What Happened ?  Paypal seems to have put a check on the personal payments feature between accounts. According to the official communication from Paypal sent to account holders in India – “We reversed this payment because we have stopped allowing personal payments to be sent to or from India.”

At the same time, they have also specified some steps for making the buyer to re-credit the amount.  It says  -

“If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then you may contact the buyer and have him or her resend the payment as follows:  (a) click the Send Money tab, (b) select “Goods,” and (c) provide a shipping address.

If this payment was a personal payment such as a gift, then we have requested that the sender find another payment method until we restore personal payments to and from India. ”

Looking for Paypal Alternative: Indian paypal holders whose transactions were reversed are fuming in anger across message boards & online forums. Here are some reactions from users of digital point forums,

Unna says, yes i am sure that paypal is freezing the money of the month of Feb 2010. I lost 3 payments .One for 1 Feb and 2 for 2 Feb. I don’t want 3 for 3 Feb. its horrible. I am going to be mad on my gmail with watching reversal mails

Varun21 says, I’m the author of a popular firefox add-on and accept donations. now all payment has been reversed. Is there something we can do under the Indian or the US law? They haven’t given any prior notices etc. These are not fair business practices.

Eviant says, ‘These kind of policies should have informed atleast three months back’

Aviz reacts, ‘what now if its a bug then they have to fix it, or they are going to lose business from India 3rd leading economic state’

Reason for Confusions

* Paypal seems to have not informed or warned about any change in their policies for Indian account holders. Varun21 also adds, ‘Called their Singapore office and they referred to the US line which is closed until their regular business hours. She did tell me that they did notify/publish a notice about policy changes but at that point she stopped giving any details and just referred me to US cust service.’

* The email sent by Paypal  mentions -

‘We are trying to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we’re sorry for any inconvenience’.

So Is this a bug or an error on Paypal`s side ?

The big question that lies infront of these account holders from India is , Will they ever get back those reversed transactions from the buyers – since the service was provided to the buyer after payment. Now, with the reversal, it looks like the service was done for Free…

Don’t know how many buyers will resend their payments!!

Update as on Feb 5^th:  We had contacted a Senior Employee of Paypal & he has accepted to answer questions relating to this matter. Will update here once we receive their official response.

Update as on Feb 6^th: 24 hours ON & still no response from the Paypal Employee who agreed to answer the questions. Infact we sent around 10 questions to know the facts.

The magnitude of the problem is getting bigger every passing day & PayPal has not come out with any explanation to its Indian customers !

What is the Issue ? 

People who have subscribed for Email/RSS updates on a particular site will have ads embedded in the Email/RSS, according to the Adsense for Feeds.The publishers of the website will be credited some amount based on the number of clicks on the adverts.

Now, these ads are not visible in any emails – latest as well as in older emails sent from the website. But, the ads are still served in feeds read through Feed Readers.

Some also say that this issue has been prevailing for the past 2 days.The strange fact is not many publishers have known this & even the google support forums does not have any posts related to this issue (there were 2 threads when this post was written).

Many publishers also feel that Google may be thinking of discontinuing the Adsense for Feeds in Emails ,which is pre-mature to conclude at this stage.Added to this,  Google has not provided any information on this issue till now on their official blogs. May be they are unaware of this!

So, we will have to wait until some light is thrown on this matter.

Update as on January 29th 2010 – Adsense for Feeds in Emails has started working, But Google has not said given any info on the downtime.

Going by that, I feel proud that I was among that small group of publishers! I did try the improved interface & here is my take on the various features that have gone for an overhaul. For all those who dont know anything about Google Adsense – It is one of the most popular platforms owned by Google , used to make money online by many(probably millions) of site-owners around the world.

The Screenshots of Beta Adsense Interface are given below.The screens are those of Dashboard, Performance Reports, Ad Blocking, Payments & Ad Management sections.

Dashboard : The overview page of the adsense account has been greatly modified to display information on Today`s estimated earnings, Total earnings since last payment, Earnings graph etc., A notable feature in this new beta interface is the help section, which has been integrated into the account.So incase you need any info – help is always by the side.

My Ads : This section is nothing new but its the Manage Ads in old interface.Again, it looks good as all ad unites are categorized under various ad types & is also easy to read. The new colour scheme for Active, Inactive ads makes it interesting to check the current status of ads & the type of ad used on the site.

Allow & Block Ads : This is the Ad Review Center ,where publishers can allow or block the ad categories & Individual ads.There is not any improvement in this section except for the cosmetic changes of the layout.

Performance Reports : This section scores high in the new Adsense Interface.With the new reporting engine, you can compare each ad unit`s performance through the day, week, month or specific dates.Now, this would be useful for the beginners ,who are new to making money online with Google Adsense & have the habit of checking their reports many times in a day.It can help you decide which ad unit performs better .

Final Sense : Overall, the new Google Adsense Interface(Beta) looks promising & the change has come after a really very long gap. (there was no big change i could remember ,during the last 8-9 yrs  as an Adsense publisher).It also looks similar to Google Analytics site, with the Ajax loading, Graphs, Pie-charts & so on. Here are some final words which could have been considered,

* URL detection could have been added, So that publishers will know which sites have their adsense code displayed on them.This will prevent unauthorized sites using your codes & get your banned.I think many publishers will agree on this feature.

* Ad Blocking feature can also be improved to realtime blocking. As of now,the changes after blocking or allowing an ad takes place only after 3-4 hrs.Reducing this time can have a positive impact on the earnings.

* Some features to check invalid clicks would have been very welcome.