The whole saga is worth reading, but just to let you know: here’s the latest.

Wanting to offer an alternative to PayPal, we set up a Google Checkout account for people to buy our ebook.

The last email we received about our Google Checkout account was “Helpful tips regarding your first Google Checkout orders” on February 9th.

But a few days ago, I logged in, and this is what greeted me:

And if you click that link, “I had pending payouts for charged orders. Will I receive these payouts?”, you’ll see that the answer is “Nope, you’re screwed.”

So, to sum up our experience with Google Checkout:

they did not try to contact us to resolve any issue

there’s no way to find out why they closed our account, due to “security reasons”

there was no notice (we found out by accident, when we tried to pay for something with Google Checkout)

they kept over $200 of our money

there is no appeal

there is no one we can contact

we cannot open a new account

our money is gone, even though people have received their products

And I don’t know if you noticed, but that agreement section doesn’t actually have anything to do with this situation. It’s clearly just there to cause a sense of despair & make readers believe they have no legal recourse.

Crime Does Pay

This is on top, of course, of their theft of over $2,000 for Adsense revenues for the web site for script.aculo.us, which happened in similar circumstances (no warning, no appeal, no replies, etc., etc.).

So, despite any number of ads I’ve clicked in my life using Google search, they’ve also made a cool $2300 at least from us by stealing our cash outright.

Translation: Google is even worse than PayPal.

Do not use Google Checkout for your business.

PayPal, as a company with financial services that have caught the eye of the government, is subject to a lot more regulations… and, surprisingly, acts better.

‘Don’t be evil’ my ass.