On Friday, I mentioned that a Web hosting provider locked a pro bono client of mine out of its Web site for non-payment and scoffed at the client's receipts from PayPal. My client thought they had paid; the provider thought they hadn't: it was a mess. The Web hosting provider is ANRHost; the pro bono client is my choir, the New England Classical Singers; the problem is mostly resolved, and should be completely r On Friday, I mentioned that a Web hosting provider locked a pro bono client of mine out of its Web site for non-payment and scoffed at the client’s receipts from PayPal. My client thought they had paid; the provider thought they hadn’t: it was a mess.The Web hosting provider is ANRHost; the pro bono client is my choir, the New England Classical Singers; the problem is mostly resolved, and should be completely resolved soon. What went wrong raises some questions about e-commerce.The short summary of what happened is that the choir officer responsible for paying the Web site lease lost the choir’s credentials to the ANRHost billing site, and made the reasonable assumption that he could simply make a PayPal transfer to the e-mail address used in previous payments through the billing site. The money went to ANRHost, and he got a receipt. What was missing, however, were the account and invoice numbers that would tie the payment to the correct Web site. Those are normally generated by the automatic billing system, passed to PayPal, and transmitted back to the payee along with the payment; when it all works correctly, the credit posts in a few seconds.Three days later, I started getting e-mailed suspend notices for nonpayment, which I duly forwarded to the choir and protested to ANRHost. It took several days to figure out what actually had happened; at that point, I dug out the billing site credentials and sent them to the choir officer once again, he paid the invoice through the billing system out of his own PayPal account, and the site went live again. Meanwhile, ANRHost has opened a billing case to find the original money and either apply it to the account or return it.The original error is the electronic equivalent of sending a check to the telephone company without enclosing your bill or even writing your telephone number on the check. In some ways, however, it’s worse than that: the telephone company at least has a number you can call to resolve a billing problem, if you’re a patient person, and will make a correction on the strength of a canceled check, eventually, without immediately canceling your service. PayPal makes a big deal about how safe their electronic payment service is compared to checks, but after this experience, I’m not so sure. What’s your take? Software Development