By heatherbird on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 in New on JustGiving
Zarine (CEO) on how we’re compensating charities from JustGiving on Vimeo.
We are really sorry for the problems you have been experiencing with the new website.
We did carry out extensive testing before we launched it last weekend. However, what we now know is that we didn’t test it extensively enough, or try hard enough to break it.
We take full responsibility for our mistakes and our tech team is working 24 hours a day to fix everything, and the rest of the team are staffing the phones and email enquiries to try and help out as quickly as possible.
How we’re compensating charities
The bottom line is this: we know that the performance of the new site over the past week has been totally unacceptable. We take full responsibility for that and are committed not only to fixing it, but also to showing that we’re sorry. We want our actions to back up our words, and so we feel it’s only right for us to refund the JustGiving 5% transaction fee for any donations made from the day of launch (Saturday 20th June 2009) for seven days.
Moving forward
It’s extremely difficult to completely replicate the live environment, as we’ve already experienced. So we do need to continue fixing and testing things live and, where necessary, taking down the site in the middle of the night, as we have been doing.
It probably doesn’t feel like it right now, but we’re confident that this new site will, once it’s running smoothly, deliver a better much faster service to people donating, to fundraisers and to charities. What’s more, the technology we built it on allows us to act far more swiftly on user suggestions for improvements – so please do keep your suggestions coming.
We know we’re not there yet but we hope you have already noticed a significant improvement in site performance. Lots of issues have been fixed; but there are outstanding bugs that we’re working hard on, and will continue to do so over the weekend, until they are resolved.
We’re grateful to you all for putting up with the frustration and disappointment caused by these problems over the past week and for bearing with us while we restore our usual, reliable service. We’d also like to thank everyone who has taken the time to give feedback, suggestions, views and even words of encouragement.
Zarine Kharas
**Update Saturday 27th June**
We know lots of you have found it hard to donate but wanted to let you know that donations *are* being made, with over £2 million given to charities this week, with many more being made today.
Tags: new site, update, Zarine Kharas
136 Comments | permalink
136 Responses
Richard slimmon said...
June 25th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Nigel Doggett website still not working
Helen said...
June 25th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
I fail to see how refunding the 5% fee on donations is adequate. Neither of my sites are available as I write so no-one can make any donations. 5% of nothing is poor compensation. This has been a total shambles and you have let down a lot of people. If you seriously want to show you are sorry, more is needed.
Lisa P. said...
June 25th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Very dissapointed that the site is still experiencing such major problems, it is upsetting, I have a few people who have tried to make donations, and are now unsure if the donation has gone through/whether payment has been made (their experience may dissuad them from using justgiving in future). Hope these issues are resolved soon, for the charities sakes ~ I appreciate the updates and trust you are doing all in your power to fix the issues.
RM said...
June 25th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Have just checked out the details for the upcoming http://www.virginmoneygiving.com site. They’re probably watching this as an first class lesson in how not to launch a charity website.
Looks like their site is going to have the sort of features that the old site here had before the “improvements” like all of the donations on one page and ability to personalise the text (not just change the colour of the page) and they are non-profit making so more money goes to the charities as the costs are much lower.
I’d never faulted justgiving before, they’ve done a fantastic job but they have dropped the ball on this and I can definitely see myself considering the virginmoney giving site next time I am fund raising, especially if justgiving do not change back some of the key features we’ve all complained about on this blog.
Something for the guys at justgiving to consider. Everyone makes mistakes, no one is perfect. It’s what you do about them that sets you apart. The reaction from justgiving has been poor. Constantly referring to the issues as “teething problems” has been patronising. Not putting up a notice or an apology on the front page is inexcusable. Waiting until the sixth day of problems before the CEO comes and makes an honest apology and offer of goodwill to the charities is simply not good enough.
It must be due for launch soon, the website says it will start in Summer 2009. I’m sure they will be very pleased that the market leader and their main competitor has just scored an massive own goal.
Dave said...
June 25th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
I love the idea that you are giving the fees back to the charities!!! Just a shame that people can’t donate through the site to enable you to give the money back so your pledge is a bit hollow I’m afraid. This is my first time fundraising. Never again will I use JustGiving. I’ve lost so many sponsors because of this.
Simon said...
June 25th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Well done for offering to compensate the charities, I think it’s a nice gesture.
I’m still not convinced the new design of the site is a big improvement. Take this page:
http://www.justgiving.com/jensonbutton/
Not only do you have to click ‘Read More’ to read the vital info , but the donations are spread over 33 pages! If I want to have a quick scroll down to see who has donated it’s now a fuss, and slow as I have to wait for the page to load 33 times, so I won’t bother. Jenson Button probably doesn’t have to fight to get loads of sponsors, the rest of us do and the ability to see how much others have given quickly and easily is very important. Can someone who is responsible for the UI design explain how/why this is an improvement. I just can’t see it…
James said...
June 25th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
This entire revamp has been an absolute disaster from beginning to end, and for no apparent benefit at all, as the new design is atrocious.
I am appalled that you have still not rectified the situation by rolling back immiediately to the previous design before attempting to fix this offline, despite days of problems that do not appear to getting any better - if anything, worse (I am now unable to access pages at all). That users arriving on the homepage of site are *still* not presented with any explanation as to why the pages they are trying to open do not work is absurd.
It strikes me as stubbornness and representative of a greater desire to out-maneuovere the competition than to meet the basic needs of your customers: the charities and donors.
You have let us all down.
Ruth said...
June 26th, 2009 at 1:16 am
I agree with all the comments raised above and would like to make an additional point.
I set up my justgiving page 14 days ago - apparently before any of these problems started (could have fooled me). Across the 14 days my justgiving page was accessible to sponsors for just half of one day and part of one evening. That’s it! Apart from this, for virtually every single hour across every single day since I set it up, my site has been inaccessible to me and to would-be sponsors (and yes, every email I sent to justgiving for help/ advice was completely ignored).
I can’t calculate how many sponsors would have donated after the initial request to do so, but gave up, frustrated by the inaccessible webpage. I know of at least 47 colleagues who have not donated and now that the impetus has gone, probably won’t.
My point is this. It’s all very well for justgiving to make this ‘honourable’ gesture to compensate the charities (which actually, they should do as a matter of course anyway) but what are they really offering? A 5% transaction fee refund made on any donations for 7 days since Saturday. Well, the charity that I’m supporting will get virtually nothing - no one has been able to access my site to make a donation.
It really is just not good enough. JustGiving need to do a lot more to compensate the charities than this. I personally will never use them again (wish I hadn’t this time) unless they make a much more convincing effort to redeem themselves.
Antonio said...
June 26th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Well done for offering to compensate the charities, I think it’s a nice gesture.
BUT, this morning I have set up my page and attempted sending emails to my contacts. As a trial I sent an email to a couple of my email adresses and I am STILL waiting for them.
I would like to know when the site will be FULLY working because, being honest, if I am going to have so much hassle I just prefer to set up a page in a different site.
Regards,
Antonio
Jules said...
June 26th, 2009 at 8:40 am
I am also unhappy with the “improvements” ss the previous post says it is a pain to scroll down to see the story and donations. I was previously using my site to update friends on how the fundraising was going but it is not suitable for this any more as to see anything you need to click read more. Also my friends are disappointed not to see the donations they have made without having to search.
My page has been down, where people are having trouble donating and I can’t update anything for four days, with my target at 95% and going for the final push this is very inconvenient. I maybe losing sponsors especially friends of friends that may find it just to much trouble.
Kate said...
June 26th, 2009 at 9:20 am
I can’t believe that it is now Friday 26th and there are still problems. Once again, I can’t view my fundraising page, and once again people are unable to make donations. This will have a devastating impact on the amount of money my sister and I are able to raise for our charity as all our fundraising activities are timed to coincide with Myeloma Awareness week which runs from 21-28 June!
A number of our friends, family, workmates and acquaintances have said that they were going to donate to our page, but have been unable to access it. My concern is that after a few attempts of trying they will give up and as a result we will not raise as much money as we had hoped.
Over all I am very disappointed, and would like to echo the point made by another poster that 5% of a donation that was never made due to problems with the site is poor compensation indeed.
Adam said...
June 26th, 2009 at 9:23 am
I have been appaled by what has happened in the past seven days. You’d have thought that they would have taken very swift action and reverted back to the old site whilst they fixed the new one. But oh, no. They decided to muddle on and fix the new site whilst it’s live.
As for my own fundraising efforts, they were going great until justgiving messed everything up for me. I was getting donations every day, but now it’s all dried up. Sponsors who visited the site upon my instructions found that they couldn’t donate and wasted so much of their time trying to, that even if the site was working properly today (which it still isnt’) they couldn’t be pursuaded to go back, so I’ve lost them as a sponsor. Offering to give back the 5% commission for all donations made over the past 7 days is a bit rich considering that:
a) most found they couldn’t make a donation.
b) PayPal, justgiving’s main payment vehicle, was unavailable.
c) the site is still not fixed so what about compensation for tomorrow and beyond whilst they’re still fixing the “teething problems”.
If they really wanted to make a jesture then they should offer to give back their 5% commission for ALL current fundraising pages for the whole of their fundrasing. That’s right justgiving, you heard me right. Your 5% commission for the whole of my fundraising effort would still be less than the money I’ve missed out on over the past 7 days due to your incompetance. Offering to give me the 5% back on monies I’ve been unable to collect due to your broken site is like insulting. 5% of nothing is nothing, so you’re offering me no compensation at all.
Check out my page, the last donation we had was the 19th, the day before the disaster. Prior to that I got donations every day. Where’s my compensation for this outage justgiving?
http://www.justgiving.com/hardwickedragonboatteam/
I also agree with everyone that the donations history should be on one page as this helps people visiting the page to know what to give. No one will bother to flick from one page to the next. Plus the event info should also be on one page.
Please listen to your customers and don’t insult us with an offer of a refund that is limited in it’s liability to you directly by how bigger mess you’ve made of this.
I wonder how long any of these comments will stay up on the site. I do hope they don’t start censoring these blog comments. I’ll be taking regular copies of this page just in case and I’ll be the first to forward them to The Register for public naming and shaming if that happens.
Also I found it telling that if you search Google for “justgiving blog” you get http://justgiving.wordpress.com/ Which I visited thinking this was justgiving’s blog as the last entry was pretty recent. But no, apparently info about the outage which is sadly missing from this page was actually posted at http://blog.justgiving.com. So no mention on their “old” blog of the outages, and their new blog which was hosted on the very site that was falling over did have info about the problem - served from the very domain that was, err, having the problem. Well done, you used the website that didn’t work to tell us that it didn’t work.
CharlieW said...
June 26th, 2009 at 9:37 am
I must agree with Simon - the new format detracts in a big way.
1. Nobody will be aware of any updates I make to my page unless I put them into small area you can see (i.e. above the ‘read more’ link). Please provide an option to display the entire page contents.
2. Having to reload the page to plod through all the donations serves no purpose other than to inconvenience the visitor. What on Earth are you thinking?
Oh, and I can’t edit my page today, 2 days before the event!
Simon said...
June 26th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Can anyone suggest another site I can use to post a page? I have an event coming up and want to sed an alternative link to my sponsors. Thanks
SM said...
June 26th, 2009 at 9:41 am
I was totally dismayed to see the mess JustGiving had made of our fund raising pages. We had only just launched our efforts for 4 charities and many people’s first attempt to donate was scuppered. I think human nature dictates that they are mostly unlikely to try again. This really is not good enough.
Please consider better compensation offers. Somebody else has already commented that 5% of nothing is still nothing - when our supporters can’t access our pages they cannot donate anything and I still get errors this morning trying to access them.
Also, please go back to the old design of pages. I didn’t write much text but it now cannot all be seen, the picture has been replaced by something totally naff and if we get a decent number of donations eventually it will take ages to page down.
jackie said...
June 26th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Please please please sort this out quickly!!! My charity event is on Sat 04th July and so far only two people have been able to access the website because of the ongoing errors. This does not give me confidence to use Justgiving in the future.
Ham said...
June 26th, 2009 at 9:51 am
I’ve waited, I’ve watched, I’ve commented and I’ve eMailed. Here’s what I think and what I’m going to do.
The bunch of people at Justgiving are sincere, hardworking and feel badly about the way this has gone. However, in my view they are entirely misguided and lack the critical skills needed to run an organisation of this size and pilot their organisation through this troubled time.
What size? From public information I’m guessing that the turnover of JG (ie, their 5%) is £10M, minimum. That’s sizeable. For that amount of money sloshing around, they really REALLY need good service management. Their behaviour over the last week can best be described as willing but amateurish, rather like a Labrador puppy who really wants to help but can’t. That’s not to detract from the effect of the individuals, who I am certain are capable and working as hard as they can to rectify the matter. No, this sits squarely at the feet of management: bad decisions followed by inadequate response.
Sure, the final site may be good and whizzy, but this is just not the right way to get there. Failure to see that, is central to my decision to abandon JG.
So, unless there is a demonstrable improvement in that attitude, I will not be trusting JG again. How could they demonstrate improvement? For example, by publishing a service level agreement to us, the site users, committing to provide a service and explaining what will happen if they don’t.
I’ve moved over to bmycharity, who aren’t perfect, but at least allow you to use HTML on your page ( https://www.bmycharity.com/londondailyphoto ). I didn’t really want to have to spend time setting it up, but there you are. If anyone else would like help moving and designing their page, I’m open to offers (of donations to my page) to help out.
And by the way, does everyone else realise that their US site - firstgiving - is still quietly running the old software??
Steve said...
June 26th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Given that people cant get into their pages and donate, 5% of nothing or very little = not much. Its rather hollow gesture and treats us like idiots. Why not give back the 5% for a week when the pages are up and running properly. Once my event is over I wont be using this site again and wouldnt recommned it to anyone else.
Ruth said...
June 26th, 2009 at 10:25 am
The compensation you are offering to the charities is to refund your 5% of donations over the last week! Now would this be the week that hardly anyone was able to make a donation?! I think that that will hardly cover the money they have lost through this. We are all deeply upset and disappointed with the way this has been handled.
Steve Bridger said...
June 26th, 2009 at 10:49 am
I think Zarine and JustGiving deserve some credit for the way they have been transparent about the problems some people have been experiencing this week.
I think the responses above just show how we all now take JustGiving for granted. Unless people have set up their page a week or so before their fundraising event, I’m sure their cause will ultimately not loose out.
Perspective people, please.
Antonio said...
June 26th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Steve, of course I take JustGiving for granted, like I do with my phone company or my bank. All of them are companies with profits, therefore I expect them to provide the service they are getting paid for.
There is not other perspective that matter more than the costumers’ one.
Emma said...
June 26th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Can someone advise of a different website that does the same as JG? I have 8 days left till my event and havent been able to set up a page. it’s really urgent now! thanks!
PS. Agreed that we should take it for granted and it SHOULD work. Wonder how many thousands charities are losing.
Paul Buck said...
June 26th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Well said Antonio, we should take it for granted. I recommended JustGiving to the charity I am raising money for, and feel a little embarrassed now. As for the gesture of refunding the 5% transaction - It’s the transactions that were unsuccessful that are the problem! Fortunately, my event isn’t until November and isn’t really affected greatly, but I feel a goodwill donation should be given to those with events over the last week or two.
Jonathan Parris said...
June 26th, 2009 at 11:52 am
What a cynical gesture!
We have all suffered from computer glitches, but coming from the market leader of an incredibly important source of income for charities large and small this response is, frankly, insulting. 5% of no donation is, as we all know, nothing.
By its very nature, the price of this unfortunate episode may not be capable of measurement, but be assured, this makes it no less damaging for voluntary giving as many of these let-down donors will tell their friends not to bother giving. I know, I have spoken to just a few of them.
Justgiving may have let down thousands of charities and individual donors. But the saddest aspect is the countless would-be-beneficiaries who, unknowing, will pay the full price of this.
SteveK said...
June 26th, 2009 at 11:58 am
@Steve Bridger,
I don’t think they’ve been transparent; they can’t deny the problems but they’ve played them down as ‘teething issue’ that have limited impact. The scale of problems I’ve seen, rendering the service useless for most of this week, is not limited impact or teething issues. I don’t think they’re being deliberately misleading, I think they’re just being over-optimistic.
Lot’s of people work in IT and know about the difficulties of replicating a live environment, but they’re not new problems, people have been implementing systems much more complicated than this for many years. But, if it’s extremely difficult to replicate, there’s a clue that it’s complicated and requires more care and more thought (like what happens if it goes wrong for a week?).
To me, it just seems a bit dotcomish, a bit amateurish, which is fine if you’re launching a free service from your garage, not so fine if you’ve been going for 10 years and have turned over £20+ million.
It seems like they’ve rushed the code into production (maybe to be a step ahead of virgin, maybe that’s unfair) and are ploughing ahead with fixing it because they didn’t think about what would happen if it didn’t work.
To keep things in perspective, this company dealt with more than £450million pounds since they started in 1999. Even an over simplified sum says that’s £1m of donations a week. So the site being off air for a week is making a difference, possibly a life threatening difference, to someone’s life somewhere.
For a company with that sort of turnover, you’d have expect them to have put a bit more care into not interrupting their primary revenue stream. For a company that affects people’s lives, you’d have expected them to have tested their implementation.
It’s not really any of my business, they can do what they want, other than their handling of the implementation and my dislike of the new design will probably make me move to virgin when it becomes available.
Good luck with the rest of the problems guys (’guys’ meant in a none sex specific way)
Adam said...
June 26th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
@Steve Bridger. Well Steve you obviously don’t currently have a page up and an event soon to take place. I do and have definately lost out this week and expect to continue to loose out. Of course my charity will get an extra 5% of nothing this week, i.e. and extra nothing.
Do you work for JustGiving or have some interest? You comments stand out as very odd as everyone else seems to have be justifiably annoyed.
The only thing I can find to thank JG for at the moment is to allow these comments to be made here without redaction… so far.
PS. Even this comments page doesn’t work properly. How small is this text, and you can’t even enlarge it in your browser without also enlarging the page width. Lame.
Ham said...
June 26th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
@Emma there are others but I’ve gone for bmycharity.com as they seem to have more charities signed up and their site is pretty good - they let you write HTML which helps
John Carnell @bullyinguk said...
June 26th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Hello everyone,
I want to weigh in at this point and say that JG have done a very good job in a terrible situation. Some of the comments on hear are obviously made by people will little understanding of how big a job JG have had on their hands moving all the user data to the new MUCH improved platform.
Maybe JG haven’t communicated a key point here, this is a platform that will allow non-profits to grow something the old system couldn’t do.
Sure we are missing some old features and layouts need a tweek (ajax to solve the reload on donations) but guess what based on OUR feedback that will happen.
I’ve been in the IT game for 15 years and the charity sector for 10 these problems happen and you could throw as much money / people and “Experts” at it and it would of still failed in some way.
JG have gone over and above in communicating the current situation as well as giving technical details of how any why this happened.
As Steve Bridger says bit of perspective here please your bank cant keep its websites up nor can government funded sites either not sure why people think Virgin money will be any different! Oh and didn’t their website crash when they opened the marathon registration and it was only dealing with 100k people JG potentially is handling 250k concurrent users at peak. (my own estimate)
John
Chief Exec
Bullying UK
Shaun said...
June 26th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Zarine said in the video “I do hope that you’ve been experiencing the improvements that we’ve made to the site”
Could someone from JG tell us what they are? Seriously, what about the new site is meant to be better?
SM said...
June 26th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
@John Carnell
What does this mean “this is a platform that will allow non-profits to grow something the old system couldn’t do”?
I would really like somebody to explain what has got better on the new web site. I have been in IT for 20+ years and know that things can and do often go wrong. But this is huge and should be recognised as such. People rely on JustGiving and accept that they rightly make money for the services offered but this time they have seriously undermined our fundraising efforts
Alastair Merson said...
June 26th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Well I’m afraid to say I’ve jumped ship to a similar website, (http://www.charitygiving.co.uk) after being more than patient for nearly a week. What has been mildly frustrating for me, must have been very, very annoying, and indeed detrimental to people with events coming up soon.
You can have all the transparency you want, its a moot point if a donation website can’t fulfill its most basic of requirements, that being for people to donate!
If this was a non profit organisation, run by volunteers I could perhaps be even more patient, but at the end of the day they are a business and they do turn a profit. Such a poor implication of the new website, with seemingly no kind of contingency plan staggers belief.
I would also take great issue with Steve Bridger’s comments which are of the mark and frankly quite flippant. Antonio has hit the nail on the head with his comment. Many people will have set it up a week before, as they have every right too, and whether this is your first week or last week this is far from what you expect from a business of this stature.
Steve Bridger said...
June 26th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
@Adam. I do know a good many of the people at JustGiving, yes… and count them as my friends. I know they are hurting at the degree to which many of you feel let down. I know that they all went to work at dawn last Saturday to get the new site up after months of work.
I also don’t currently have a page on JG, but do not for one minute underestimate the pain in the butt the glitches must be for those of you experiencing them. Seriously.
I’ve been following their efforts to respond to people’s questions on Twitter - http://twitter.com/justgiving. I stick to my guns: JG has raised the bar, big time.
@Steve K. I think much of what you say is out of order, frankly.
John Carnell said...
June 26th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
@SM
Charities will be able to grow through the new features and ideas you generate and feed back to JG to have implemented, under the old system well it was as it was and was never going to change.
Right now people are upset about the current situation, you are loosing donations. Here is the thing though with the potential of the new platform to expand and incorporate the ideas we as charity professionals need to succeed it can only grow and so to can our donations.
My view is that once the current stability issues are fixed we will see donations increase over their previous old system levels especially as new features are rolled out.
The old JG system was clunky and not fit for purpose moving forward, consider the current site features the baseline from here it can only grow and with all of our help succeed.
But of course everyone is free to choose new providers if they wish and over the last couple of months I’ve spoken to most of them.
JG is the only one that “gets it” it’s just a shame that some parts of the Third sector are so far behind you can’t see the potential looking forward, not directed at any one person just an observation based on some comments here.
As i say perspective we may loose some donations in the short term (week or 2) but in the long term it will be a huge improvement to all our lives and the lives of the people we support or provide for.
John
Megan said...
June 26th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
My word, you lot are a bunch of moaner’s.
I have used justgiving many times and raised and donated money to various charities. I have always found the site easy to use and so have the people donating to me and asking for donations.
Yes, they are having some problems at the moment, but only since Saturday. No-one willinging tries to upset there customers or clients. I am sure that the justgiving team are doing everything that they possibly can to rectify this situation (as noted by the CEO).
Have a little patience, be more supportive. This site was very good and it will be again……. stop moaning for heavans sake…..
Anna C said...
June 26th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
This is ‘a gesture’ but unfortuately doesn’t make up for the loss of donations this week. We’ve lost a number of donations because people couldn’t consistently donate through the site. It was only yesterday that it seemed to start working again and our event is in 2 days.
Our final push for sponsorship was unfortunately damaged because of the technical glitch. I would suggest that the receipient charity is at least give one month’s free memebership to make up for the loss of income.
Katie said...
June 26th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
As everybody is saying a total shambles and the offer of refunding 5% of nothing is simply the desperate offer of a clueless management team. I’ve been looking for alternatives myself and whilst we wait for Virgin I also founf Everyday Hero http://www.everydayhero.co.uk Looks interesting and they have a seminar in London on 6th July which might be worth a visit….
Terry Davies said...
June 26th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
How the mighty fall! I have to say I really do feel sorry for the poor souls who are manning the phones at JG. I know they are doing everything they can to rectify the situation but I wonder if it is really enough. I am sure that Zarine and her management team meant well with their refund offer but like so much of the decision making in the last week or so it just smacks of desperation. I am ex-military and the one thing we learnt was not to make decisions on the hoof! They always make things worse. Like so many I need an alternative and I need it fast because we have 2 events - the first is July 5th and the 2nd July 11th - I recently received a notification that CTT (Charity Technology Trust) have partners in online fundraising - http://www.everydayhero.co.uk Like Virgin, they are probably rubbing their hands with joy!
Nancy Scott said...
June 26th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
After losing a dear friend to cancer a year ago, my friends and I have worked relentlessly to create our own fundraising event - Little Legs for Life, in aid of Cancer Research UK. We were inspired by the Race for Life idea and have set this up just for children. We have 250 children taking part - we are all busy mums but have worked our socks off over 4 months to make it a success. The event is in 2 days time and noone has been able to receive donations to their pages.
How these problems can be brushed off as ‘teething’ trouble is beyond me - after all our hard work, I am so disappointed.
Yes, the pages stay open after the event, but the impetus is lost then.
5% of nothing is not really compensation is it? Waiving the fee for 7 days AFTER your problems are fixed - now that’s what I would call goodwill.
Oh, and I do wish JG would stop sending event reminder details with fundraising tips until all the problems are fixed - very annoying!
BigDaveSB said...
June 26th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I like the new look. I have obviously been fortunate. I’ve been away from a pc for the past few days, so have only had my phone for access. As soon as it was launched, I looked on my phone, both my current pages were fine, and have been today on a PC too.
I tweeted that I liked the new look, and someone saw it, and tested the site by giving me a very genrous doantion that rounded up my total to a nice £1,500.
Justgiving have done a tremendous job in helping me with my various challenges over the years.
I find some responses here frustrating, as you are clearly acting like victims - it’s all justgiving’s fault, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Yes, it’s going wrong, but instead of just complaining, give solutions too!
I appreciate that it is frustrating that your page is down, but please remember that there are paper sponsor forms as a back up. Any charity worth its salt can give you paying in slips so you can get money/cheques and pay them directly into the bank. You can extend your page to fundraise beyond the original set date. You can email people in the future. What kind of events have you got? Some people only bother sponsoring afterwards - for example when I ran four marathons, a kind friend said she would sponsor me £100, £25 a marathon. However, I had to complete a marathon before I saw the cash through justgiving. People will still be happy to sponsor you after you’ve run that marathon etc.
Take a little initivative, get in touch with the charity you are fundraising for, they will be able to help you. A lot of charites allow donations directly through their websites. You can send that link in the meantime, so donations can still be given online.
The 5% is a nice gesture. I agree with the previous comment from Steve who suggested that it is rolled out for a week when the site is working fully again.
It would be interesting to know what the exact figure is for sites that don’t work. I think these comments may have a selection bias - all those that have trouble are more likely to complain. Am I really lucky in that I’ve not experienced any problems, or is it that those commenting are really unlucky, as the majority of people haven’t had any problems? I don’t know, but would certainly like too.
Give them a break, and try and stick to constructive criticism.
BigDaveSB
roger parfitt said...
June 26th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
still not working. I’ve tried to donate to two separate fund raisers this week.
Adam said...
June 26th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
This relaunch has been disappointing. But is anyone really suprised? It is not as if the facebook app ever worked for prolonged periods. Perhaps your brand has finally peaked?
You have been the only game in town for a long time and now a couple of other sites are starting to appear as stronger contenders. Obviously the Virgin launch is looming and you wanted to be first mover, this was a big mistake in hindsight.
People will use Virgin and the site will look good to that there is no doubt, but they bought that place at the table, its also disturbingly looking like a Money brand cross sell- which is not what the ethos of giving is about. But that is Branson’s marketing genius for you.
My worry is that since your launch, you have failed to really re invest your market position, rather you have taken your rate and spent it on an average system. Where is the added value to the sector?
For JG not to sponsor the marathon, which is clearly your biggest revenue stream, you have dropped the ball. The launch of this “upgraded” site reflects the nagging knowledge you must have that, as first mover in this market, your time is coming to an end as the dominant player. One could almost call it “friends reunited” syndrome.
By opening the door to online giving, you have hugely assisted the sector and kudos for that must never be held back. The simple reality is that you have not continued to pioneer enough. For me it is sad to see this happening as i dont much like the thougt of Virgin Money as a new player, but my sympathy fails slightly as you had 5 years to evolve…
Survival of the fittest kicks in now, either learn fast or you may just further contribute to your decline.
Dawn James said...
June 26th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
How on earth can waiving the transaction fee be considered compensation when no-one can donate anything! I have to raise £2300 for a trek which means casting my net way beyond my close family and friends.
These are the donations that have been lost. People are busy and will normally only give one go and then move on.
I’m sorry but your response is a joke and has made me very angry.
James said...
June 26th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Why do it at such a busy time of the year for Charity events when Winter would be more appropriate!! Maybe 5% of funds raised to date would be more acceptable.
Steve Bridger said...
June 26th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
@Adam The Facebook app stopped working when Facebook changed something at their end. They forgot to tell their users.
“…failed to invest in your [Justgiving's] market position”, you say. I know for a fact that is *so* not the case. Stay to the facts.
BigDaveSB said...
June 26th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I’m not that great at IT, but a thought occured to me. Given that some pages are working, and some aren’t, would clearing any caches and cookies etc possibly solve it for some people?
Any one better versed in IT think it would?
Any one that’s experiencing problems willing to give it a go and see?
BigDaveSB
Chris said...
June 26th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Very poor decision to roll this out without proper testing, sounds like a T5 scenario to me, very poor decision wrt timing as in the middle of summer most charitable fundraising is taking place, even poorer decision is the new format which is complete step backwards ( who sanctioned this!!), we are losing sponsors and this has happened 2 weeks before the event. I didn’t even know about the virgin website, thank goodness I do now as I know exactly where I will be taking my fundraising next year. I feel very let down.
SteveK said...
June 26th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
@Steve Bridger, You said “perspective people, please”, I replied; my perspective is that charities pay an annual subsciption for this commercial service and have lost £150,000 a day during this according to CTO Dominic Lacey.
Maybe the ‘life threatening’ bit was over the top. I buried a family member yesterday and the charity who helped him will be affected by this so maybe I’m a bit touchy.
I’m sure your friends at JG are great people and are working hard, I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. I have no problem with JG or the money they make, they provide a great service for the benefit of many people thoughout the world. They should be very proud of what they’ve achieved.
My point was that the approach of not being able to revert and ploughing on regardless, seems more akin to dotcoms; people with lots of spirit, energy and positivity trying their best to keep going forward when in my opinion they really needed a plan to go back, stop, think and try again.
The CEO said they have to keep fixing and testing in production, I think this approach is risky when you’re dealing with people’s money and trust. I certainly wouldn’t like my bank to be fixing and testing code in production while I’m paying bills. I wouldn’t want Amazon to be testing and fixing code in production while I’m placing orders.
As I’ve said before though, they can do what they want, it’s their company. I wish them all the best in resolving their problems because I think it’s a fantastic service.
P.S. Good tips BigDaveSB
Mark Shaffer said...
June 26th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
John Carnell and Steve Bridger, I’m astonished that you can think JG have handled this at all well. The people involved would have been severely reprimanded in any of the orgainsations that I’ve worked for. I have over 15 years in IT in the aerospace and banking industries and so feel that I have a reasonable perspective on this. I’ve been on teams that have released systems lots of times and yes we made mistakes and yes we caused some problems, but we always communicated openly to our users and when we had showstoppers (like this) we rolled back.
And yes, I know this isn’t life critical, it’s just a donations site….but people are going to great lengths to raise money for charities and not being able to maximise much-needed cash for those charities and so feel rightly extremely let down.
There have been technical failings but more importantly huge management failings:
1) Poor communication. 1 blog entry per day with insufficient detail. Took until today for any detail about how they’re learning lessons.
2) Really poor decision making. Poor risk analysis in the first place compounded by a refusal to roll back
There has still been no explanation as to what actually went wrong. I know the testing was inadequate, but which part of the app is failing? Web server/App server/DB/Middleware? We just got the “teething problems” line which just served to inflame the situation. And any ststs to back up how badly affected the user population is or can’t they tell??
There has been no explanation as to why they didn’t roll back. This “simple” action would have saved JG from most of the complaints. I don’t for a minute think that rolling back is necessarily simple but surely a revamp of the look and feel would not have been an issue to roll back - or did they also change the DB structure and not think of a way to store data changes to allow roll back…so poor risk analysis as well?
Why are we still suffering? It’s almost a week after go-live…. Zarine, for God’s sake, Please roll the site back…..!!!
I feel sorry for their support staff (if they really are working 24/7 in shifts) - there’s no need. There is no reason that this has to be released now - it can wait to be fixed at a sensible speed - roll it back (or at least explain why this couldn’t be done) and let the support guys take their time to get the release right rather than just try and test in the live environment.
And to counter the “great new features” that will increase donations, well that’s fantastic, but let’s get them right in test first and give us a workable system to use in the meantime…
Ruth said...
June 26th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
I can’t now even remember what my justgiving page looks like, it is so long since I’ve been able to access it. This is a ridiculous situation. I am not at all ashamed to say that I am jumping ship to another site. I’m absolutely furious that I’ve lost 2 weeks worth of sponsors that I will probably now never manage to get back, having lost the impetus. I’d stay around just so that my charity could get a little something back from JustGiving’s very generous (!) compensation offer, but as has already been pointed out - 5% of nothing is still nothing.
At a guess, this example of how not to deal with your ‘teething problems’ (I’d hate to see their example of real problems then) will mark the downfall of JustGiving. They well and truly brought it on themselves.
Simon said...
June 26th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I think there are 2 separate issues here. The back end platform and the UI.
The majority of the problems have been with the back end. The charity people in the know who have commented on this seem to think that in the long run it will be better and they are probably right. I’m lucky, my event is in August so I can wait for them to be fixed. I’m sure the system will be more robust, I’ll have to take your word for it, but if your happy then so am I.
However, no one ‘in the know’ seems to have tried to explain the new UI and the ‘feature’ of the donations being spread over multiple pages and not being able to see all the text on the page at once. When my mum gives me a donation she doesn’t care about the extensibility of the back end system for not-for-profits. She just wants to be able to read about what I’m doing and see any updates and check which family members have made a donation so she can hassle them. I doubt she’ll want to wait for the page to constantly reload. You have to think of all your use cases, not just the Twitter junkies…
I work in software so appreciate what the JG team are going through now. Good luck!
Rich said...
June 26th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
JUST ROLL BACK TO THE OLD WEBSITE WHILE PROBLEMS WITH THE NEW ONE ARE SORTED. IT’S FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND I STILL CAN’T LEAVE A DONATION!!!
BigDaveSB said...
June 26th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I haven’t had any issues what so ever. So, if you are reading this and have not been able to access your page at all, then tell me, and I will donate (or try to) a fiver to you. (Unless you’re a religious charity, or some animal charities).
I’ll then let you know how I get on.
First come, first served…
SteveK said...
June 26th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
BigDaveSB, have you had any luck editing your page?
I’ve been trying to update mine to let people know about the death of the person in whose name we’re raising money.
BigDaveSB said...
June 26th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Yes, updated with out any issues (I put a note on saying that jg were having a few issues, so if you weren’t able to donate, come back in a day or two).
My offer of a donation still stands…
Dom Conway said...
June 26th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Just tried to leave a comment here and even that didn’t seem to work! Second attempt…
The few people who have actually managed to access my page and leave donations say their donations aren’t registering so your offer is much appreciated BigDaveSB!
http://www.justgiving.com/samuelconway/
Anne said...
June 26th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I can’t edit my page at all, either. Also it tells me I don’t have a page - which I DO! I FINALLY managed to set it up yesterday after trying all week, (thanks guys!) but I waived the right to edit as I set it up for fear of hitting a glitch and not being able to set it up at all - and thus miss our print deadline today. But I need to edit the photo (who wants a dirty old pair of trainers?) and the message
What a mess!- and mega frustrating…
Anne
BigDaveSB said...
June 26th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Dom Conway, that’s £5 towards your challenge.
Having just donated I’ve got to say that the process seemed a lot quicker and smoother than previous donations. Barely took me any time at all.
Confirmation email received too.
Seriously, this upgrade, from my eyes, has been nothing but seamless, smooth, and good. I like the new look (granted, that’s subjective. I still have no idea why CSI Miami is the most popular, given it’s the worst of the lot).
It’s such a shame that’s not the case for everybody.
Back to my previous comment, could cookies/cached pages be messing things up? With my limited knowledge it seems to be the only thing I can think of - my pc here at work was cookie/cached page free having not been used in a week.
Cat Pinner said...
June 26th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I’m doing my event tomorrow .. how am I supposed to get sponsors now. It’s going to be too late so I’m not going to meet my target. Beats the point of using this site if it doesn’t work.
Rod said...
June 26th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Having had problems all week until today they have started again in the last 30 mins…
I’m trying to update my page with important information and i’m getting the now infamous “We’re really sorry for the problems you’re having with our site”… If this was your internet banking site, insurance comparision site, etc you would be losing customers very rapidly and getting a lot of press coverage…. you should thank your lucky stars that isn’t your case and people are being charitable and giving your team a change, at the moment
Other people have already suggested this but you should really look to back out your changes asap, go back to the old site and go back to the drawing board.
Enough is enough
R_hem said...
June 26th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
BigDaveSB…….
Have just tried clearing my cookies etc.
For the first time in two weeks I’ve just viewed my just giving page - it works! Don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not - but maybe you’re right. Something has certainly just happened
Fanks!!!
;0)
Rod said...
June 26th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
June 26th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Having had problems all week until today they have started again in the last 30 mins…
I’m trying to update my page with important information and i’m getting the now infamous “We’re really sorry for the problems you’re having with our site”… If this was your internet banking site, insurance comparision site, etc you would be losing customers very rapidly and getting a lot of press coverage…. you should thank your lucky stars that people are being charitable and giving your team a chance, at the moment
Other people have already suggested this but you should really look to back out your change asap, go back to the old site and go back to the drawing board.
Enough is enough
Emma said...
June 26th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
I have never had problems with justgiving before and I do think the site is great. I rang the customer services line today and asked for some help as some of my friends donations were coming in as anonymous without their comments.
The girl i spoke to was very friendly and very helpful and fixed my problem instantly. I do believe they are working hard on sorting things out.
However, i am not happy that I have just sent an email out to all my friends/contacts asking them to donate and now the site is down! Most people only donate as and when they see an email/reminder. If they go to the page and it is not working then it is unlikely they will think ‘oh i’ll go back later’ - they won’t. So i am a bit frustrated now. I wonder how much money I have just missed out on.
John Foster said...
June 26th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
@BigDaveSB
Your comment “Seriously, this upgrade, from my eyes, has been nothing but seamless, smooth, and good”
Apart from personal experience, JustGiving appear to disagree with you.
@Mark Shaffer
Well said, I couldn’t agree with you more!! - Get the site regressed and fix the problems offline..
Adam said...
June 26th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Great. Looked like it was finally up and running again (albeit minus PayPal). Managed to get three supporters to make donations, sent out a global email based on this all working again to find the all too familiar “We’re really sorry for the problems you’re having with our site.”
When can we ever trust this site again?
Looking forward to the Virgin site launching but it won’t help us now.
Still no further word on their blog after the awful video from the CEO.
James said...
June 26th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
absolutely disgusted.
Losing donations left, right and center. The 5% refund of your fee which you graciously make charities pay is an absolute joke, because as many people have pointed out, 5% of nothing, is nothing.
The video could not be any more oily or responsibility-dodging if it was given by an MP with two houses.
Five percent is not good enough, neither is saying “we really tested it a lot, honestly” whinge whinge.
The refusal to roll back is obviously a really poor choice also.
All round extremely poor management and you owe the charities more than this. Given you charge charities a fee for this service, if you pay people a salary i think someone you should be willing to do the opposite and someone deserves to lose their job.
JG has let down an amazing number of people and charities, and their lack of acknowledgement or _proper_ remittance to the charities is poor.
Did you expect people not to notice that you were only offering 5% for seven days - or that 5% of nothing is nothing?
James
Adam Crisp said...
June 26th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
I believe in loyalty but having no rollback strategy is suicide.
http://www.charitygiving .co.uk - 5 mins set up, painless, donations are rolling in. C’mon JustGiving, force rollback then test it live at 2am - 3am UK time for a week of evenings.
Vicky said...
June 26th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
And I thought I had problems! Have to agree with the vast majority of people - the new look JG is seriously bad and I found difficult to navigate unlike the old - and yes I too am looking for alternatives.
My website http://www.bfkbooks.com has had an upgrade over the weekend - guess what my webmaster cloned it first and worked off line. Pity JG didn’t do the same.
Good luck to all of you who have forthcoming events - hope fully something will be sorted soon.
Rich Green said...
June 26th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
It’s been *really* frustrating, god knows how many fundraisers haven’t been able to take sponsorship donations. A project on this scale should have had a rollback plan and it seems like it should have been put into place. The fact that you weren’t able to test as fully as you should have done smacks of a company with limited resources trying to target investment and being forced to cross a few fingers. There are worse criticisms for a company offering your services.
Returning fees fees sounds reasonable and hopefully the company has learned from the experience.
Rich
aileen douthwaite said...
June 26th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
I’m a bit confused by this whole thing. I had difficulties before the the “new improved” website! Some friends tried as far back as January and had extreme difficulties in getting their donations registered. I have had two donations today for £20 which i watched the people make in my office and only one is registered here when i checked at home tonight! So, that’s £20+ I’ve lost as the person had now retired!!! I’m sure my charity can’t afford to loose £20. A poor gesture to refund the fee for 7 days.
Oh and you still can’t upload decent sized pictures!
Aileen
CharlieW said...
June 26th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
The irregular and blindly optimistic postings (e.g. broken feature X will be fixed today - three days ago) from JG are nothing other than inflammatory. Please stop insulting us! Want to be useful? Give OUR users a contrite, polite and complete error message when their attempts to donate their hard earned wedge to charity are denied. ~That would take you all of 5 minutes and would make a difference.
The wonder of it is that JG is a business - I could understand this level of incompetence if we were talking about a bunch of happy-go-lucky amateurs. But we aren’t. We are talking about a company that charges a handsome fee to facilitate our fund raising.
Nick Lincoln said...
June 26th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Personally this is far from good enough. I can’t update my site, upload pages and therefore not encourage more people to donate since I just finished my london to paris ride on Saturday. So what’s 5% of £0 - yup £0.
It shouldn’t be hard to roll back to the old site. The time that this has taken (days, rather than hours to acknowledge the problem), illustrates the lack of attention to the frustration justgiving’s customers are feeling and has a real amatuer feel to it.
Here’s a 2 words to look up “contingency planning”. At times, things don’t go right - but at least be prepared for it
Charlene said...
June 26th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Just put the old site back up again until it is sorted! I am trying to do updates to my site, I have a BIG awareness day tomorrow (saturday 27th) and have permission from the local council to collect money, also I have paid for posters to be made and flyers with my website —- but alas, if I direct people to it, they can not give —- NIGHTMARE!!!! Hundreds of people will be at this all day event!!!!!
Mike Vogel said...
June 26th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
It seems to have settled down now.
The one thing I don’t like is the necessity of trawling through separate pages to see the donors. The space for individual donor records is now too big; it was very adequate before and on the old site you only had to scroll down to see all the donors’ names on one page. That was much better, in my opinion.
mike
Barbie Lindsay said...
June 27th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Disappointed that it hasn’t been working as I am sure the Royal Society for the Blind has lost out because of the problems. Emails that I have had, telling me they couldn’t leave a donation on this site hasn’t been followed out by a cheque in the post! How does 5% refund help here?
Nigel said...
June 27th, 2009 at 8:12 am
7 days since the launch of the new web site and I am still unable to update my fundraising page. This is the fist and last time that I will use JG.
Vanessa said...
June 27th, 2009 at 9:29 am
I think they should offer for £100 donation instead.
I think the 5% offer is really sneaky and low because:
1. People couldn’t access my page to make donations,
2. I deliberately didn’t ask for donations while the site was being changed
3. When I did try to send an email round, nobody got it.
So they will be refunding 5% of £0, as that is what I have raised in the time covered. I am sure they are aware that there have been very few donations, so are just trying to look good as cheaply as possible.
Catherine V said...
June 27th, 2009 at 9:41 am
The 5% offer does cover donations today so fundraisers like me can hope that donors give generously today! I’ve just emailed and texted everyone so…hope the JG fixes work and I am not let down for a second Saturday.
Good luck to all other JG users with events in the next week or so.
admin said...
June 27th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Hi all, thanks for your continued feedback and suggestions. I just wanted to let you know about the update we’ve just put on the post above:
We know lots of you have found it hard to donate but wanted to let you know that donations *are* being made, with over £2 million given to charities this week, with many more being made today.
Jonathan (JustGiving)
Adam said...
June 27th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Zero comment on any points made aside from “the donations are being made”. Fine, so what about all the other comments, the most important ones being the inability for users to confidently tell people to go to their page (I’ve done this several times seeing that donations can be made, only to find the page replaced with a “sorry” placeholder the minute someone else tries), the pathetic 5% extra for 7 days, 7 days when most didn’t dare try to get anyone to donate, 5% of nothing being nothing, et al., the stupid mulitple pages for donation history that no one seems to like, in fact everyone seems to hate and considers to be a hinderance to gettting others to donate too.
All this missing and not even another blog post, just an edit at the bottom of one now made two days ago.
This simply isn’t good enough, even trying to spin your way out of this would demonstrate some feeling towards your users, but we’ve not even had that. It’s looking very much like JG is in an ivory tower right now. Roll on Virgin’s site, a not -for-profit affair. I don’t much care that Virgin Money will get the kudos and proabably free advertising from it. Run non-for-profit is I think how most people thought JG was run. This affair has shown just how the opposite is in fact true.
Come on, you have people working 24/7 on this. So what’s the excuse for not being transparent with the issues and posting at least daily or better still more than that on here about what’s going on. We don’t want to see any more CEO videos, just post regularly on the facts. Then at least we could be persuaded that you are actually doing something about this.
Val said...
June 27th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
I’ve just had a donation from someone totally unknown to me but havent yet received donations from several people who had promised to sponsor me.
Is it possible that donations are being allocated to wrong people/pages??
Rod said...
June 27th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Is anyone at justgiving.com actually going to inform their CUSTOMERS what is happening, what issues are still there, what the timescales are to resolve these issues, why this upgrade cannot be backed out to the old site?
Stating that millions of pounds worth of payments have been made is very poor PR since you know that you are losing revenue, customer loyality is being eroded and more importantly you are stopping charities from getting much needed funds
I thought I’d try to update my page again today but no same old “We’re really sorry for the problems you’re having with our site”… each time. Same as i reported on this blog at 4:30pm Friday.
I’m also getting emails from people saying they can’t donate and can I help them.
I wish i could, I’d probably do a better job having worked for a Service Delivery IT organisation for many years.
BigDaveSB - I’ll take your £5 for the NSPCC (as promised) and can the person accountable for this mess sends an email to all users saying sorry and explaining what has happened
I decided to do a bit of problem analysis for you….
Clearing your cookies does not sorts the problem out.. tried that one
Switching on Compability Mode on (IE8 feature) doesn’t work….. tried that one
Backing out the change…. I suspect that will work!
Will common sense prevail?
AWL said...
June 27th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
I am a complete luddite when it come to computers but I do know how to use the ‘undo’ arrow when I’ve made a mistake. Does JG have that botton on their toolbar? If so, one push would take us all back to a perfectly functional site. Only a thought!
Steve said...
June 27th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
I wonder whether they hope that if they ignore the comments and keep saying things are really Ok ish with donations coming in we’ll just live with it. But I think theyve completely misjudged the feeling of the people who pay for and use the site. They really have not got it. £2m in this week, I wonder what they received in the corresponding week last year with a functioning site?
Ruth said...
June 27th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
I have been absolutely appalled at the way JustGiving have handled their ‘teething problems’ and will be very unlikely to use the site again in the future.
I do however, have to make a comment regarding the charities’ administration staff. Despite the huge number of us having difficulties with the site & (quite rightly) complaining, one of the justgiving staff members has taken the time to personally update me on the situation - more than once. In a number of ways she has really gone the extra mile, leaving me very appreciative and touched.
The management has very clearly screwed this whole thing up. In my eyes, the only saving grace for justgiving is the attitude and effort of some of their team members. I think these people are doing a great job under ridiculous circumstances and I feel really sorry for the position they’ve been put in.
Helen S said...
June 27th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
I am absolutely appalled that there is nothing on the front page of the site to say that nobody should try to create a new page this weekend. I have just wasted my evening uploading photos, and writing and rewriting my text (about a very emotional issue - my Mum’s death from Alzheimers) only to hit the save button and be taken to your unbelievably lame error message page which talks about ‘teething problems’, not about the fact that people can’t set up pages. I’ve been trying for a week to create a page, but until this evening it wouldn’t let me get past the first bit, uploading my personal details. The fact that this evening I could get as far as I did seemed to indicate that it was going to work. Why on earth can’t you be up front and make matters clear on the front page? I really don’t know what I’m going to do now - I’m supposed to be doing a parachute jump in two weeks time for the Alzheimers Society. I’ve had to pay my costs to Skyline, the parachuting company, upfront. If I can’t raise enough money, not only will the Alzheimers Society not get anything - I’ll be out of pocket. I’m SO upset. And when I rang your helpline number just now all I got was an answerphone message.
Susannah said...
June 27th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
I’ve donated via Justgiving many times in the past with no problems and am baffled and frustrated by what’s going on now. OK, so beta testing etc didn’t show up the issues and the best planned projects can have problems - BUT that was then and this in now.
My experience as follows: Tried to donate on 20 June: website down. Tried again 21 June, disappointed by look of new website but dragged my way right through the process which seemed more cumbersome than before, donation processed and thank you message received: but never appeared on website. Don’t know where money has gone. Checked back for a couple of days - nothing showing so phoned the helpline, as directed. Got the voicemail saying v sorry, v busy, pls leave number and we’ll phone you back. That was 4 days ago - no call back received and still can’t get through. So - decided to donate again regardless tonight. Failed to get onto process donation page. Message says: email or ring Helpline (a bit pointless if no response) and/or read blog - so I did. So sad to read so many fundraisers obviously v frustrated and unhappy. This hopeful donor similarly frustrated and unhappy. Please, Justgiving, get more resources in fast to a) fix the problem and b) communicate properly with your customers (fundraisers and donors) - or they will desert you in droves and not come back.
Nigel said...
June 28th, 2009 at 6:51 am
I had no idea that there were problems until after I had entered my credit card details. If I had known earlier I would have found a different way to donate that would not have entailed me spending extra time trying to establish whether my donation has gone through.
Victoria Evans said...
June 28th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Absolutely disgraceful statement and reaction from JustGiving. Unprofessional, shoddy and inadequate.
As it stands I STILL cannot accept donations a week later. Everyone who has been emailed to help 2 causes I am promoting have not been able to pledge their donations and WONT RETURN!
We have lost donations to a childrens charity helping bereaved military children and also donations to a hospice helping terminally ill patients and their families.
Way to go! I dont see how the 5% is going to make the blindest bit of difference, when you cant even make any donations.
As someone who owns several websites and runs a non-profit organisation to boot if we had behaved in this manner with upgrades to our websites we’d have been out of business within days. Anyone with any technological nowse would know if there are glitches then you revert to the old site immediately, not force customers and community to endure even more cock-ups for days on end.
IMO the CEO and tech teams should be fired on the spot! ANd to think, 5 days ago I was one of the few people who was voicing support for what they had done in trying to rectify the problems.
Jason said...
June 28th, 2009 at 10:27 am
From what I’m hearing from people who have tried to donate to my page - this is more fraud than just a bad new website. My friends have made donations that haven’t shown up - are JustGiving making off with the money?
What a joke to say they’ll refund the transaction fees when they’re not even handing over the donations people have made! Of course, if your friends don’t independently tell you they’ve made a donation, you have no way of tracing it down so it would be very convenient for JG to keep it from the donor and the charity.
Despite the fact they’ve blown my trust, I’m not going to shut my page down because I still want to support my charity and don’t want them to lose the donations already made. Yet.
I’d like JG to come clean and explain how they’ll verify that EVERY donation that’s been made ends up credited to the right charities and PROVE that they haven’t lost one single transaction. They’ve already proved they’re technically incompetent so suspect they’ll never be able to do this.
If I don’t get a response by the end of the week, I will refer this to the relevant regulatory body, JG’s ’security’ partners and/or the police. I’d encourage others to do likewise if they see the same types of problems.
Launching a crappy new website is one thing - stealing from people and charities is another - JG should be ashamed.
Ryan said...
June 28th, 2009 at 11:39 am
I haven’t been able to create a new page for the past 4 days so I can’t even start accepting donations. So the 5% compensation is no good to me or my charity or potential donaters. I’ve emailed my charity to see if they will set up with bmycharity.com as there is a definite need for strong competition to raise the quality here.
Victoria Evans said...
June 28th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
As an aside … has anyone else noticed that the URL for the error pages goes to a page entitled alastaircampbell.org.uk
Coincidence or not?????
SM said...
June 28th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
We are STILL receiving feedback that would-be donors find our pages are down. Not good enough.
Adam said...
June 28th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
48 Hours later, JG give us another update (no video this time)… that… err… tells us nothing really.
Check it out:
http://blog.justgiving.com/2009/06/27/new-on-justgiving/update-on-the-justgiving-site-%E2%80%93-saturday-27th-june/
AW said...
June 28th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
My walk was the 20th June and lost loads of sponsors due to site being down for long periods of the days following my walk. And as others have said 5% can not be repaid on donations not received.
James said...
June 28th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
I just wanted to commend Zarine and the JustGiving team on their level of honesty and transparency over the last week. I totally trust them to do the right thing, minimise any further disruption and ensure that no one is at a loss.
Launching a new secure transactional website is hard, damn hard - and I’m sure the team will have given their all to test it and get it right - for the benefit of the entire Just Giving community. Unfortunately - things sometimes do not go as planned.
Companies are not machines. They are run by people - like you and me - and Just Giving has some of the very best And people sometimes make mistakes or errors.
Why castigate people? No one was trying to make this happen - and, as far as I’m aware, no one has died in the process.
Please give the team a break - and help them get back to delivering the exemplary service I’ve certainly come to expect from them.
Adam said...
June 29th, 2009 at 8:58 am
@James
“Honesty and Transparency” You’d make a good politician. So where is this honesty and transparency then? All I’ve seen is a half harted video that just seemed to incite people with the pointless 5% of nothing rebate. And another posting from a staff member saying that everything is fine, but there are still some issues with everything.
The positive comments on this blog comments stick out like a sore thumb, and no one is being fooled by them. Of course I’m sure the staff are doing all they can. But that’s no reason why people shouldn’t be able to vent their anger at the only people they can. Monies lost over the past 10 days will not be replaced.
If they really were displaying honesty and tranparency then there’d be more than one blog posting every 2 days to let us honestly know what’s going on. They’d comment on the 5% thing, they’d give some estimates for returning PayPal, they’d give us some real answers on what specifically the problems were and exactly how they were solving them. Honesty and transparency? Please don’t insult us James.
Steve Bridger said...
June 29th, 2009 at 9:19 am
@Adam. Yes, it’s me again. Actually, JG are being more transparent than many by sharing what they can, when they have something valuable to add (I know you’ll come back at me for saying this, too).
One of my hats is as a community manager for another organisation, and believe me, I know what it’s like to be on the other end of a thread like this. It hurts. You take it personally. You feel like people are kicking you in the guts when you are trying your best.
I repeat, mistakes happen. No one sets out to make them. You think Virgin Money Giving will be equally as transparent? I would put my mortgage on it that they will not. The fact that some people seem to be suggesting JG is almost stealing money from good causes is outrageously wide-of-the-mark.
I take the long view.
BigDaveSB said...
June 29th, 2009 at 10:15 am
@adam Whilst my positive comments may “Stick out like a sore thumb and no one is being fooled by them”, may I suggest you look at the evidence for my comments:
You can view http://www.justgiving.com/thecontinuingadventuresofdavidwood and see the £100+ donation I received on Saturday, the day of the upgrade.
You can also see my paragraph “As you might have noticed, justgiving have revamped the page. I’ve not experienced any problems, but if you can’t donate, try again in a day or two. Thanks!” Which demonstrates that I have succesfully been able to edit my page.
You can visit here: http://www.justgiving.com/samuelconway/ to see the painless £5 donation I gave, which also leads me on to Rod, sorry, but you were beaten for the £5. I’ve promised another on the latest blog thread though.
Justgiving have truly been nothing but helpful in my dealings with them over the years (I have used to jg to fundraise for two China Treks; running four marathons; eating catfood; and my current 106.8 mile challenge). I feel compelled to post positive comments because they deserve them, and also, I feel, in the way of negativity from most people posting comments, need them so they can remember why it is they’re trying to fix things, when the majority of people on this blog do seem to be totally ungrateful.
I know that a lot of you are upset and frustrated, and this is understandable, but please, there’s more you can do than just moaning. This is why, earlier, I posted this:
“I find some responses here frustrating, as you are clearly acting like victims - it’s all justgiving’s fault, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Yes, it’s going wrong, but instead of just complaining, give solutions too!
I appreciate that it is frustrating that your page is down, but please remember that there are paper sponsor forms as a back up. Any charity worth its salt can give you paying in slips so you can get money/cheques and pay them directly into the bank. You can extend your page to fundraise beyond the original set date. You can email people in the future. What kind of events have you got? Some people only bother sponsoring afterwards - for example when I ran four marathons, a kind friend said she would sponsor me £100, £25 a marathon. However, I had to complete a marathon before I saw the cash through justgiving. People will still be happy to sponsor you after you’ve run that marathon etc.
Take a little initivative, get in touch with the charity you are fundraising for, they will be able to help you. A lot of charites allow donations directly through their websites. You can send that link in the meantime, so donations can still be given online.”
All becuase your jg page is down, doesn’t stop you fundraising.
I may stick out like a sore thumb, but my comments are genuine, and aren’t meant to “fool” any one. The evidence above demonstrates why I say what I do.
Dom Conway said...
June 29th, 2009 at 11:28 am
BigDaveSB, thank you so much for your donation! Glad you were able to leave it painlessly. Things do seem to be a bit smoother with the site now so fingers crossed we’re over the worst of it.
MarkP said...
June 30th, 2009 at 8:47 am
I’m afraid I have to side with the naysayers on this one. Any organisation that takes money from people needs to be 100% sure that they can either perform a website upgrade OR rollback to the previous version of the website to ensure continued service. JG have not done this and as a commercial organisation that is unforgivable. They should resinate the old site immediately, and if they cannot do this then they need to be honest as to why they can’t and why the proper procedures were not put in place.
To assuage the folks that have lost donations they should, once the website is working properly again, waive the 5% transaction fee for a period equivalent to that which the site has been in error.
Graeme Stuckey said...
June 30th, 2009 at 8:49 am
If you are really interested in feedback as you claim
“We’d also like to thank everyone who has taken the time to give feedback, suggestions, views and even words of encouragement.”
Can I suggest that you revert to the old site which:worked, it also displayed donation information MUCH better.
Before burning your bridges, why didn’t you run both sites side by side? Giving people the choice of using the new site, that way, you had an immediate fall back option you would also have had much more effective testing of the new site.
I hope you manage tp sort your problems before irreperable damage is done.
Jonathan said...
June 30th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
My first and last time trying to give via your site having wasted half an hour on the site and following up to see what happened to my intended donation. Nobody in 2009 launches a new site in the incompetent manner you have depriving charities and fund raisers of moneyand frustrating givers like me. I have no confidcence in your ability to safeguard my personal data including my credit card information. You charge enough for the service as your 5% doesn’t include credit card etc charges so your disclosure is misleading and arguably a breach of trading standards. If Branson can do it for free let’s hope you deservedly go out of business. Unhappy - you bet!
George Bliss said...
June 30th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
This really is a shame.
I agree and echo the majority of the comments on this board: that Just Giving have let their users and their charities down.
If tiny startup dotcoms can push for (and achieve) 100% uptime and SLA, with cheap cloud hosting and technology more reliable and easy to test than ever it seems unbelieveable that Just Giving, in comparison a relatively large dotcom are having these issues.
A day would have been a disaster. Two days and jobs should be on the line. A whole week? Appalling.
Looking forward to Virgin Money Giving going live.
Paul said...
June 30th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
I’ve been using JG for years, but when the new website first went live and we were first emailed about it, I took one look and thought that the new site was awful - for the reasons already documented above. That’s without all of the flaws in the performance of the website that have been found.
I don’t think that this question has been answered as far as I can see - why did JG bother changing?
It’s apparent to me that they’ve put themselves and their users through a massive amount of grief, and we’ll all be worse off with the new website anyway.
(Please don’t give any answers related to twitter/facebook/youtube/blogging unless you have to, which I really do think a lot of people will think a waste of their time - certainly in my experience)
John said...
July 1st, 2009 at 7:41 am
Video apologies at this stage with a waiver of the 5% from the past 7 dayes when no one can donate is a joke.
The money you are making from your 5% should be shared among all the charities that are active over the past 7 days.
what about the costs incurred from the people who are supporting the charities?
I know I have spent a lot of time and money on printing and marketing which has been all wasted as no one could donate.
If only you had spent more on the development instead of trying to do it on a budget and setting cowboys on to develop a new site.
Andrew said...
July 1st, 2009 at 11:04 am
Noticed that the firstgiving sister site is still using the old UI - can you guys switch back to that?
As per Paul’s blog, i’m not really sure what the rationale for change was here. At this time of increased competition, why did you upset your loyal customer base who before these changes were largely your advocates?
Did you unknowingly hire programmers from Virgin?
Jimbo said...
July 1st, 2009 at 11:20 am
New site is a disaster.
The new site looks basic, hiding part of the important “My Story” is unacceptable, the oversized donation entries spread over multiple pages is time consuming.
The new widget is awful, also looks basic, much prefer the previous version which listed 3 latest donation comments and looked great.
Offer of 5% of donations since launch of new site is worthless if people were unable to make donations!
Bring back the old site. I will be looking at alternative sites in future.
BigDaveSB said...
July 1st, 2009 at 11:33 am
@Paul Facebook/Twitter etc are important. I have received over £500 directly from Twitter use. It’s up to you if you ignore the latest digital technologies and trends that are out there, but let’s face it, JG needs to move with the times, even if you choose not to.
Nigel Rudkin said...
July 1st, 2009 at 11:41 am
A total shambles.
I have used JG for 4 or 5 years now with absolutely no problems. The day I sent my main mail out to probable donors was the day it all went wrong.
I agree with the vast majority of the comments here - first why bother - the old design was neat, clean, you could see all the text without further clicking, donating was easy. Now, you have the Flash target-barometer and the apps for facebook etc - hardly much of a payback.
I too will look seriously at other giving sites now - my donations are definitely well down, and I have given up telling friends to “try again soon” - a total and utter b*lls-up.
Paul said...
July 1st, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Hi BigDaveSB
“JG needs to move with the times, even if you choose not to.”
It’s not necessarily that I choose not to use these things, but I think that it’d be a waste of my time as my sponsors wouldn’t use these things either. I think with all of this hype over these technologies, I still suspect that the majority don’t bother based at least based on the evidence from my circle of friends / family / colleagues / aquiantences.
When I started with JG, virtually all of my collecting was done on paper rather than JG which was just down to people’s preference, so at least that’s changed - I’d say it’s about 50/50 now.
I’m glad it works for you though.
Paul said...
July 1st, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Website now allows donations, but no comments. The only way is to go through the Help facility and locate a link which allows you to add a comment later. A painful process.
If JG don’t have the appropriate skills to run a large IT project properly, perhaps they should use external specialists .
sharon d said...
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:44 am
This is the first time i have used this ‘charity donation website’ and i wish i had not bothered!!! - many ppl i know have tried to make donations - only to find that this site DECLINES their kind and generous donations!!
Totally Ridiculous & Highly Embarrassing…….
PLEASE get this problem sorted out!!!! - TEN DAYS ago i created my account & you are still having problems??? - why not revert back to the OLD VERSION until this issue gets sorted out ?? That way the charities don’t loose out - You save (some) face, AND the ppl who are asking to be sponsored and promoting that they do it via your site don’t end up looking stupid for recommending something which does not work!!
Please let me know of other sites which i can get aa service which will actually work??
BigDaveSB said...
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:28 pm
@Paul Sorry, my first reply to you was a bit updrupt (my fault for writing it in a rush). I got the impression from your post that you were being very dismissive of these “Web 2.0″ (Facebook etc). it seemed to me you were saying, it doesn’t work for me and my social circle, well why bother?
Obviously thsoe that use Justgiving AND Facebook (and the like) are a subset of the total JG users. However, I think it is crucial for JG (and charities in general) to get on top of how the interent is changing.
In the past, it was very much that you took what you were given. Now with blogs, you tube, comments etc we, the users, are also in control of the content.
Justgiving refelcts this. Initially, we had very little control over our pages. This upgrade (yes, I view it as a step up, despite the problems) gives us, the users, more control over our pages. In addition, JG are lsitening, and will be able to introduce further changes.
Alreay they are listening - you can bet your bottom dollar that we will soon have the option of displaying 10 donations, or 50 (or more?) on our pages, and that we can show more of our message, or less. It will be up to us.
I look forward to that happening. I already have a few adventures in my mind for next year (I’m a serial fundraiser) and am looking forward to then, when I will be able to customise my site a lot more.
Just Giving added to our Hall of Shame « Software Quality Matters said...
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:04 pm
[...] an act of desperate reconciliation, Zarine Kharas, the CEO of Just Giving has publically apologised for this complete disaster, admitting they ‘didnt test it (their website) extensively [...]
Tina said...
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
5% of nothing is nothing… I’m afraid that I find your gesture of refunding the 5% transaction fee hollow.
You mention that you will refund the transaction fee on all donations made between the 20th and 27th June… NONE OF MY FRIENDS COULD MAKE DONATIONS DURING THIS TIME DUE TO THE ERRORS. They have only just started putting their donations through this week after numerous attempts last week which failed (Oh and incidently I completed the event on the 27th). I have tried texting and texting the sponsors that were going to donate in good faith but were put off by the site issues, I think it’s costing me more in text messages than your transaction refund!!!!!
Rishad Alikhan said...
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:14 pm
The website problem was a minor hiccup and although unfortunate, was quickly resolved. Good work.
Sharon D said...
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
to Rishad… ermm ‘quickly resolved’??? from what i have read here and on http://blog.justgiving.com/2009/06/30/new-on-justgiving/update-on-the-justgiving-site-%E2%80%93-tuesday-30th-june/comment-page-1/#comment-2254 webpage there are still many people having problems - including myself, of which i am still waiting for someone to email me about, so not sure where your ‘minor hiccup’ comes into it as I’ve had problems for the past 10 days… and as for it being ‘quickly resolved’ as far as i am aware there is no resolution to ALL of the problems myself and others are experiencing!
John Scott Cothill said...
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:31 pm
5% of nothing, is nothing. Week 1, day 1 stuff to be quite honest.
I personally detest the new design, I swear you guys are going backwards with technology, not forwards. Sadly, your site now has fail whale written all over it.
Moreover, Virgin Money Giving is up and coming and after a quick sneek peek at their website, it doesn’t take a genius to understand why they are better than your service for charities. Comparison here; http://uk.virginmoney.com/virgin/giving/how-we-compare.jsp
Furthermore, your negative stance on Vigin’s new launch here http://justgiving.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/justgiving-welcomes-virgin-money-giving/ is not good.
I look forward to seeing how you guys rise to the competition. You can do it.
Best of luck,
John
Connie Wan-Docksey said...
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:16 pm
I thought I was alone in feeling completely racked off with Just-giving then I read all these emails.
I’ve had (very) delayed replies to my emails which say they are trying their best blah de blah, I just dont think its good enough!
Its the charities that are losing and by compensating 5-poxy-percent you think that shows your sorry?!
No it doesnt! Too little too late.
You have to understand that people are very busy and once they’ve made a donation, they aint gonna check their bank accounts and make another donation if it hasn’t shown up!
Flippin useless and I will NEVER use this website again!
Also, how can you possibly say you didnt test it enough to ‘break’ it?! What the hell? People are just trying to make a donation? Whats to break?!
Mike Henley said...
July 7th, 2009 at 11:48 am
It’s a fine gesture offering 5% admin refund for one week (which has now expired), but when I still have friends today telling me that they have tried to donate multiple times and have failed, that doesn’t really help - 5% of nothing is still nothing!
Trish D said...
July 7th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
I am extremely disappointed in Just Giving dot com. It’s been more than 2 weeks and I know I have lost a lot of donations as people have just given up trying. As others have said: 5% of nothing is zero and I feel my efforts at raising donations have been thwarted by JG AND I much preferred the old site!
Dan said...
July 8th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Gutted that JG made such a hash of this transition. The fallout for me was:
1) the charity did not get the amount of money they could have done.
2) I was embarrassed in front of colleagues including senior managers
3) I wasted time I could have spent doing something worthwhile trying to sort it out.
The pathetic gesture of 5% of donations that couldn’t be made is the final insult. 5% of nothing is still nothing.
I noticed the patronising e-mails telling me to harrass people I knew continued to pop up in my in box. I should have remembered to send JG one to remind them to employ competent project managers and IT professionals.
Tricia B said...
July 9th, 2009 at 1:12 am
I have just completed my challenge and thought i had been one of the lucky ones who had not had any problems with the JG web site, but hey ho text from a very good friend who could not donate to the web site though could see others had!! Please can you tell me how we can find out about failed donations as we need to revisit these generous people?
I collected by late donations on sponsor forms and now have the challenge of collecting in the money.
Preferred the old site not just because it worked, it also looked more professional and the information was easier to read. Also donors could easily see what others had given
Peter Brand said...
July 10th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Not enough. Give the charities all your income from launch date until the site is satisfactory. I still can’t edit my page because it has more than 10000 characters (but it won’t tell me how many more - I can only count 8900) and the site refuses to load the photos I previously put into Flickr (I guess they’re too big but I don’t get an error message!).
Bel C said...
July 10th, 2009 at 10:13 am
I have had exactly the same problem as Tricia (above). It is really embarassing and frustrating to know that friends have wasted their time trying to donate over and over again - and probably gave up after some time. Is there any way we can identify who tried to make donations and failed?
heatherbird said...
July 10th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Hi Peter Brand,
I’m sorry that you are having problems editing your page. it could be because the character limit is 10,000 but it includes all the HTML code which sits behind the text (we are currently working on a fix for this), so the more formatting you have in your message, the less visible ‘words’ you can have.
A short term fix is to copy your whole message into Notepad and paste it back in without any of the formatting. This will leave you with more room to write, as your allocation is not being consumed behind HTML code. We’ve got instructions for you in our help section here: http://bit.ly/tSzmn
The photos have to be smaller than 4MB to upload properly - you are right there should be an error message to explain this -it is on the list to implement.
Thanks
Heather
heatherbird said...
July 10th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Hi Tricia B,
I have sent you an email about your donations, if you have any further queries please don’t hesitate to get back in touch.
Thanks
Heather
heatherbird said...
July 10th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Hi Bel C,
If you email or call the helpdesk they can tell you whether your donation has gone through successfully or not. I will email you to investigate further.
Thanks
Heather
Emma Halls said...
July 10th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Hi there, can you tell me when we will get the refund, as no sign of it yet!!!!
heatherbird said...
July 10th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Hi Emma Halls,
I’ll send you a separate email so that you can send me more information about these donations so that I can let you know when your money will be refunded.
Thanks
Heather
Jenny Gregson said...
July 10th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
I am gutted that, having just got back from doing a 700 mile Charity walk in aid of MacMillan Cancer Support to find that all the cards I handed out with my Just Giving Website have been completely useless, and anyone trying to give must have just given up. What was wrong with the old format, which I found very satisfactory and easy to use? If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
MadeUpName said...
July 11th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
What a complete shambles this upgrade (!) has been. Being as you didn’t respond to my request for help via email, I’ll post here. I have had emails from potential donors this week and last telling me
1. that they have donated but can’t see it on my site
2. they can’t donate because the site just times out and they can’t back to it
3. the site is just unavailable
In addition I have had donations but not always received the confirmation email (at least the donation was made but shows that there is an issue) and there is a donation on my site that has no amount against it.
5% of nothing when I was at school was nothing - so therefore your compensation gesture has the same value, nothing.
If you can’t be bothered to test upgrades properly then I suggest you leave well alone. The system before as far as the user and charity was concerned seemed to work - messing around with it has led to donations not being made. For you that impacts your job, for the beneficiaries of the charities that CAN mean the difference between life and death.
Hang your collective heads in shame.
Tricia B said...
July 13th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Hi
I have still not received an email from Heatherbird regarding my question of July 10th
Tricia B
JustGiving - Raise money for charity online said...
July 14th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
[...] **Post updated 14/09/09 with video from here** [...]
heatherbird said...
July 14th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Hi Tricia,
I’m really sorry that my email response was delayed. I have now sent you an email.
Thanks
Heather
Ken said...
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I am bitterly disappointed in this website. So many people have tried to donate to my charity and have found it impossible to make a donation. In future I will be looking for a website which actually works.
Leave a comment