Right?!
To add insult to injury, Square went right ahead and took a loan payment out of the little bit of money we did make today before the problems started. Only a couple bucks - not even a hundreth of a drop in the bucket for Square, but 10% of the day's booth fee for us.
Can't believe Square was trying to blame this on banks! We vend in an outdoor tourist market: The 30 to 40 vendors who use Square ALL had problems today. Collectively, we (attempted) to process thousands of charges using the many different credit and debit cards belonging to hundreds of tourists from multiple continents and countries. Who knows how many different financial institutions from around the world were represented at our market today... It was not a bank problem!
Or that they had the nerve to suggest "we" are at fault for not immediately calling them! Nothing looked particularly out of the ordinary until we'd packed up and gone home, when we went to run the offline transactions, and the fun began. We are located in New Orleans, Louisiana, and at the moment there's this little thing called Mardi Gras going on. Well, when all of a sudden there are hundreds of thousands more cellphones in town than normal, it's not unusual to have problems with wifi and cell service. None of us thought anything more than "yup, it's Mardi Gras..." Also, fyi Square - vendors at a busy market do not have the ability to sit around making calls to customer service. People aren't paying any attention to you and your booth? Dial a number or open a book - guaranteed you'll have people asking questions before you can count to 10! 😁
The one thing I do know is that Im about to do something I never thought I would - send away for Paypal's card reader, so we have a backup next time Square leaves us hanging. Today proved it's imperative we have a backup.
