SagePay turned into a three-day snooze fest, angering retailers that were as of last night still struggling to process sales in a peak shopping week. The online payment service, which boasts about letting retailers get on with the business of retailing while it manages multi-channel …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I agree with all comments below

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    MTU

    Very weird mtu issues, lots of problems with the SagePay Virtual terminal from multiple different providers.

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "but it's the way a cloud company deals with them that sets the grownups apart. We've again asked the kids at Sage"

    Nice one.

    1. Adam 1

      And for the record, this is how a grown up service should apologise.

  4. hairydog

    Protx managed to survive a really nasty DDoS attack not long before Sage swallowed them.

    Gradually, following the Sage takeover, the service got less and less good, then it got more and more not good.

    I'm not sure what the current positions is, because all our clients who were forced to move from Protx to Sage Pay have now moved to different payment processors.

    The problem is that most of the others are almost as bad. Oh for a reliable, sensibly-priced online payments system. And a sensible way to see what they charge.

    1. tiggity Silver badge

      .. When you find one, someone buys it out and it goes downhill.

    2. Milton

      "Oh for a reliable, sensibly-priced online payments system"

      "The problem is that most of the others are almost as bad. Oh for a reliable, sensibly-priced online payments system. And a sensible way to see what they charge."

      Quite so. But as someone else said, as soon as such a system gets enough traction, one of the big lousy providers comes along and makes an offer, the investors in the decent new system sell out, and what was good, having now been swallowed for its captive customer base, soon turns to shit.

      Although it's not confined to the internet world, there is a truism that seems to happen online faster than elsewhere: Bad money drives out Good.

  5. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I was the admin for a ecommerce website for a number of years and we always had a back up payment processor available for such events (Paypal) Their fees were slightly higher but better to be able to take orders and pay a bit more per transaction than customer going elsewhere because they can't pay for their orders.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: backup payment processor [...]

      That sounds eminently sensible.

      Are you sure you're in the right place? This is DevOps domain, not Cloud Cuckoo Country.

  6. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    "it's the way a cloud company deals with them that sets the grownups apart."

    Or rather "anonymous server farms in unknown jurisdictions" to give them a rather more accurate description.

    Remind me (again) how "cloud" apps never fall over and how they scale up under load.

    BTW Sage is in someways the nearest the UK has to a major international software brand (they own Act CRM, and managed to f**k that up, although it got better once you'd patched it. A 400 rec DB with 2-3 secs to go to the next record before patching).

    they've always spent more on their PR than their development budget (accountants "incentive" scheme. Recommend Sage, get bung "finders fee").

    1. Adam 52 Silver badge

      Re: "it's the way a cloud company deals with them that sets the grownups apart."

      Er, how many people want to integrate direct with card issuing banks? If you don't want to do that (and as someone who did it once, I really don't want to do it again) then you don't really have any choice.

      Next you'll be calling domain registrars "cloud" and moaning about how unreliable and badly scaling they are when DNS has an upset.

      These companies do a vastly better job at a massively cheaper cost than anyone outside of a Fortune 500 could do.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      BTW Sage is in someways the nearest the UK has to a major international software brand

      One word: Autonomy

    3. graeme leggett Silver badge

      Re: "it's the way a cloud company deals with them that sets the grownups apart."

      Act! CRM is by Swiftpage these days.

      Sage have their own CRM to sell you

  7. HKmk23

    Only one decent company to deal with

    PAYPAL......customers like it too!

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Only one decent company to deal with

      "PAYPAL......customers like it too!"

      From the customer's PoV - mostly. One thing not to like is that they pass the customer email address on to the merchant. Not good as some merchants then spam and, worse, PayPal seem to have no effective method for disciplining offenders. Worst of all, the email address is the login ID.

      PayPal really need to do some serious thinking about this between now and next May. Actually between now and now would be even better.

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