Discrepancy in Coupons from Marketing to Square Online BIG ISSUE! Help!

[DinaLRosenberg]

As we've all been made aware, coupons are moving from Square Online to Square Marketing on August 7th.

It appears that the coupons that exist in Square Marketing are already being used in Square Online transactions.

I've recently noticed that the discounts on one of my coupon codes isn't calculating properly.

I went into Square Online and the coupon is setup correctly. The discount is supposed to be 15% off the entire purchase within selected categories. We selection pretty much every category except special events & readings.

Please see the photo of the setup of the coupon:

I went to my website and put two items in the cart from approved categories and entered in the code "TikTok" and as you can see the discount only applied to ONE ITEM not the entire sale.

I erased the coupon in square marketing and re-added it. Apparently the rules in the marketing coupon is different than in the online coupon and this is a gigantic problem.

We have been using the same discount rules for years! It appears there is no way to setup the coupon in square marketing to EXCLUDE the special events category. If we select category (see below) the discount only comes off one item.  If we select entire sale, then customers will be able to take the discount in special events WHICH WE DO NOT WANT (note events are treated like inventory items in our shop- so they are in their own category so we can exclude them from discounts).

The problem is we have $1,000s of dollars in marketing postcards with the coupon code that says use the code to take 15% off YOUR ENTIRE PURCHASE.

We've had multiple orders come in with people complaining the discount isn't right, requiring us to REFUND the appropriate missing discount back (which costs us in Square return fees I might add)..

We have no idea how many customers are abandoning their orders because the discount isn't correct. 

Please PLEASE PLEASE fix this programming MESS!

[MayaP · Accepted solution]

Hello @DLRosenberg,

Thanks for flagging this over to support. How frustrating! 

I did check with our team, and they did confirm this is expected behavior 😥 This is something that has been escalated to our team but I would submit a feature request for this as well as there is no defined ETA to when they will actually fix this. You can find more insight on this thread. The workaround would be to use Automatic Discount instead of coupons. 

[Dominic_M]

This same issue has basically destroyed Square Onlines functionality for my store as we give different discounts for categories.  Automatic discounts wouldn't work either.

Not sure why it was changed but it's made every online discount functionality useless

[Laurie_]

I understand your frustration with this change, @Dominic_M.

Rest assured, we’ve flagged all the feedback we’ve received to our Product Team, who are aware of the concerns as they work on improving online coupons through the Square Marketing platform.

We’ll keep you updated with any product changes as they become available. In the meantime, please continue to share your feedback on using Square Marketing coupons, and we’ll make sure it reaches the relevant teams.

[QCYG]

Hello square support. I am experiencing this exact issue and I’m not sure why you are suggesting that this is a feature request. This functionality worked perfectly in Square online and since you folks removed/change this functionality in Square marketing, you have broken a perfectly working feature. This appears to me to be a bug rather than needing to be a new feature. Please just fix the functionality that existed in Square online and I think we would all be happy. Myself and I’m assuming thousands of other customers pay good money to use Square And this is hugely frustrating. 

[NorthfieldYarn]

I completely agree with these other frustrated retailers. You have made it impossible for us to offer the discounts that our customers have grown to expect. You are tying our hands and making us unable to run our businesses they way we choose. 

[olivasdeoro]

I just found out about this limitation for my store as well and called support.  It's acknowledged that others are having this problem as well, but they could not tell me if there was any timing for the behavior to be changed.  I'm really disappointed (and mad) that it was highlighted months ago.  Now, I'm sure you're all in the same boat with the holiday's on top of us.  The suggested work around is to discount everything in the cart.  Does anyone have other suggested work arounds?

[NorthfieldYarn]

Thanks for sharing about your call with support!

If someone at Square considers discounting the whole cart a "workaround" then they really don't understand how to run a retail business. Do we have to spell it out to them? We maintain some control when we offer a discount on a chosen item or a category, as opposed to an entire order.

We can advertise a discount on a single item in a category, but then we sound stingy, saying "offer applies to one item only."  Square has seriously tied our hands and limited our options. 

Square did NOT "highlight" the problem ahead of time, if they gave you that impression. They simply said the discounts would "work a little differently." That's not accurate. The discounts we had set up no longer work. They were not up front about it. 

[olivasdeoro]

I will be looking for a replacememt system. This is the last straw for me.  Is anyone else in the process of looking or transitioning?

[LovejoyWorkshop]

Yes, we are having the same issue and added it to our list of other issues with Square. Unfortunately the recent changes have removed core functionality that we've relied upon. They seem to be continuing to remove functionality so we need to look at other options asap.