Should Square refund processing fees for duplicate transactions when its system "malfunctions"?

[cjg1965]

I attempted to process an $800 transaction on Saturday morning for a customer - payment was accepted but the app on my phone misbehaved when I attempted to email her a receipt. I put in the correct email address, but when I clicked on the send button, the screen went blank momentarily and went back to a cleared payment screen. I then clicked on the transactions button to try selecting the transaction and make another email attempt - but the transaction was not showing up. In the meantime, customer is waiting patiently in front of me. I explain what happened so we decided to try all over again as the transaction was not showing up in the transaction list. After the same thing happened all over again, I asked her to check her bank account on her phone. She did and found both transactions debited her account - YET IT STILL WASN'T APPEARING IN MY TRANSACTION LIST. So now I'm faced with a $66 dollar transaction fee (first transaction, second transaction, and refund transaction fee) instead of the normal $22 fee. Does this sound like an intentional scam on Square's part to triple its fees by simply disabling part of the function of its mission critical financial service through the application of unannounced "updates"?

[TheRealChipA]

Hi @cjg1965.  There is no Square conspiracy here, and Square did not intentionally disable any functionality.  This seems to be just a misunderstanding on your part.  Let me try to clarify.

On Saturday there was a disruption that caused a long lag time between transactions being processed and showing up on reports, in balances, and even in our transaction lists.  Square’s status page posted updates as they worked to fix this error, and it took a number of hours to finally resolve.  You might want to bookmark that site (issquareup.com) to check if you notice weird stuff in the future.

It sounds like you did not know that there was a service disruption and ran a transaction twice.  It’s possible that if you call Customer Support they might consider refunding the $22 fee for the duplicate transaction.  But I can not be sure of that since a) I’m not Square and b) they did post on issquareup.com that transactions were completing normally, just not being reported and that we wouldn’t lost any transactions.  Still, it is worth a try, eh?

As for the fees, here’s how it would work:

• Attempt #1 would charge a $22 fee
• Attempt #2 would charge a $22 fee
• The refund would refund the customer the entire transaction amount, but Square would keep the fee of $22.  There’s no added fee for a refund transactions.  We only lose the original fee.

The most you will be out is $44, but if Square decides to refund $22 to you because you did not know about the service disruption, they that would drop to $22.

Regards,