Paypal Sandbox – So Slow it’s Unusable
Paypal offers developers an environment called the “sandbox” to test out their applications. “Sandbox”is a generic term for “test environment.” I last used Paypal Sandbox a year or more ago in testing a Paypal integration with Oscommerce, and didn’t notice anything unusual.
Today, however, just now, when throwing a quick test together to detail out a quote, I was unable to use the environment. Page loading is over 10 minutes and counting. To check whether or not it was just me, or just a momentary problem, I did a search and found quite a lot of angry complaints. The complaints spanned a year’s time and seemed mixed at first. The last complaint, just a couple of weeks ago was just resigned. He would not be using paypal in his applications again.
A major theme of the complaints was that Paypal wasn’t interested in improving the situation. They didn’t really care. That was something I had heard before, not from the developer community, but from eBay sellers. They complained of problems, which Paypal customer service was very uninterested in resolving.
If Paypal were just another online store it would be one thing. The problem is that Paypal is basically a bank that has a LOT of peoples financial information online. Are they competent? Do they just not care about the little guy? It seems to me that Paypal should be all about the little guy, because I don’t see many Paypal buttons on Fortune 500 websites.
The bottom line is, if a developer can’t use Paypal’s Sandbox, why not try Google Checkout?
I find PayPal so slow to (not) load that it’s just unusable. I’m in the UK, on Vista, and the same result happens in IE7 or Firefox. I’ve been looking around for alternative payment services – which is a pity because that means I then can’t easily use eBay, but I buy very little there these days anyway.
PayPal is extremely SLOW. It took me three hours and a half yesterday to make a simple payment of $75.00. PayPal is UNUSABLE. We all need to look for alternative ways to make a payment.
J.R.G. Miami, FL
Hi!,
I have integrated paypal sandbox but getting issue. I am passing all values corroctly and on sandbox it is showing payment completed but when have return to my website it is showing payment error, please response asap.
yeah, paypal sandbox is some kind of a HEADACHE to me. When i first developed my site, it was working fine. Now when i checked back a couple of months after, well paypal sandbox seems to fluctuate. It just gives me random errors (errors generated by the server which have nothing to do with my code). Either im being timed out.. My last action could not be processed.. UI of logins are not working. You have to click buttons several times before it works.. sigh
Paypal is anything but developer friendly. For many applications that I have worked with, getting it functioning in the Sandbox DOES NOT mean it will actually work when you go live. So there is an additional step of thoroughly testing the application live that is necessary. I guess Paypal Sandbox is better than nothing, but not too much.