Are you considering another POS vendor?

[wowsno]

I’m getting sick of Square’s system outages affecting our sales. I own a small shaved ice business and 60-80% of our sales are via credit/debit card. Today’s outage alone cost us nearly $65 in sales.

Have you ever tried another POS vendor?

[TheRealChipA]

Hi @wowsno.  First, I feel your pain regarding outages.  At the very least they are frustrating, and it sounds like whatever happened to you cost you some money today, which is never good.

I was not aware of an outage today.  What was going on?  Usually, as long as you have offline mode enabled, you can swipe cards that will be processed when they can be after everything is back up.  Because of that, I haven’t had to worry about any recent outages.  Can you explain a little more clearly why you had an inability to process cards?

Also, to answer your question — I’ve been with three separate POS vendors over my times as a retail food operation — two with Piper’s and one other with another operation.  All of them have outages.  If you go to search Google for public gripe boards for any Square-like company (Toast, etc) you’ll find people upset there are just about as much as they are here sometimes.  All companies use internet servers and when those are down, everything comes to a standstill.  And they are all about equal in software failures because, frankly, engineers are human and mistakes happen.  I was a software engineer in a former life.  I speak from experience.

Anyway, one trick I’ve found that always works.  If you are having problems processing cards, turn off internet access for your payment device, and be sure that offline mode is enabled.  This will force the POS to automatically process cards locally, and then when you are done for the day you can reenable the internet access, bring up the POS, and the offline cards should process normally.  That’s never failed me the few times I was having processing issues I could not figure out right away.

[wowsno]

@TheRealChipA definitely did all of the above. Reset the terminal. Restarted the Wi-Fi. It wasn’t the internet. Even offload mode didn’t work. Couldn’t access the sales app or dashboard for nearly 90 minutes. It was a Square outage. I understand it happens, but it’s happening more frequently these days and it’s not good for business—mine or Square’s. I know these things can happen anywhere, but do they happen as frequently as they do with Square? I guess that’s the question I should’ve asked to begin with.

[Lovewell]

Wow, yeah this is a toughie. It always sucks when there is an outage. The last bad one I had was a few months ago, Square was down about 45 minutes and I ended up putting everyone's transaction through my phone because for me it was my register that was down, but the POS app on my phone was still working. I was able to take card transactions that way. 

For your circumstance, does this happen often to you? If you can remember next time it happens, even though things might be hectic, take a second and send a system diagnostic, then you can let square know you sent a system diagnostic after a huge outage for you and they can see exactly what your system was experiencing.

@TheRealChipA definitely has WAY more experience in all areas than I and I'm confident he can help you!

I will say as a coffee shop we have lots of customers that are in the restaurant business and I have heard some pretty bad stories of outages with different companies as well. 

On another note, we didn't experience an outage with our system today and normally we do have some hiccups during these outages. I'm intrigued why we were not affected..

[wowsno]

No clue. Square said they didn’t have any outages, but I wasn’t able to login to the dashboard either to get in touch with support for that same 90 minute period…so clearly they had an outage of some kind. And it wasn’t one device, it was multiple devices. My team couldn’t access the Square Team app during the same time period. 

[Lovewell]

@wowsno That's insane! I see you have a beta team member badge, Not sure what products youre currently testing but it might not hurt to post something in the beta community as well and possibly a recent update caused a bug that they are trying to figure out. That has also happened to us a couple times where it was a beta issue. 

I really hope square can get it figured out for you and you won't have to go through the process of moving to a different company. It's frustrating watching business walk away with a bad experience. 

[TheRealChipA]

@wowsno I see.  Well I’m definitely sorry to hear that.  I can’t answer that question, other than from my own experience.  No matter who was processing my cards over the years, I had multiple outages every year.  With Square, mine have actually been less, and I can count on one hand the number of total system-wide outages I’ve had in twelve years with them.  You can ask around, but I’ve learned that the “greener grass” on the other side of the fence is usually blue once I’m there, with just about everything.

I also have friends who use Toast and Clover.  I hear them complain about outages and bugs with the same frequency as I see them here in the Community.  But of course, I notice Square’s more because I’m very active here!

Have you considered a backup option for times when you are totally dead in the water?  At one point, with another vendor than Square, I created a Stripe account and only used them for desperate times.  It cost me more, because I had to do manual card entry, but it got me through a few rough patches with no downtime.  I wouldn’t recommend it regularly, but a backup plan that doesn’t have subscription fees is a thought.

So I’m curious.  Why couldn’t you access the app and why were you offline?  Did you ever learn?  I’m really curious because I’ve been fine here all day!

[wowsno]

We use the terminal. Restarted it twice. Reset the Wi-Fi twice. Even trying to login to the square dashboard wasn’t working. It was an outage. I just got through to customer support and they’re going to look into it. It’s just bad for business. We ask customers if they have cash, but if they don’t, we can’t tell them to stay and wait for the system to start working again. It’s a shaved ice business. That’s bad customer service on top of an already bad experience when the branded POS Square Terminal isn’t working. There’s an outage website online and about 25 other people reported outages in that same time period today. Sales, website, app, etc. 

[TheRealChipA]

@wowsno Square Terminal?  Ok, let’s do a little more follow-up.  Are you using the same Terminal device that you’ve used for a while?  Or, are you by chance doing any testing of new hardware for Square?  I ask only because I see you are a Beta seller and so am I.  I am currently doing some testing on new Terminal hardware that I can’t talk much about here on the public board.  But I’ve been having intermittent issues with that new hardware.

Most likely this is just a shot in the dark, especially since you said that your employees couldn’t sign in on the Team App either, which definitely points to an account-wide issue and not a device issue.  If you aren’t testing any new hardware for Square, then ignore this entire reply!!

I’ll leave you with one other thought.  The only POS I’ve ever heard of that had close to zero outages were the ones (like Micros, etc) where you buy the hardware and then connect to your own card processor (bank) with a merchant account, but those cost a lot of money up front for the hardware, then there are the expensive software subscriptions,  and then their add-on fees like interchange fees, statement fees, annual fees, etc, will eat you alive.  Most of us can’t afford such things.

[wowsno]

No, it’s not a next-gen device. It’s just the regular terminal. The only thing that irks my nerves is the fact that Clover has local reps that handle issues in person. They’ve sent multiple reps to my business over the past few weeks with offers to switch and reduce all of my fees/rates—I’m almost tempted to take it. This is the third time we’ve had an outage like this that’s cost us sales. I’m a generous person, but the sno cone season is almost over and I don’t make money giving stuff away for free. Nobody does. We’ll see what Square does to make it right and how they can improve and keep the issue from happening again. 

[TheRealChipA]

Of course I won’t try to dissuade from doing whatever you believe is right for your business.  I will say this — Clover allows you to use different payment processors so you can shop around.  That is very true.  But you usually will buy hardware, and you have to pay a monthly software licensing/update fee, which is based upon the number of services you use.  That is one that requires some work to be sure you are comparing apples to apples because their fee structure is so different.  It might work out for you, and it might not.  See if you can talk to any Clover sellers in your area.  But regardless, I wish you the best.  It’s been good chatting and I sincerely hope you find a solution.

[PartyManiaMD]

That definitely doesn't sound like it's a Square outage. Offline will work regardless of whether Square is suffering an outage... It might be an issue with your hardware, I'd definitely contact support and look into whether the hardware needs to be replaced.

That said in my two decades in retail and restaurants every POS system and credit card processor goes down, if I never have to see a crash kit again I will be a happy man.

I've worked with every POS, almost every credit card processor, and every single one of them can have pain points.

Case in point my family has another store using a traditional credit card processor and they call me once a month to run their transactions through because it goes down ALL the time and they don't have an offline mode.

One thing to keep in mind with those "reps" they send to try to get you to sign up and switch, they aren't going to be there if you run into support issues, they'll most likely tell you to contact clover. They're not reps, they're sales people for either the banks that run the processing or for clover themselves. Trust me when I say there's a difference between reps and sales people and the sales people will promise you a reduced fees/rate, I have yet to see any of them actually promise anything in writing.

[downoutages]

I understand how frustrating and costly downoutages can be. It's surprising to hear about today's outage; usually, with offline mode enabled, you can still swipe cards, and they'll process once everything's back up. This has helped me avoid issues during recent outages. Could you elaborate on why you couldn't process cards?

Regarding POS systems, I've experienced CenturyLink outage with three different vendors. It's common across the board — just check any public complaint board for companies like Square or Toast. These systems rely on internet servers, and when these are down, operations halt. Plus, software issues are inevitable as engineers are human.

i alway used this website to see my favorite company down outages status https://downoutages.com/status/centurylink-outage/

A useful tip: If you're struggling to process cards, turn off your payment device's internet access and ensure offline mode is enabled. This forces the POS to process cards locally. Later, when you reconnect to the internet, the system should process the offline transactions. This method has consistently worked for me during unresolvable processing issues.

[DinaLRosenberg]

This is a good idea and you're right all the companies have outages.. perfection isn't attainable. We make sure we have Zelle and PayPal so we can still take payments when this happens,