By admin on Monday, June 29th, 2009 in New on JustGiving
• Making donations – The fix that we made over the weekend means that the majority of people can now make a donation, however, there are still a few people who are still seeing error messages. We now know why this is happening and should have it fixed very soon. This is our top priority and we are very sorry for the continued frustration. If you are worried about whether your donation has gone through successfully please get in contact with us.
• Creating a new fundraising page – At the weekend there were some problems with new fundraising pages created, this has now been resolved and you should be able to create a new fundraising page without any problems. If you created a page over the weekend and are having problems finding or viewing it please get in contact. We can help to rebuild it if you have not done so already.
There is no update on the following issues since Saturday, but what we can tell you is that the team has continued to work on them. The underlying problems have been identified and we are working on these through the night.
• Not receiving an email from JustGiving to confirm your donation – Most people are now receiving these emails and we are closely monitoring this. However, we’re finding that there are problems in a limited number of cases and we are investigating why this is happening. If you make a donation and are unsure as to whether it has gone through or not please contact the helpdesk.
• Having trouble uploading images or editing my JustGiving page – We are aware that people are having problems editing their fundraising page. If you are experiencing problems please let us know your name, the web address of your JustGiving page and the email address associated with your JustGiving account.
• Cannot view a fundraising page – If you are one of the people for whom this is still a problem we are very sorry and understand that this is very frustrating. Again, we are keen to investigate each case so if you could send your name and JustGiving page web address to us we will look into the issue. Please either send this to the helpdesk.
To get in touch with the helpdesk either email help@justgiving.com or call 0845 021 2110 (local rate).
53 Comments | permalink
53 Responses
Ryan said...
June 29th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
The 2nd paragraph is totally untrue. I still cannot save any text as it keeps giving the following error, even when I type a few words only: “Please check you’ve entered these details correctly…
* The content of your story - you can enter a maximum of 10000 characters”
I also can’t change my page title. This problem has been going on for days.
Rabia Damdelen said...
June 29th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
I cannot create a fundraising page even though according to your main page the problem is supposed to be fixed.
Richard said...
June 29th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
I tried several times to donate
Can’t be bothered to try again.
I cycled 140 miles.
I have all this money from family & friends.
I am goint to spend it at Amerzon.co.uk and on beer.
Cheers !!!
Leon said...
June 29th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
You still haven’t commented on the fact that one of the key “enhancements” - the inability to see more than 10 donations on the first page you look at - is reducing the number of donations people are receiving. Whilst I am already (and, by now, unhappily) pretty much tied in to justgiving for the event I’m currently raising funds for, I am very unlikely to use jg again and will look at alternatives such as charitygiving.co.uk or the new virgin site.
Will said...
June 29th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
My page broke on Black Saturday, started working again last week, but is now down. Again.
Menno said...
June 29th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
It’s down again! My page is again totally unviewable, showing the default error message. I’ve lost loads of donations with my event only a few days away. It’s now been over a week that its been broken!
This is shocking, and now totally unacceptable!!
You would have been better bringing the old site back from a backup.
Rob said...
June 29th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Much the same comments as above.
I can’t access my page, neither can others and why should they keep trying? Over and over with no success - I’m very dissapointed about this. To go live with such instabilites is not reasonable.
I will think twice about using JG for fundraising - and may contact my charity and discuss their “recommendation” of JG for the future.
malcolm brown said...
June 29th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
This is a farce. Have had dozens of people on to say they can’t make donation and when I go to check it comes up with an error page. I wish I had never gone down this road. You are costing charities money
Sarah said...
June 29th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
That’s the best idea - bring back the old format until the new one it working. I’ve posted my page on my facebook profile and am pretty embarrassed that it can’t be viewed.
People have the urge to sponsor and if they can’t do it after a few tries, they’ll probably give up.
And I agree - I’d rather see as many sponsors as possible on my page than the latest few - the messages people leave help reinforce why someone is sponsoring you.
I can see my page intermittantly, but that’s not good enough when I’m trying to promote it. Please bring back the old page in the meantime
Simon Lewis said...
June 29th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
I just updated my web page with my progress and then tried to look at it and I get taken to a “We’re very sorry - the page you’re looking for isn’t here” which is annoying. What is strange is that in the tab title, it says http://www.alastaircampbell.org,uk. What is that all about?
John Moorhouse said...
June 29th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Uploading photos to site is a rather hit and miss affair.
I am told that pictures on the edit page are shown in the order that they will be shown on my page but invariably they are not.
The buttons on the edit page are so big that when a browsed for and found photo is uploaded, the end of the file path cannot be seen.
The edit page does not make it clear that one has to enter text to accompany the photo before the picture has been uploaded.
If one wants to edit the text, then the photo and text has to be binned and back to square one.
When scrolling trhough pictures on my page, they pop open at different locations on the screen and different sizes, and the caption text is almost impossible to detect, let alone read.
Bed time now.
Night night.
Will try again tomorrow
Eiona Roberts said...
June 30th, 2009 at 7:18 am
5 days to my event.
Not only can’t I get into my account but I was informed last night that some still cannot donate to my page especially via PayPal.
I feel humiliated. Thanks-what a shocking way to treat people.
Denise said...
June 30th, 2009 at 8:37 am
The old site was much clearer and prompted more donations. This new layout is most offputting and not an improvement for the better
Steven Kelly said...
June 30th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Yesterday people couldn’t donate on my site and now the link I’ve given people won’t work. Comes up with an error message saying you’re really sorry. How about fixing it instead of being sorry and employing some decent code writers whilst you’re at it?
Jake said...
June 30th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Just wanted to let you know i cant make a donation on my page. Understand you will be working to resolve this but just wanted to give you the feedback. I dont see how some of these comments above are constructive.
12 day to my event so the sooner people can donate obviously the better. Great site other than the obvious problems… hope to see it in full workingorder soon.
Thanks
Fiona said...
June 30th, 2009 at 9:03 am
I have been told by close friends who tried to donate & failed that they have no confidence in the JustGiving site & will not use it. They are also concerned that they have entered credit card details and worry about the security of these on such an unstable site.
So I KNOW that I have lost out on sponsorship from close friends (although they have promised so send cheques the ‘moment’ seems to have passed - who knows what I have lost out on from those I don’t know so well.
It is unacceptable that thesite is still not working properly & that the old system wasn’t restored while these problems were sorted out.
Dan said...
June 30th, 2009 at 9:32 am
I’ve tried 3 times to donate now and will not be bothering using your site again.
Your new layout looks rubbish too.
Fiona said...
June 30th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Can we please have an up date for today?? Tuesday 30th June 2009
Neil said...
June 30th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Sorry to have to say that the site’s getting worse, not better!
After sending a message to you yesterday after you finally rang me, I get 2 standard auto replies with 2 separate reference numbers. Customer service again fully consistent with the performance of the site. I gave up waiting for the edit site option to download this morning.
I sent out another circular seeking donations yesterday – in anticipation of the problem being fixed, and I’ve since had more complaints of people not being able to donate, even suggesting I recirculate when it is fixed! I’m now despairing of you ever fixing it & am amazed that the issue has not hit the national press yet. Charities are losing out big time, and a paltry 7day holiday from your charges is little recompense – particularly when the level of donations is down because of your system screw up.
Unless you drop the new design, it can only be good for bmycharity and going back to pen & paper.
mark Dally said...
June 30th, 2009 at 9:59 am
I’ve tried to donate 4 times, it just doesn’e work.
Richard said...
June 30th, 2009 at 10:16 am
I manage the delivery of IT systems. I’d love to know what’s been going on behind the scenes but the word fiasco springs to mind. I can only assume the driver for this with some form of infrastructure upgrade?
As for the change to the interface this is just like recent revamp of the BBC weather site. Take something clear, concise, logical and turn it into a clunky mess.
You certainly need to fully resolve the technical issues though ASAP as the longer this goes on the greater the long-term impact to your reputation.
Rob said...
June 30th, 2009 at 10:24 am
I don’t like to moan, but the problems with this site in the last few days really are unacceptable. Many users are just a few days away from their chosen charity events & are going all-out to get as many last-minute donations as possible (it’s also payday soon, which helps!) yet the site has been unusable for people trying to donate, leaving some of us short of our target amount, even though people have been trying to donate. Many people have agreed to sponsor me, but then just send me an email saying ‘the justgiving site isn’t working’; as others have pointed out, convincing people to donate money, especially in the current economic climate, is hard work, and we often only have 1 chance to do this; if we can convince someone to donate, they’ll follow the link to the site, try it, but if it fails, they’ll just give up & we won’t get the donations. we can’t even ask people to try the site again, as it’s still totally broken (for my account anyway) & has been for a long time now. in my own case, I’ve resorted to getting cash off the people who I see regularly; this morning I tried to put the whole amount through the site, to earn the giftaid on it, but having filled in all my credit card details, I just got the standard ’sorry’ message. I then got an email in my inbox, saying thanks for the donation, but the total amount on my JG account is still the same, so I’ve no idea if the payment has gone through - one thing says that it has, another says it hasn’t. if this was someone trying to donate money to my charity, I’d be totally livid about this & would have lost al trust in donating through JG again. I work in web development, and it’s not all that hard to test a site & new functionality/changes etc., before making it live, and it’s not hard to keep full working backups, so that you can revert to a working version of a site if new releases fail. Neither of these seem to have been done properly here, which is utterly unforgivable when so many charities & people like myself have relied on & counted on you to keep your side of the bargain (after all, you don’t do this for free!). please sort this out asap & ensure it doesn’t happen again, by using what are decades-old software development best practices
Julia said...
June 30th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Neither myself or my friends and family who wanted to sponsor me can access my page. This has been a continual problem since your supposed ‘update’! Why oh why cant you just put the old system back? It was far better to look at, use and IT WORKED. I consider it a total waste of time offering to give back the 5% fee from donations posted over the 7 days, as none of those individuals wanting to sponsor me have been able to. I have just read a blog from a user detailing the Virgin equivilent. Like him/her I shall watch how they progress as I would seriously consider not using Just Giving again.
I have now completed my walk and will find it harder to request donations/sponsors retrospectively, so thanks so much for reducing the money my charity will receive.
Tim said...
June 30th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Will & Menno - Looks like your pages are available again now - Looks like you both have tough challenges ahead too - Good luck with those!#
Things seem to be settling down a bit (for me at least) since I have successfully received a few donations over the past few days. On occasion i do still get the ‘error’ page but I assume this is due to the continued maintenance.
Leon said...
June 30th, 2009 at 10:44 am
I have just found out that for some people justgiving *has* rolled back to the original site - it seems that these are the ones signed up for through major charities’ websites rather than directly on justgiving. You can find them by the url original.justgiving.com (see http://original.justgiving.com/piersrosslynsmith/ for example).
So some questions for justgiving:
- If you’re rolling back to the old version for some users, why not all?
- Why do you even bother having a blog if you don’t respond to people’s concerns?
- When you *have* got the new version working properly, when are you going to remove the worst feature of all, which is the inability to see all donations on the same page?
Robin Bresnark said...
June 30th, 2009 at 10:49 am
I just wanted to say that not everyone is livid with you guys - I’m sure you’re really pulling your hair out at this and doing everything you can to fix the bugs. Problems happen with websites. No one likes it but that’s how the world works. Even blimmin’ Google goes down every once in a while!
So, please people, before you rant too much - remember there’s real human beings working at JustGiving who obviously care a lot and are, I’m sure, extremely upset that this has happened. Everyone who visits this website does so to make the world a slightly better place. Let’s start by not being too horrible to people who are, clearly, on the side of good.
Robin
John Moorhouse said...
June 30th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Do I dare try to make a donation to my own site from my own PayPal account?
David said...
June 30th, 2009 at 11:25 am
I am very frustrated at trying to make donations, can’t get through the process, has been over a week of trying. I keep being told that it should be ok now, but it never is………
If the problem is not resolved, I won’t be using this site in future, that’s for sure.
The site should never have gone live with all these isuues, it should have been tested properly in the first place!!!!!
Andrew Cook said...
June 30th, 2009 at 11:39 am
My event was last Sunday. Wanted to email thankyous to those who had donated, I inserted my own email address. Several hours later, still no email has appeared…
This means I’ll have to manually email other potential donors.
(on a positive note, received one online donation.)
Martin Johnson said...
June 30th, 2009 at 11:43 am
WOULD SOMEONE AT JUSTGIVING MAKE A STATEMENT ABOUT THE ALTERNATIVE WEBSITES (secure.justgiving.com and original.justgiving.com)?
THE REASON I AM SHOUTING IS THAT, DESPITE MANY REQUESTS FOR INFO AND COMMENTS FROM OTHER USERS, YOU REFUSE TO TELL US ANYTHING USEFUL.
Did you get that, loud and clear. Just tell us what the hell is going on.
Thanks
MJ
Adam said...
June 30th, 2009 at 11:56 am
@Robin Bresnark
If they “obviously” cared so much we’d have at least daily updates on this blog and comments on the issues being discussed. I think you are a little naive as to what is going on.
Just tried my page again today:
http://www.justgiving.com/hardwickedragonboatteam/
And get the familar “We’re really sorry…” page. Can’t be that sorry as the pointless jesture of 5% refund on nothing ran out on Friday and the site is still broken. I don’t think confidence will be restored before my event.
To think every charity that you can donate to through JG pays £207.00 a year for this. By my reckoning a refund on this charge should also be offered.
Come on JG, start communicating with your customers more than every 3 days.
Martin Johnson said...
June 30th, 2009 at 11:56 am
ok, I’ve just made a PayPal donation using this page:
secure.justgiving.com/annamontaguejohnson
and it worked just fine.
The donation can be seen on the “secure” page and also on the new page at:
http://www.justgiving.com/annamontaguejohnson
SO, (I’m getting all shouty again)…..IS IT OK TO DIRECT PEOPLE TO THE PAGE AT URL:
secure.justgiving.com/annamontaguejohnson
?????????
Thanks
MJ
Leon said...
June 30th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
@Robin Bresnark
Robin - I’m sure they are human beings…however they are a private, profit making company who deliver a service in return for money. They have got themselves into a position of market dominance and their service has performed badly - unaccetably badly in many people’s eyes - for the past couple of weeks.
For people to get upset about this seems to me to be very reasonable indeed - especially when this profit-making company’s poor performance is directly reducing the revenues of charities - if I worked in a restaurant and left people waiting for their dinner for several hours, or was driving a bus that just stopped without telling anyone…i’d expect to get shouted at a lot more severely than Justgiving seem to be contending with now. The fact that they are not even bothering to respond to comments on their own blog makes it doubly infuriating…
John Moorhouse said...
June 30th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I have just tried to give money to my own site in order to test functionality of PayPal.
Anna Montague Johnson said she managed it successfully using this URL:
secure.justgiving.com/annamontaguejohnson
I tried putting my URL in the only place available to me on the PayPal website, which asks for an email address of mobile number.
Can someone please tell me how I do this? Is the PayPal facility now functional or not?
Jonathan said...
June 30th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Hi all,
I wanted to let you know that PayPal is now back on the site. We released that earlier this morning and wanted to check again that it was not affecting any other areas of the site before letting people know about it (and for the record, 10% of donations have been made using PayPal since we added it in January, so it is not our main payment provider as may have been reported elsewhere).
You can use it to donate to any page on JustGiving, and you don’t need to go through a secure.justgiving link or an original.justgiving link.
The reason that there are some pages with original.justgiving.com addresses were that we created them with custom branding for specific charities. These pages were not changed to the new branding so didn’t actually ‘roll-back’ - they were never ‘rolled forward’ - so you will not be able to access pages created on the default JustGiving design by using an original.justgiving.com web address.
As for the secure.justgiving.com link, we don’t recommend you use that to make a donation as it has not been fully tested for a large load of users.
And to respond to questions about the new design - it is not a final design and it can (and will) change. The previous design had up to 50 messages on each page before you had to click to read more, the current one has only 10. The idea was to make the experience better for people sponsoring someone, so they could personalise their message more and make it stand out. Clearly those of you with fundraising pages giving us feedback here, don’t like that. We’re taking that on board and compiling all the feedback we’ve got so far.
We are working on fixing all the remaining bugs on the site at the moment before we plan any changes to the design, so I cannot give you a date on when that will happen yet - it depends on when we are happy that the site is 100% again.
Jonathan (JustGiving)
Leon said...
June 30th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Jonathan
Can you explain why you haven’t rolled back to the original version of the site for most users and why you *have* for organisations such as Oxfam?
thanks
Jonathan said...
June 30th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Hi Leon,
Maybe I didn’t explain myself well there - these sites were never rolled-forward to the new version. They stayed exactly as they were before we made the changes to the site. So we have not rolled back for certain organisations and not others. Simply, they did not change in the way that other pages did.
Jonathan
Adam said...
June 30th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
@ Jonathan (JustGiving)
HURRAY! Okay things still aren’t fixed, but at least after 10 long days we are finally getting a JG admin replying to some of the comments on here. This at least is a step in the right direction. I wouldn’t imagine you’ll reply to individual comments (pointless getting into a comments war), but nice to see that you are addressing it with some feedback on the running themes.
Please keep up this feedback, one informationless and insulting post every three days is not good enough. There was more in your comment post above than we’ve had from JG in the whole time.
Thanks.
Fiona said...
June 30th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I tried to make a donation on my own page today by Paypal to check that the system was working – unfortunately IT IS NOT WORKING!!!!!
I did not get a receipt, although I did get a reference number and the opportunity to add a message. It looked as though the donation had gone through - BUT The donation does not show up on my page and the money has not been taken from my PayPal account.
This is worse than getting an error message as least then you KNOW there is a problem.
Still not good enough I’m afraid - what a fiasco!!!
James Straffon said...
June 30th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
So we created our JustGiving page months ago, and completed our 600+ mile cycle trip recently. And guess what, the donation page closes today. Can anyone access it? Of course not. Thanks JustGiving. You picked a great time to fail us.
All our proceeds were going to Breakthrough Breast Cancer. I think you owe them a reasonable donation to cover this failing.
NÖ Endeavour
James Straffon said...
June 30th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
hmmm…now it seems to be working. Such a shame this wasn’t an efficient process.
AC said...
June 30th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
I can’t believe this is still on-going.
As you said it would all be sorted by last Friday I sent ANOTHER round robin email to friends and colleagues today explaining there had been problems but to please try again - stupidly thinking that everything was fixed.
Managed to get 6 donations on and the rest have been lost to oblivion for the second time.
I’ve given up - there is no way I can bring myself to send a 3rd email - anytime soon would be pointless anyway. It is ridiculous and I can not understand why something has not been done as a temporary measure.
I can’t bear to think how much money Charities have lost out on over the past 10 days. It’s incredibly sad.
Offering 5% back on donations isn’t much use seeing as NO ONE CAN MAKE DONATIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!
BigDaveSB said...
June 30th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
@Jsmes Straffon All is not lost!
Are you aware the upgrade lets you extend your web page to accept donations after your deadline? (Love that feature - well done JG!)
Did you know that 80% of people that tried to donate when the site was at its worst were able to? Now that things are improving, that figure’s going to be even better!
You’ve completed 600 miles, I am in awe. Well done! Don’t give up now. Seriously.
I wish I could afford more donations this month, as breast cancer is a cause close to my heart.
Last comment: you can get in touch with me, and I will get paid at the end of July again…
Martin Johnson said...
June 30th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
so Jonathan, since there was no roll-forward, am I correct in assuming that the major change was in fact a UI? Does this mean that the old UI at secure.justgiving.com is still pointing to the same fundraiser and donations data?
So it doesn’t matter which one folks use?
Please answer this ASAP as you are damaging your credibility by the minute…
Thanks
MJ
Matt said...
June 30th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I’m trying to add the ‘Just Giving’ logo to my email signatue and I can’t see the logo when I input the code.
Could you advise if these logos are visible to the Internet? if they are, please could you make your explanation of how to add them to your email simpler?
Thanks
Matt
David said...
June 30th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I can login to just giving, but i can’t login to a race for life site, that i am directed too form your site. Do I need a new login, or is this part of the issues you are having?
David
Jonathan said...
June 30th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Hi MJ,
The major change was at the code level – the new site is running on Microsoft .Net, Windows services and message queuing. The previous version (still running on the custom sites we built for charities) is running ASP code. Far from being a user interface change the whole system has been overhauled and re-written. We are running the previous version of the site on old code *only* for these custom sites.
Jonathan
John Moorhouse said...
June 30th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Hi Jonathan
In your email 1330hrs today you tell us how not to make a donation through PayPal but I cannot work out how I do make a payment through PayPal.
Last time I looked at PayPal (earlier today) there was no evidence of a JG link and payments appear to be set up to go to email addresses and mobile phones.
Could you please clarify?
admin said...
June 30th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Hi John Moorhouse,
To make a donation via PayPal you simply make a donation as normal through the JustGiving site. Go to the specific web address of the person you want to sponsor, e.g. http://www.justgiving.com/xxxx and then click on the ‘Donate now’ button. Once on the donation screen you will have the option to donate with PayPal - look out for the yellow PayPal button and use that instead of the ‘Donate with a credit/debit card’ option.
Thanks
Heather
Colin said...
June 30th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
From last weekend no is able to donate.
I have tried to add in a donation given myselff and the option flashes up the goes to a new page.
I can get all the way through to the donate page and the message and the get to change the message but the amount has gone to 0.
I can be patient, but with some givers you may only get one change
SteveK said...
July 1st, 2009 at 9:02 am
BigDaveSB,
Well done for adding some positivity to these comments, it’s easy and understandable to get frustrated with these problems. It’s very generous of you to spend your time and your money to PROVE that the site works. JG could have done the same with a £2 test donation to prove that it works for people who complained on this blog. It would have cost them very little and would have done a great deal to show that people CAN make donations, and to provide a little goodwill.
You’ve done that for them, I hope they make a donation to your cause.
Andrew Cook said...
July 1st, 2009 at 10:01 am
Nope - 24hrs since I emailed thankyous, but no sign of them ….
BigDaveSB said...
July 1st, 2009 at 10:49 am
@SteveK Thanks Steve. I have two challenges on this year, JG have donated to both.
If anyone else out there would like to as well, feel free!
http://www.justgiving.com/thecontinuingadventuresofdavidwood (in which I am taking part in three events totalling 106.8 miles, for the Meningitis Trust)
http://www.justgiving.com/jailbreak4kidscan (in which a friend and I are getting as far away from Manchester as we can, with absolutely no money, for Kidscan, a children’s cancer charity)
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