Solved: Re: Duplicate charge with a No Sale transaction

gallery55art · ‎08-05-2024

Square duplicated an in-person credit card sale with a No Sale transaction inserted in between. The credit card customer disputed the duplicate charge, which I accepted. Has this happened to anyone else? How do I prevent it from happening again?

gallery55art · ‎08-05-2024

Thanks, good advice. I think we figured out what happened. A customer bought something with a credit card and then left it on the counter near the credit card reader. Then her friend came up and discussed buying the same kind of item but pay by cash. The cashier wrote up the ticket in Square and pressed Charge waiting for the cash payment. Then there was a discussion about whose card was on the counter and I believe the card may have been waved over the reader in the process. Square charged the card. The friend then decided not to buy the item for cash, and the cashier did not realize it was already charged to the card.

I think it would work better for our cashiers to have to manually select "credit card present" when that is the payment type instead of Square assuming that is the payment type when no other option is selected.

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gallery55art · ‎08-05-2024

Just to clarify, it was not a temporary thing. The duplicate charge happened almost a month ago and is still listed in our transaction list for that day.

TheRealChipA · ‎08-05-2024

Hey @gallery55art. Sorry to hear this. Since I’ve rarely heard of this in my many years here in the Community, I’m not sure what anyone could do IF, indeed, this duplicate was Square’s fault. It sounds like there might have been a WiFi glitch or something when the original transaction was processing, or maybe it seemed to be declined and your employee re-ran it when it shouldn’t have been? It’s hard to say since we have no way of knowing why the duplicate happened.

My suggestion would be to try to find out. Go to your transaction list and get the transaction numbers of both transactions. Then get in touch with Customer Support with that information and ask them to investigate. They might be able to see what happened and then you would know what, if anything, you can do about it.

Otherwise, I’m not sure what else could be done, without more information.

Chip A.
Square Expert & Innovator and member of the Square Champions group. (But NOT a Square employee, just a seller like you)

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gallery55art · ‎08-05-2024

Thanks, good advice. I think we figured out what happened. A customer bought something with a credit card and then left it on the counter near the credit card reader. Then her friend came up and discussed buying the same kind of item but pay by cash. The cashier wrote up the ticket in Square and pressed Charge waiting for the cash payment. Then there was a discussion about whose card was on the counter and I believe the card may have been waved over the reader in the process. Square charged the card. The friend then decided not to buy the item for cash, and the cashier did not realize it was already charged to the card.

I think it would work better for our cashiers to have to manually select "credit card present" when that is the payment type instead of Square assuming that is the payment type when no other option is selected.