The PayPal payment outage this weekend is the latest of a number of online systems falling over. Last week we saw the Microsoft Genuine Advantage system fall over and before that Skype.
The problem with these services failing is they have a terrible impact on people who depend upon them. This is the major reason why I discourage businesses from relying on online services.
One of the worries I have is that IT and web businesses don't fully understand customer service. The PayPal outage is a good example; "sorry, we have no idea; come back later."
I never cease to be amazed at how companies like PayPal can't stick a simple message on their website and keep their customer service people in the loop that there is a problem, what the problem is and how long it's expected to continue.
To add to the problem, the Internet itself is not wholly reliable for the average home or small business user; outages are still more common than they should be.
Until we have a much higher level of reliability and responsibility from vendors, it's very difficult to recommend Web 2.0 applications to businesses.
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