We've received a lot of feedback from developers asking for a way to test all of the different payment scenarios in their integration. ("Hey, it's pretty easy to test all of the 'happy paths.' I need to test what happens when the payment fails.")
We've just released a new Sandbox feature that allows you add different payment methods that you can use to more fully exercise your integration. For example, you can checkout with a billing instrument that has "AUTH+DECLINE" as the first line in the address field, and this will cause the order to act as if the initial authorization was declined.
The full details are, of course, in the Checkout Developer's Guide.
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4 comments:
Hi Steve,
Constructive criticism.
Being an integral part of established merchant operations, I find it extremely strange that Google does not offer a better way of obtaining customer/technical support.
Features are good, but against the bottom line (sales, therefore $), they take a back seat - and I mean way back.
I can understand the resource cost for providing support for "all things GC", but there must be a way to offer some "tiered" service - say, to your Adwords Customers who receive invites to GC. And maybe further when a GC merchant actively processes transactions via GC.
For established merchants, GC is an added feature, likely rolled out in "beta" (we're talking sales/operations here). Therefore confidence must be gained.
I hate to compare, but payment gateways such as Verisign (now PayPal) have always offered direct telephone support (we're talking money). I have that handy, even if I've only probably used it twice in over 4 years of operations.
As it stands, it seems email is the only avenue aside from Dev and Merchant forums. I can tell you from experience that the latter 2 are not areas any established merchant will consider as support/service resources.
I have another suggestion to improve the testing process. Quite a few times I provide a new address during checkout for testing shipping calculation etc., if these new addresses can be stored, it will be really helpful.
Thanks very much Robin, this is good feedback.
This is the typical scenario that is dificult to test today, but help is on the way: we're working on testing tools for merchants to make it easier to test their Google Checkout integration.
We should start shipping a first version of that within a month or two.
Great! Looking forward to it.
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