We recently setup our server for credit card payment processing and have learned that Linkpoint (our payment gateway provider) completely shuts down on Sunday afternoons for 4 to 5 hours!!!!

Why in the world would they do such a thing. This completely destroys the utility of having an online store. Shutting down the entire system guarantees that our store will have at best a 97% uptime for the month. That's nearly half a day's worth of income lost every week. Why not bring it down for maintenance at 1 or 2 AM?!? Most decent companies have the ability of performing maintenance without bringing down the entire system at all. Let alone in the middle of the day!

If you are using Linkpoint, please take the time to contact them and make this an issue. Maybe if enough people gripe, they'll
get sick of hearing it. Here's the number: (800) 456-5989 ext. 4100 and e-mail: support@linkpoint.com.

Needless to say we are looking for another payment gateway provider.

I just called them and they said it was only for last sunday and this sunday.

Michael

If you take a look at the LinkPoint website they have a standing maintenance window as follows:

****Quoted from LinkPoint Web site****
Scheduled Maintenance:
From time to time, the LinkPoint Secure Payment Gateway may be down for scheduled maintenance.

The current maintenance schedule is Sundays from 12 to 4 p.m., Central Time.
****Quoted from LinkPoint Web site****


I also spoke with Linkpoint support and they said that the Sunday afternoon window was the best time, based on a survey that they conducted. Apparently, the Sunday from 12 Noon to 4 PM impacts the least number of customers (I find this hard to believe). I think they surveyed their engineers.

Linkpoint is run by monkeys. When we started hosting we used the periodic feature they have. Three times they "lost" data. That meant we have to re-enter data - one time over 300 records! They did it for us once because they couldn't find a single excuse. Back in July '01 the periodic system went down for 7 days! Not a single periodic was run for a week. The linkpoint system itself was down for over 24 straight hours to start it off. In two years, we have had weeks of downtime.

LP doesn't care about its customers. During that downtime of 7 days I finally got to an upperend support person. I wanted to ask how I could recover my data from Oct '00 and before that they deleted- which was lost and never recovered by the way. Turns out, the database guys were gone - went home! They only worked a regular shift while their system was down and data was lost. I have no doubt that the reason they do Sunday 12 to 4 p.m is because they are lazy and don't want to do it at 12 AM.

For anyone looking for the CSI/LP option for hosting- do yourself a favor and avoid it.

We have since moved to Verisign (formerly Paymentnet ==> Signio) and we have yet to have a single issue. This includes our customers too.

I talked with our merchant account provider, Card Service International, about LinkPoint's maintenance schedule. The sales manager seemed upset that LinkPoint had such a ridiculous maintenance schedule. He has contacted LinkPoint and is waiting a response. He told me that they would get me off of LinkPoint immediately if LinkPoint's maintenance schedule didn't change.

I would recommend that everyone talk with their merchant account provider and ask that LinkPoint not be used as your payment gateway provider.

I would recommend authorize.net weve used them for years and never have had a single problem

I hightly recommend Authorise.net as well, and this is after two misfires with other suppliers!

I also enjoyed working thru Merchant Express (http://www.merchantexpress.com/) as well. They were fast, helpful, and no-hastle.

-t

As many LinkPoint users know, Sunday afternoon is the scheduled maintenance window for the LinkPoint payment gateway. When the gateway is down, there is NO online revenue for us online merchants. This window is scheduled for 12 to 4 PM Central time. Right now it is almost 8 PM central time, and I just attempted to place a credit card order. I received an error message and then called LinkPoint support. LinkPoint Support said that it "should" be working anytime now, but there was no ETA.

I am very frustrated with the whole situation. LinkPoint is very arrogant to close my business every Sunday for 4 or more hours. If I lose just one $50 order during this time every Sunday, in a year this would add up to $2600, 2 or equals $5200, 5 orders equals $13,000. Not to mention all the repeat business from the cutomers that are lost to my competitors(who are not using LinkPoint).

There is no way that I am staying with a gateway provider that is going to cost us this amount of money. I will be changing our payment gateway provider ASAP and I would highly recommend other LinkPoint customers do the same!