JustGiving Admits New Website ‘Unacceptable’ and Offers Charities Refunds

JustGiving will refund fees charged since re-launching the website as the chief executive admits its performance has been “unacceptable”.

A week after the relaunch of the site on 20 June, chief executive Zarine Kharas wrote on the company’s blog that the “performance of the new site is totally unacceptable”.

JustGiving will now refund the 5 per cent transaction fee it charged on all donations made from when the website relaunched until Saturday 27 June.

The website was plagued by multiple bugs after launch, most significant of which was the inability of users to log in and the collapse of the PayPal system. Also, confirmation emails were not sent to donors, pages did not load and widgets failed.

Kharas told Professional Fundraising that most of the glitches in the website were sorted out within five days, but that there are “some minor bugs still affecting a small number of users on a random basis”.

In her blog she told users the company is “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”.

Offering unmitigated apologies to users, Kharas admitted that testing had been insufficient.

“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,” she wrote.

Despite the problems, the website raised 10 per cent more money since its revamp than it did over the same period last year, bringing in £4.2m since 20 June.

Originally posted on Professional Fundraising; reposted with permission.