50p Service Charge on Deliveries?

[Zongnan]

Hello everyone,

I only just joined the Square merchants less than a month ago,

Yesterday I received an email, reminding me that the 50p per delivery service charge will be reintroduced.

first of all, for the past couple of weeks I was wondering why there is an option on the online store to add a service charge on the delivery orders, yet there is not an option on the pick-up orders, I have been spoken to the supports a couple of times, and nobody seems to be able to answer that question, and now the reason just appeared, so I would like to ask a few questions about it:

 1. when I signed up to square for restaurants, there is no mention of a 50p per delivery charge on the pricing plan. or anywhere that is obvious to be noticed of the charge. I would suggest that if you are to charge people with this, it is best to make it obvious.

2. I am troubling my mind to understand how justified this charge is from the square's side, firstly, I am paying a % of my sales as a transaction fee to square on all card payments, which by the way, there is no Cash option on the Online store anyways, which means Square will take a cut of all my online sales. which is understandable up to this point.

and then I am paying an annual fee for the website that I make my sales on, still okay, similarly to pay for a hosting and SSL certificate.

then, if I opt-in to do delivery services from the website I bought and built, which square has already taken a payment processing cut off, I then have to pay for a 50p per order charge? for what reason is this justifiable?  in what way is Square involved with me offering delivery service on my own website that makes Square think a charge per order is okay? 

I haven't tried the retail site, I just wondered now, does Square charge a 50p per shipping orders as well? 

please if anyone can help me to see the reason behind this would be much appreciated. 

I thought Square stands for Fair and Square, please live up to it.

Update: 23/06/2020

We have moved our online ordering to another platform now, since it is so close to the end of the wavier of this 50p delivery fee, we are unsure if the square store is best for us to do deliveries on, and we don't want to risk to move services midway.

It is somewhat annoying that with all the efforts we have put into building the store here, the money and fees we have paid are now wasted basically, the hardware we have purchased are now cannot work as intended, as 80% of our orders are coming from online ordering, makes the POS and Cashier seemly a waste of money too.

We are left in a situation that, with no choice to separate the dine-in system and online ordering system, which is a shame. 

and for the future, if we are wanting to have them under the same system, we will have to swap "square for restaurant" to another Epos system that compatible with our current Online Ordering.

[Taylorsfree]

Why will I be charged 50p for each delivery order from 1/7/20 when I delivery all orders myself so there's no difference between me taking the order to the curbside for collection or me taking the oder to someone's front door for collection? Also most of my customers pay by PayPal so how will you collect the 50p charge from PayPal? 

[Sam_400º]

@Taylorsfree 

The curbside is when customers come to you, sit out in their car & call you to bring their order out. 

Good point on PayPal! 

As you take PayPal I'm going to assume you're on one of the higher tiered paid plans? Would you drop the customer services an email https://squareup.com/help/gb/en/contact

Like you, I got the same email & have raised it with Square as it seems off message for how they normally act. 

If someone has a free site, I'm all for them paying to use parts of the service & totally understand that you should pay more for extra features you use. But I don't think this being put in place outside of all the subscription plans is a nice way to do it. 

(It's also really quite expensive!) 



@JessRog I'm going to be annoying & tag you here, even though I know it's not your area but you've adopted me now 😂😂😂

[Taylorsfree]

@Sam_400º

I Pay £20 per month to accept PayPal payments,

I really can't figure out why we're going to be charged 50p per delivery when I deliver every order at my own expense unless square are going to deliver all my orders for me at the rate of 50p per delivery. I'll get on to them via email. Thanks 

[Sam_400º]

@Taylorsfree Just going to clarify the situation (just in case we're at cross purposes). 

The charge currently comes in only for locally delivered option as part of the collection/delivery. If you're using the standard 'shipping' options then there's no change whatsoever. 

In either case it's been poorly implements IMO. 

[Sam_400º]

@Zongnan Can I ask you to email the CS team? 
https://squareup.com/help/gb/en/contact

I've emailed with a very similar point of view this morning. 

When it was introduced they did say they were waving the fees for that part, but as they were also (kindly) waving the online fees in general it wasn't clear of the new structure they were going to implement. 

Like you, I expect to pay the processing fee (that covers the app development too I guess) & also pay for my website/online store. I've picked the price tier that does what I need. 

While I firmly believe we need to pay for the development of features (let's face it, I don't think Square is a profit making company yet?) this also struck me as a strange way of implementing the cost/feature. 

Sam

[tranguyen]

Hi @Zongnan, thank you for reaching out and voicing your concern. 

I'm happy to provide some additional context to this. The fee for local delivery was originally waived in light of the COVID-19 shutdowns (please see the "Pickup and delivery with online orders" section). This decision was part of the same relief effort in which we waived our other fees. 

We've also sent several communications about the waive of these fees via email. The language of these communications included: 

“Today Square Online Store released the option for curbside pickup, and later this week a local delivery feature will be available for all businesses so that you can quickly adapt to this changing environment. We are also waiving curbside pickup and delivery fees for the next three months.”

and

“We are waiving delivery fees through June 30, 2020”

We recognise that delivery needs robust and useful features to ensure its success. In addition to these existing features, we will be launching more delivery features down the road that will drive additional value. 

If you still have additional concerns or feedback, please let me know so I can take note and forward it to our product team for you. I will also reach out to our team to get further clarification on the fee structure, how it will be implement with paid plans and let you know once I have more information. 

Again, I really appreciate your feedback and I will be sure to put this forward to our team. 

[Sam_400º · Accepted solution]

@tranguyen Unfortunately this is the same frustrating response I first had from CS. 

Yes, communications have gone out - but please understand where we’re coming from. 

The feedback & comments so far all seem to focus on the surprise at this new structure. It’s not the clear/simple form we’re use to & expect. 

I’d never add a surcharge to my customers, and would have though Square would do so either. 

When it was said that the fees were being waived I’d assumed that it was the same as the others that were being waived at the time  & that the option would be built into the tiered pricing structure for online sales. 

It seems totally bizarre to have this separate charge for a single feature (from any company, but especially from Square).

[tranguyen]

Thanks for reaching back out, @Sam_400º! I completely understand your point and I will be sure to include that when passing it to our team.

Once I have further clarification from the team regarding the fee structure as well, I will be sure to share it with everyone here. 

[capandcollar]

Sorry, but I'm livid about this additional charge! 

For weeks I have been contacting Square to ask them to rectify bugs and glitches connected with the "delivery option". Our customers have been struggling with various issues but I've had no response from Square. I chased again yesterday, still no response. 

50p per delivery is crazy, are you going to help us make the deliveries Square?  I don't see what benefit we're obtaining from these charges. 50p to allow a customer to input their address details (since that's all we realistically need). Please iron out the glitches and re think these charges Square. If the issues aren't resolved we'll be taking our business onto a different platform.

[WildfirePizza]

It’s crazy to put this charge on. I’ve tried switching my site to delivery only this week. I’ve had 3 people today who can’t find their address when trying to add the delivery option. I’ve tried to do it for them and the addresses are missing. I’ve had to switch on collection so they can place an order and to write in the comments the address they want delivery to.

[Taylorsfree]

I've had no response about this from square, does anyone have any further information on how they plan to implement this for order's that are paid via PayPal? 

[WildfirePizza]

I think I’m going to end up using the Shipping option and make clear the areas I deliver to instead as so many delivery addresses are missing. This should also avoid the charge!

[Sam_400º]

@Taylorsfree 

Just going by the standard stuff, if you owe Square money (from any form, such as a refund) then there is already a direct debit set up from your linked bank account.

If I've refunded a customer but have already transferred all the Square balance out then they just take it from my bank within a few days to cover the refund. 

I think it would be safe to assume the same for any charges. 

[Taylorsfree]

It's great new that this has now been put on hold until November