Frustrated!

[SanduskyCrowbar]

Hi all.  We've been using Square for two years as a bar, then with food and merchandise as additions.  In the last two years, my managers have spent a ridiculous amount of time in every format (chat help, emails, phone calls) with Square and we've officially reached the breaking point of whether to stay or go.  Our biggest issues in order are:

1) No preauthorization.  For a bar, this is just messy and expensive.  

2) Square lied to us about no processing fees after $250,000 in annual sales.  Also, there was zero communication that this was being dropped as a service.

3) It's is almost impossibe to get an actual human to quickly and efficiently answer our calls.  As a bar, we don't have someone sitting around and able to just stay on the phone for 4 hours.  Which has actually happened more than once. 

I'm frustrated and my staff is too.  Does anyone else have these experiences or same feedback?  

[ryanwanner]

Hello @SanduskyCrowbar ! Welcome to the Seller Community!

Let me start with #3. You're in the right place now. Between the mods and all the super sellers here, usually you'll get a lot faster response with questions here than in any other way of Square communication.

For #2, I was never aware of a processing fee cap at $250k in sales. If there was one, I need to talk to someone too. 🙂 I'm curious as to where/who you heard this information from. If that was a sneaky sales pitch then there needs to be some training on Square's side for sure. Square still has fees they have to pay to the card providers regardless of your volume of sales, so it doesn't make sense to have an upper limit. Maybe--just maybe-- something can be negotiated, but my bet is you'll have to add another zero to your sales numbers for them to be receptive. That said, when you have the time, I do recommend calling in to see if you can negotiate a lower rate. I believe (and don't quote me on this because I'm not entirely certain of the threshold numbers) that if you have over a $17 average ticket and process over $250k you can talk Square down in rates. Quick aside, when I started with Square in 2011, they had a $500/mo flat fee for processing fees. That didn't last long for obvious reasons...

Now, for the one that I'm super excited about: #1.

Square just released the ability to have open tabs/preauth'ed cards via their online store's QR code self-serve ordering. Basically, you have a bunch of QR codes at your tables and bar seats, your customer uses the code to order from their phone, and they can keep the tab open and add to it as many times as they like.

Check out all the information in this annoucement post!

I worked on the test of this product, and I can tell you it's really slick. Hopefully the development team will take the code and technology developed to make this work in the Online environment and roll it out to the point of sale sooner than later, but for now I highly recommend getting the QR codes going for your bar!

Hope this helps! Please feel free to follow up with any other questions or concerns you may have!