Square Loans - privacy issue

[RasIII]

Since your “managers “: do not have phone support ( unheard of)  I am posting this here . Hopefully somebody will see  it and take the correct and ethical action . 

   I had one of my team members reach out to me about her Square Loan. She was declined for a loan for her business due to my account had a current loan with NEEDS WORK  algorithms. 

She told me underwriting referenced my account in her loan application. She answered her account was a separate account and her own business separate from mine. They asked about my decline in service and she answered, summer is my busy time and business is picking up. 
      Underwriting declined her loan because of my business! After she told me this I asked why are they asking you about my business ? She didn’t have an answer but  they said we were associated. I have her listed as a team member on my account with access because she helps in my office occasionally. She does it for free to help when I get backed up especially in the summer, and she won’t even let me pay her. 

      She has reached out to loans, support and I think tech to get some information on this. She gets no answers and has told me they have even hung up on her. She has received a few emails that basically give her carbon copy answers but no indication on the connection. She finally had one agent agree to look further and said they could see no connection aside from being a team member . She has spent two weeks between loans and customer service trying to get a resolution. In return she has received two or three carbon copy emails. Telling her they can’t revisit her loan and will not go into details about the account association.  
     I am so angry about all the for so many reasons.
     1. She has a totally separate type of  business than I have and it does not overlap or connect in any way what so ever.  She is just extra help for me and doesn’t get any income. Square took it upon themselves to assume this, denied her loan, and at no time by email or on our dashboard brought it to our attention. 
     2. I don’t like that they asked another account holder or even one of my team members  about my personal business information. They asked about  my slow season decline in service and my status of that changing. I also don’t care for the fact that this was shared without my knowing. I should have been notified before you ask anybody about me or my business, especially in that detail . But if you have to know, my service is down but I am beyond current in my payments .I don’t have disputes or red flags .  My loan is a small amount, pretty much what she was offered and my sales are 5 times hers , so how would that affect her anyway. She is an ( unpaid) employee and  why is that squares place to even ask her about it? She is not the owner and her name in not listed as an owner, nor her ss number or anything . I don’t even have her business email. Her address is different. 
    3. She is a small business owner that could use the funds and their denial has no connection to her business at all . She told me her algorithms are consistently in the green and her previous loans always current ( even during Covid , when she had to close for 3 months, and a year of crappy business ) no disputes ever , or alerts. Why would my business affect this ? You have now marked her dashboard with a declined loan that will prevent her from getting another one. 
     4. She has been pushed back and forth between three departments, she said escalated many times. I told her ask for a manager, and she showed me 2 emails that said word for word the same thing. She said managers don’t have phone support , and agents can only escalate. Managers send out a email and don’t respond to any questions or communication. They dictate but won’t resolve. She said a few times when she tried to be firm, they hung up her .I know her she doesn’t have aggressive nature, so that is not the reason for that. That is how you handle a problem like this ? You bully the person until they finally back down ? She is a customer and has questions about her account, that you are responsible for  and you choose to ignore her? It is your job to help her clear this up. She can’t do it without help, because she doesn’t know where to start. Her and I have gone over our dashboards and no indication. 
     4. WHY WILL YOU NOT AND CONTINUE TO REFUSE TO RECONSIDER HER LOAN , IF IT HAS BEEN POINTED OUT TO YOU NEARLY 100 TIMES , IN THE LAST TWO WEEKS , IN ALL ANGLES THAT YOUR REASON FOR DECLINE WAS NOT CORRECT AND YOUR MISCOMMUNICATION ISSUES  AND POSSIBLY , JUST POSSIBLY YOUR MISTAKE.  
     5. I deal with a lot of companies, big ones , bigger than square  in my business ( hundreds) and not one have I not been able to communicate with a manager or owner when something can’t be addressed on an agents level. This is absurd, no phone support for your managers? She had chat tell her they don’t respond to emails they just respond to the escalation. No communication at all after that.  None . She said they have asked the managers to talk in support and they say no they won’t she needs to escalate. Her recent call to an agent told her , the will not escalate this anymore , like they blackballed her. She keeps asking because you’re not only not helping her understand it, fix it , you just plain out don’t respond .  They told her the managers are too busy. We are all busy, she is busy, we are small business owners you don’t need to tell us about that. We are all busy, but as owners we know you take the time to address problems until they are corrected. That is what keeps our businesses open! When you are the only one that can shed light on something. Pick up the phone!  

      I have never in my life , ever,  taken the time to write a letter like this , I have never encountered anything so neglectful and disrespectful  that I thought I had to.

       Your main customer base is small or smaller or even the smallest business. Actions like this are a huge hit to a small business whether it’s time or money, our money, or our privacy. All these little businesses that you continue to treat like this will walk and where will you be without them? 

[Donnie-M]

@RasIII I get the frustration, but let me offer up my opinion from both sides.  I sometimes have to evaluate risk in decisions.  From Square’s perspective, loan risk is all about connections. If someone has access to two accounts, even in a limited role, there’s always a chance that finances could be intertwined—whether officially or not.

Square likely sees shared access as a potential financial tie, even if no money is directly linked.  What kind of access does she have?  Full Access?  Did she sign/acknowledge anything in her loan application and give permission to look at your account information. If one account with a loan needs attention, it makes sense that underwriting would flag that risk when evaluating a connected applicant. Banks do the same thing with co-signers and business partners.

That said, I agree that support should be clearer about this upfront. If team member access can impact loan decisions, Square should make that crystal clear to business owners before it becomes a problem.

Transparency = fewer headaches for everyone.

I would recommend if you want someone to have access to your account to be able to do work on your behalf, set up an administrator account with a totally separate e-mail.  Then you can give them access through that and it would be totally and wholly controlled by you.  The e-mail address associated with an account is one of those holy grail things with square.  That and the phone number are just simply unique per account in my experience.

#UnderwritingLogic #SquareLoans #Sweet16 #HatOrBust

[RasIII]

I gave her access to be able to call and ask questions, but she cannot sign my loans, change my bank accounts, anything like that. she is listed at office manager. Her only connection is helping in my office, not finically, at all. In fact she has hardly had to use it. As for her business , I know nothing about it except where she goes to work in the morning. That’s it .

Support had not been clear AT ALL, to either of us. At no time when she agreed to this did they tell her or notify her it would affect her account. She found the old emails from them, requesting to be added .
Crystal clear I am finding is not square is being here at all, or at any point. In fact I find it very unethical not to keep either one of us in the loop about this or notify us in any way and pull the rug out from under her when she needed it most. 

You mentioned email, as I stated above , she uses a personal email with me, has a separate email on her square account. In fact I don’t even know her square account email. Not connected . 

I let her handle this, I thought it was pretty much done, she called me last night so upset and spilled all that they have put her through the last two weeks. I was so disgusted I wrote this in the middle of the night, because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing . 
she told me about over 10 - 11 escalations, and nearly two straight weeks on the phone, emailing , and chatting. To get a couple lousy carbon copy emails back, no calls , nothing. Then they told her they won’t escalate anymore , it’s over . They haven’t addressed the issue. It will continue to be a problem, and has prevented her from getting this much needed loan. 

[Donnie-M]

@RasIII I am not one of the people that will ever say the square loans are an easy open process to understand..simple in theory...but as can note from the threads in the forums frequently...the process is cryptique algorithm driven.

I don't want to seem like I am making excuses, I am not.  I do like to understand the question behind the question and why this happened.  I also want you to know that you will get heard.  I have worked with Square for many many years and there are a ton of great people I have worked with over there.  But when something doesn't go the way you expect or it should, it can feel like you are singled out or almost picked on.  From a risk standpoint, I get square checking and cross checking names vs. accounts.   It sucks that we have to deal with so many criminals trying to scam sellers or game the platform and fictitiously inflate or manipulate to get loans or access to people's banking information.  But I think that is where the phrase, "This is why we can't have nice things." comes into play.

A good example that you brought up was no access to banking.  I was around when you couldn't have a full access team member that didn't have access to the banking.  I like to think my advocating back then helped to make the change where they restricted banking changes to only the account owner.  This opened up the ability to really let someone else help and do business.

So right now, I don't have anything prophetic to pass along except to say I don't think there is any ill intent.  Maybe a little skepticism on square loans part, but the goal is to have a robust secure program for the benefit of all sellers.  Right now, that won't be how you feel.  But you did the right thing to bring it here and post it also, square has a great community of like minded sellers and square staff really does step in where appropriate and they can.

[RasIII]

I understand where you are coming from , I do but so many things come into play here and square not only has denied her or me the information, they have pretty much told her it’s none of her business. That does not sit well with me . 

I wish  you could have heard what she told me about how she has been treated the last two weeks. It’s inexcusable and truly unethical behavior.  I am only with square because she told me it was a good idea. Now it blew up in her face .

like I said in my original post , she has an extremely good track record on her account with square and an amazing business reputation. She has been in business 30 something years with square for a good portion of that. 8 loans from what she said and never a late payment, even during covid when she was closed and struggled to recover after. In 30 years even before Square, she has never had one charge dispute, that’s impressive. Almost always in the green unless she takes a little time off. No a verse account activity or anything.

Underwriting asked her all about my business , not happy about that either, they asked about things she knows but if she called them would not get the info, that is not her access level. They asked about our connection and she explained it all. They didn’t even take it into consideration . Any other loan company would say , this is coming up , we need to correct that . Nope . 

As for my account she is an office manager on an as needed basis . How would these managers at Square  like to be declined for loans, credit cards, etc, because they dig into Squares sketchy business practices. That is how much sense this makes.  

I looked in to Squares Better Business Bureau account , they have an A plus rating but I don’t know how , if you read the comments and lists of complaints and lack of resolutions, it’s frightening. Complaints of stealing money, holding back funds, loan issues. It’s bad. And it all comes down to in almost every single complaint and claim in lack of communication. They do what they want and don’t give people any explanation. 

I tried to convince her to file such a complaint but she doesn’t want to go there. She is a good person and it’s not in her nature. I told her she might not have a choice because since they refuse to disclose the connection and communicate  about it . She might not have a choice or it will be an issue for both of us . 

[RasIII]

I sent a copy of this post to customer support today and did receive an email that they have to investigate for 15 business days. After she has spent over two weeks working on this now they are pushing it 15 days.  Who needs 15 days to look into this it’s so simple. Also she has requested this over and over. 
 

I got on with customer support and insisted they call her and at least act like they are trying to clean this mess up. The agent agreed to call and did, and she told me she was listening,  but again just escalated an encouraged her to speak to loans.  

This brings me to, why do their agents have no authority but to escalate and managers refuse to communicate when escalated. It’s a broken system. My mind is blown by this. How do they run a productive company like that. I am now pulled into this and have done a lot of investigating on Square. This is a common business practice for them. Very. 

She called me and after she spoke to the agent and loans was closed, but she is apprehensive to call them because they basically refuse. They refuse managers and they now won’t escalate it.  

Being  declined for the loan is an issue, because they have zero basis for it. She does her part. But beyond that she has a declined loan , Needs Work  on her dashboard , and knows an offer isn’t coming anytime soon. Again, no basis for this. The final straw for me was, when she called me last night and told be how they were handling this , I knew she was communicating about it and it was supposedly being looked into, but I had no clue it was this bad. The fact that the say things like watch your dashboard , or keep swiping, is so passive aggressive . She is asking you over and over , where in your system was she connected . She is still waiting for that answer. Because if this isn’t addressed it will keep happening.

Square , you don’t hold the key to these accounts they are our accounts a should be kept in the loop about them to the best of your ability. 

@Donnie-M 

[Donnie-M]

@RasIII Totally get how maddening this has been—especially when it feels like you're hitting a wall and no one’s giving a straight answer.

Just to be clear though, I’m not Square support—just another seller trying to help where I can (sometimes feels like handing out umbrellas in a hurricane, I know).

That said, I’ve learned the hard way that once frustration hits a certain level, it’s easy to start seeing everything as intentional or broken—even when it might just be slow, clunky, or poorly explained. Doesn’t make the experience any better, but it might help keep perspective.

Either way, really hope they get this sorted out for her soon. I like helping troubleshoot—not because I enjoy pointing out the oven is off and the cookbook is on fire.

Good luck,

Donnie

[RasIII]

Thank you for all your input, it is definitely appreciated.

I can assure you after all I was told about the last two plus weeks, their system is broken and not efficient.  No doubt in my mind.  Keeping information without full disclosure with response tactics and time are almost non existent.  She showed me the emails they consider as a response. Not one addressed any of her escalations, or her concerns. Just generic emails, over and over.  They offer to respond with questions, she does and they don’t reply. Chatting with an agent they told me that they don’t respond the the emails , and are not required to. Then why are you ending you email with , if you have any additional questions or concerns, let me know. Let’s add misleading. They tell her to watch her dashboard but her point is they tarnished it and she has worked hard to keep it clean. 

They hold the information hostage, refuse to communicate, dictate how it’s being handled, and don’t take accountability. In my world that is bad business and unethical. 

Maddening is only one word for it, they drag things out at their customers expense and time with no concern for the ramifications. 

[RasIII]

Just to update . I sent a letter similar to a copy of this post to support. Over chat I set up an escalation on the 19 th . I got a response they would respond in 15 days . Two days later I got an email stating case has been closed for 2 weeks. How is that if I opened it two days earlier . I sent two more emails through support on the app. Because they send emails from a no reply email. This is convenient , isn’t it? I finally got a response from Brandy that she would be calling Monday . Today , no call. I had her call and she did finally get to a manager , that said the same as an agent. So back to square one.

Their tactic , give you the run around to the point that you back down. They are all very well scripted with the same robotic answers and emails. No resolutions or attempt to help .

@Donnie-M