Sage Pay Update Mess?

[gibby]

I know Sage Page were updating the system over the weekend but is anyone else having trouble?

Firstly its taking ages to log in, pages time out when you try to do anything.
Also from what I can see they have made it very user unfriendly by putting important info into small boxes that you have to scroll through

We do seem to have alot of failed payments this weekend too.

Its a bit daft doing a major upgrade so close to xmas

H

 

[johndon68]

One of my customers has reported problems with SagePay since yesterday...

John

 

[Brasso]

Just totally went off on one then filled in the feedback questionaire. Kind of just unloaded. I've copied and pasted it into here for your amusement... . Ahhhh... I feel better after that.

We are at least taking payments but we did loose a few over the weekend.


What do you think about the redesigned my sage pay?

When I first opened up the new mysagepay it was a suprise. Totally non intuitive interface. I couldn't work out how to get the thrid man score, how to filter by date (I got it in the end, the default is set to 2003 - why?). Loads if interface issues with this. Why is the grid showing only 4 rows. Totally pointless having it. Who in the design team went, 'hey lets have a grid in there with loads of pointless columns that annoys the user with side to side scrolling and only has 4 rows. Then we'll add in column chooser and column adjuster that doesn't bother to remember my preference making it obsolete. How many of the test group fed back, I really love the inability to quickly see my transactions like I used to. Who in the second test group went, 'default date filter set to 2003 and cannot be changed. Thank goodness, thats a feature I have been waiting for. Finally I can scroll through 10,000 records to find that obscure transaction from 7 years ago without that pesky filtering that just brings up the transactions that I want to see... Sorry, but this needs a rethink. It could be useable and OK but as it is I am going to get very grumpy. In the past I have blogged on how good Sage Pay is, but this change is poor, very very poor. I feel a blog rant coming on...


What can be improved?

Change the loading on scroll to paging (with 50 records at least in view, preferably changeable to 200, 500, as a user preference). Extend the number of visible results when the filter is open (up and down scrolling is OK isn't it?). Take the grid out of its own frame, it sucks. Change the default date filter so I don't have to change the flipping year from 2003. I want to see todays transactions not all transactions for the last 7 years (doofus). I want it to remember my search settings and my column settings (because else what is the point of having changeable column settings).

 

[gibby]

is this a form to fill in to leave feedback?

just got an email from the saying "they had teething problems"

M

 

[Chunkford]

Its a total devolution!
I have a client that uses the deferred payment a lot, and now we can't find deferred payments release on a certain day, making their entire back office procedure redundant.

Sort the reports out Sage Pay, please!

 

[pollensa]

Not found the contact form but there is a thread about this on the sagepay support forums ( I cant post the link though as I am new here)

Look in the 'MySagePay' part of sagepay forums, its hot!

Not looking good for Sagepay, time to find an alternative I think as this has cost me time and money today.

 

[Kay_SagePay]

Hi,

Thank you for all your feedback on the new My Sage Pay area.

We are currently collating all of your feedback along with our customer feedback. This will be passed to our development team and further communications will be given when information is available.

If you have any questions or need any assistance please contact our support team on 0845 111 44 55.

Regards,

Sage Pay

 

[gibby]

You could also give us a genuine number to call, rather than the expensive 0845.

 

[Brasso]

Hi,

If you have any questions or need any assistance please contact our support team on 0845 111 44 55.

Where you will be told that all lines are busy and try again later (which I got earlier) or you'll be on hold for a very long time (I gave up in the end).

By the way, I couldn't see the logout button earlier, but it is there now, so I can sumise that updrades and improvements are on going.

Anyone interested can leave feedback at SagePay. I'm not going to be jumping ship just yet, it has cost us money but I do think that this will get better and they will sort this out. I am a big fan of SagePay, just very frustrated today.

 

[nevets]

You could also give us a genuine number to call, rather than the expensive 0845.

saynoto0870 dot com

 

[NuBlue]

Not been able to login all day!?

Payments are still working by the looks of things which is good. Overall we have been very happy with Protx/Sagepay over the years but the recent changes and outages have become very frustrating!

 

[quikshop]

SagePay updates have been flakey since they bought the Protx system. Although its more expensive, the RBSWorldpay system has historically been more robust and resistant to DoS attacks.

 

[JamieM]

Our account was logging in fine over the weekend but the updated admin is shockingly bad. I hope they bring back the old system and start over.

 

[LianneF]

I too hate the new sagepay system, I was happy with the old one. You try and pick what columns you want to display and the headings don't line up and you have to keep scrolling cross to see anything. Tried ringing support about another matter and they just say they are busy and hang up. Filled in the feedback form before it went live, by the sounds of it no one likes it so why did they still go ahead and change it.

 

[cjd]

They've made a bish of it; got carried away with the technology.

I've just read the report contained in that link, where the Chief Nerd rubbishes the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" saying. He then goes on to extol the virtues of the new interface, using lots of techy words to describe what they've done. Well, guess what - we run businesses and simply want an interface that does what we need it to do. We're not impressed by

"We’ve embraced Test Driven Development, Agile methodologies, Continuous Integration and parallel automated testing.

All that means nothing when you have failed to understand the basics of making an interface easy to use. What use are "agile methodologies" when the production of a simple report has become impossible? The blog reads as if it was written by someone so overexcited and wrapped up in the technology that he can't grasp the basics. He needs to calm down and start looking at his handiwork from a customer's point of view. OK, rewrite the whole thing if you must, but think about what the user needs to achieve when they visit the interface - then design the interface to help them carry out that task with as few clicks/steps as possible.

 

[Textlocal]

One person tweeted yesterday "sagepay, the 90s called. They want their design concepts back"

So true. It is laughable - how could Sagepay management sign off such a ridiculous UI!?? Every time you click on anything, then go "back" you lose the content and have to start afresh (because the scrolling grid control is in a frame).

Also the payment API went down or 40 mins yesterday.. I called support and could not get through. Then called sales and was told "calm down, there is no issue - it must be a problem on your side."... then then passed me through to support where there were 30 other calls waiting... ;-)

A.

 

[after8shoes]

Its a total devolution!
I have a client that uses the deferred payment a lot, and now we can't find deferred payments release on a certain day, making their entire back office procedure redundant.

Sort the reports out Sage Pay, please!

we too use deferred payments all the time, and not being able to 'bulk release' is hugely infuriating. complete idiocy on sagepay's part!

 

[Optegris]

We've embraced Test Driven Development, Agile methodologies, Continuous Integration and parallel automated testing.

Which in plain old English for us poor saps who are obviously not as clever as those sage pay bods means...

We've employed a blind monkey with spanners for arms who has just finished at school and wanted to put their design talents to work. We gave him a copy of "interfaces for dummies", a bunch of bananas and 50p to buy some sweets with on his way home and set him to work.

After much fiddling, bashing, sleeping and whooping, "monkey nuts" as we like to call him has now proudly unveiled his latest creation.

He's off for a wee sleep now as the workload over the last 20 minutes has tired the poor soul right out.

Sarcastic? yep. Shocking re-design? Absolutely.

 

[sysops]

Also the payment API went down or 40 mins yesterday.. I called support and could not get through. Then called sales and was told "calm down, there is no issue - it must be a problem on your side."... then then passed me through to support where there were 30 other calls waiting... ;-)

On Saturday night, when they messed up their SSL certificate, I started receiving a series of texts from our server. This is at 10.30 on Saturday. So, a rather beery me had to call SagePay. They insisted that there was no problem at their end. In the end (about 11.30 now) I had to put in a load of debug to figure out exactly why CURL was failing. It was only then that they were kind enough to pass me through to their 2nd line guy.

Good thing too, because if the first line support guy had said "could you open a browser on your server" one more time, I would have been tempted to get myself over there and thump him.

 

[sysops]

Another 10 minute outage. Thank you SagePay.

 

[gibby]

seems there is another issue, funds due in today have not appeared at all.


G

 

[sysops]

That's what I posted yesterday - the weekend's settlement is delayed by a day, and so is Monday's.

 

[cjd]

Also some passwords stopped working and if you used IE6 it won't work anymore.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/10/26/sage_pay_upgrade_glitch/

(Anyone still using IE6 deserves what they get in my opinion; but I know a lot of government organisations still do.)

 

[gibby]

its totally fallen over now
we cant log in or do anything

lots of orders with no payments yesterday & some new customers stating they didn't wnat to try again as it looks unprofessional.

I hope they aren't thinking of charging us this month?

G

 

[gibby]

"Hello,

We've been talking about a system upgrade for a while and we're finally able to show you the results. All the work we've been doing so far has been successful in achieving all of our objectives.

Our development team are so excited about the new look My Sage Pay, not only have we reduced functionality and squeezed the interface into a tiny box that makes it look so neat and tidy, no longer do you have to suffer the untidy mess of being able to see all those columns in a report. Even better you can now save energy as your inefficient 22" display can now be replaced with a far more efficient 15" one due to the introduction of our brand new technology called sideways scrolling.

If you're already live and processing: Login as you would normally to My Sage Pay, where we have installed the new untested system that looks nothing like you are used to. But don't worry nothing will work, there's no danger of charging a card or processing a refund, as currently nothing is working anyway.

Please get in touch with our customer services team on 0845 111 44 55 where we will play you some wonderful music at the bargain price of just 8p per minute. We know that it is difficult to charge customers for things that are usually free but we are confident that you would rather pay by the minute for an 0845 number instead of making use of the free calls included with your unlimited calling package from your telecoms provider. Without the 0845 number we would not be able to bring you this wonderful hold music so you would have to sit in silence while waiting for alt least 20 other people to get through to our technical support person.

One final thing... We anticipated that our customers might have something to say about our incompetence and the fact that even when the system is working everything takes so much longer than it needs to. We would suggest the best way to work around these issues would be to hire more staff to manage the extra workload required to use the new My Sage Pay system. We'd also really like your feedback, so let us know what you think and we'll try to avoid including your requests into future releases. Just so we don't have to deal with all of your complaints we have sent our senior management on holiday to spend their bonuses received for their part in making your lives so complicated. We have also set-up a special feedback form that sends all your feedback into a black hole to further reduce the amount of genuine complaints we receive.

As always, if you have any queries don't bother to tell us. In a few days time we will send you another back slapping message, telling you what a great success the new My Sage Pay has been, just to convince you that we know best, hopefully by then you will have given up complaining embrace the new limited functionality SagePay way.

Kind regards,


Head of Customer Services"

 

[nta123]

We are having a nightmare. We have been withthem since the protx days.

problems with new system:

1. Text too small on the table of pre authorised payments
2. The text is too small when you view a pre authorised payment
3. The pre authorised payment page, you have to tab on the left to see the fraud, 3d, post code etc match results.
4. Once you release the payment, you cant tell easily if the payment has been authorised from pre authorised.

Loads more other comments that make us angry here.

We hope the person who decided on this 'upgrade' is out of a job soon. He/she deserves it. Those developers think we sit right by a computer screen all day to be able to read the small font of the each payment and keeping both pre authorised and authorised screens/rows green. Maybe sagepay can compensate us for each order that is missed from being released?

Time to look for an alternative. I had every trust in sage pay till this. They should be closed down as a psp by the PCI DSS/government. Their site is now unclear and not fit for purpose.

 

[kevin555]

Whoever designed the new sagepay payments interface is a total arse and should be sacked immediately!

Unfortunately, it has all the hallmarks of a senior manager as opposed to a developer with skills in usability issues.

I had a look at the new interface about a month ago and immediately wrote to them with most of the points made here - scrolling, can't see info on one page, when you do remove columns it doesn't store your settings etc etc. I'll dig out the email and reprint it here tomorrow when back in the office.

As a web developer I know what I'm talking about so I'm so perplexed that they produced something so incompetent.

Business people need uncomplicated and speedy solutions. The previous version may not have been pretty but it was fast to look at transaction basics and release them.

It is an utter disaster. There is nothing else to be said.

 

[PayVector]

As always Iridium is doing a deal to any Sagepay merchant looking to move. Basically if for example you have 6 months to run on your existing we will give you 6 months of credit on an account with us.

We have a pretty slick interface which you can check out by registering at : https://mms.iridiumcorp.net/Pages/PublicPages/RegisterMerchant.aspx. There is no obligation for registration.

Iridium is part of the Datacash group which in turn is a wholly owned subsiduary of Mastercard.

PM me if you have any questions.

 

[gibby]

has a big issue with SP yesterday that we kept getting logged out & then the access was blocked.
A nice person there was good at unblocking it every few mins.

Today we ahave the issue that customers could not get to the payemnt page, with more lost orders to add to the mess over the last few days.

SP have told us they we bring back to the old system but it could take a week.

G

 

[Dymo King]

Just totally went off on one then filled in the feedback questionaire. Kind of just unloaded. I've copied and pasted it into here for your amusement... . Ahhhh... I feel better after that.

Wow, I thought that was quite polite. I didn't pull any punches in my feedback - they should be in no doubt what I think of resetting everything to default each time, not being able to log in properly and then getting locked out, defaulting to 2003-2010(!!!), and - crime against design - horizontal scrolling! Time to sack the drunken monkeys that designed this.

Luckily they seem to have relented, got an email today saying soon we would be able to choose the old interface instead... yay.

 

[gibby]

we had the same issue with coop bank

the redisgned it & it needed doing as the system online was really bad.
Sadly they did the same & moved everything into really small boxes that needed scrolling.

its really poor but 100% better than what we had before.

I really wonder who gets paid all this money to redesign these things as often they are so so bad.

G

 

[Dymo King]

Yeah, I think they must have the same team of incompetent designers that go around designing all the banks systems. Our business banks online interface is rubbish as well - only 10 items per page and the next page button keeps moving up and down depending on whether the transactions have 1 or lines of information so you can't even sit there just clicking the next button to scroll through large amounts of transactions - grrrr....

 

[Clodbuster]

TBH I quite like it - Proves that us Old Codgers are more receptable to change - unlike all you young pups.

 

[sysops]

TBH I quite like it - Proves that us Old Codgers are more receptable to change - unlike all you young pups.

Do you like the fact that both payment gateway and MySagePay are down AGAIN right now?

 

[Dymo King]

TBH I quite like it - Proves that us Old Codgers are more receptable to change - unlike all you young pups.

We don't mind change, just that they replaced a usable system with a totally crap system. Maybe for you oldsters with your 640x480 screens p)it doesn't seem so bad, but the rest of us with HiDef widescreen monitors at decent resolutions just see a tiny fixed sized window with scroll bars and a ton of empty space around it that could be used to display the 7 years worth of transactions and god knows how many extra columns that we now get displayed by default...

 

[sysops]

System intermittent all day today. Payment system timing out on about one in 15 payments. Admin system screwed.

 

[Dymo King]

We switched over to Secure Trading last time PROTX made an arse of things (remember that multi-day outage a while back when they switched to a new system?)

We just use them as a backup now...

 

[gibby]

interesting idea - although paying two of them is a bit fo a pain

shame non of them just charge by the transaction

Really we should have a clause on issues like this as its not acceptable service but they keep on taking the payemnt anyway

G

 

[edmondscommerce]

I only discovered the new MySagepay yesterday, trying to debug some failed callback payments for a client.

Yep I have to agree its awful. Its like trying to work through a letter box - why are they wasting all my screen space like that?

Looking at it though, there is a lot of fancy stuff being done, its just that its being done badly - I bet it still cost them a fortune though!

Will be interesting to see how they respond to this, its so unusable I'm surprised a lot of you aren't jumping ship.. the sheer cost in staff time wrestling with this interface must be costing you guys a fortune!

There are a few other players now, its not just Protx vs WorldPay which was always a no contest...

Time for the under dogs to gain some market share I suspect - surprised totalwebsolutions hasn't chimed in yet

 

[Dymo King]

System intermittent all day today. Payment system timing out on about one in 15 payments. Admin system screwed.

Is anyone having problems with 3d secure screens not appearing today?