I have a category that keeps disappearing

[danhinchliffe]

https://la-vostra-pizza.square.site

My specialty pizzas and all its sub-categories keep disappearing from my online ordering site.  To get it back, I have to rearrange the categories.  It'll reappear and then disappear later.  It had been happening once a day but finally managed to stay up for over a week.  I thought it had worked itself out.  I checked today and it was missing again.

It is always the same category that disappears no matter where in the category order I put it.  I have tried deleting it and recreating it.

I am at a loss.

[RobynR]

Welcome back to the Community @danhinchliffe, 

Which category or categories keep disappearing from your online store? I want to make sure we are on the same page.

I'll keep a lookout for your reply.

[danhinchliffe]

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@RobynR wrote:

Welcome back to the Community @danhinchliffe, 

Which category or categories keep disappearing from your online store? I want to make sure we are on the same page.

I'll keep a lookout for your reply.

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The 'Specialty Pizzas' category.  Just like taking your car to the mechanic and it won't make the noise it's been making, the category hasn't disappeared since I made this post.  I can assure you it has disappeared over a dozen times in the past month.

I want to re-emphasize that I tried deleting the category and recreating it.  It did not help.

[RobynR]

Oh, of course, that always happens, @danhinchliffe; I would recommend reaching out to our Square Support Team at 1-855-700-6000, so we can get a ticket filed and they can take a deeper look into why this category keeps disappearing. 

Let me know if you have any other questions.

[danhinchliffe]

Hi,

I wanted to update this and let you know my "Specialty Pizzas" category has disappeared again.  I am closed on Tuesdays so I will leave it until tomorrow so that the support team can actually see that it is not working correctly.

I am going to call them now.  I wanted to wait until it disappeared again so they would be able to see what I am talking about.

edit:  I talked to support and they say they have fixed it.  I'm a little dubious as it sounded to me like they just played with the categories until it came back (which is essentially what I do), but time will tell...

edit:  It disappeared again 😞

edit:  Support fixed it.... for ONE day.  However, they did tell me that the easiest way to fix it (clearly temporarily) is to unpublish the website and then publish it again.  I just did that and it is currently working.

[danhinchliffe]

This is an ongoing issue.  I know how to fix it, but the fix is temporary.

[JJ_]

Hey there @danhinchliffe 

Our team identified what was causing this and applied a solution. If you are still confronting this behavior please let me know so I can look into this for you. 

[danhinchliffe]

Your solution did not work.  😞

The same thing has happened again.  I will leave it until about 12:00pm tomorrow so you can look at it.

This is very frustrating for me.  An important category has most likely been unavailable all day today.  I don't have the time to keep checking on this.

Unpublishing and Republishing is NOT a solution.

Rearranging categories (and then optionally putting them back in their current order) is NOT a solution.

Both of these are temporary fixes.

[danhinchliffe]

It happened again.  😢

[Arie]

Thank you for going through these steps already, @danhinchliffe. I understand your frustration. If you're still having trouble with categories after rearranging your categories, reach out to our support team here so we can file a ticket. 

[danhinchliffe]

It happened again.

I 'filed a ticket' following your link.  Even though their goal is to respond within 24 hours they have not gotten back to me.

I first called support's attention to this problem on April 23, 2022.  Today is June 12, 2022.  I have used this forum, I have spoken to support over the phone, and I have 'filed a ticket'.  I have been told at least twice that the problem has been found and fixed.  I have been told multiple times that the problem has probably been fixed.  I understand that intermittent problems are difficult to diagnose.  To my knowledge, the problem is only intermittent because I keep applying a temporary fix so that customers have access to my entire menu when I am open for business.  Otherwise, I believe the category would never reappear.  I wonder how many other businesses have missing categories and are unaware?

Someone, somewhere in the (Weebly?) organization must know how to fix this.  I am at your mercy to call their attention to the problem and ask for their assistance.

[JJ_]

Hello there @danhinchliffe 

I am sorry to hear that you are still experiencing this. I have requested your case to be escalated to our Advanced Support Team so they can investigate this further as all known issues regarding disappearing categories have been addressed. 

Thank you for reaching out once again about this matter. I hope you get a resolution soon.  

[danhinchliffe]

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Thank you for reaching out once again about this matter. I hope you get a resolution soon. 

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I have not.

Depending on who you ask, my situation has been escalated to either "the advanced support team", "the engineering team", or "the books team".

I did get an email from NaKenya, who said they were "taking over the issue."  They gave me specific instructions to call in next time the site broke so that they could see it and not to do one of the temporary fixes.  They told me to tell the advocate on the phone NOT to touch the website and to immediately reach out to advanced support.  This took some doing, but I eventually managed get this to happen.  I was assured I would be kept "in the loop."

A day later my site was again in a working state.  I was excited about the possibility that my site had been fixed.  It was not.  It broke again a few days later.  I immediately called support again and after HALF AN HOUR managed to convince the person on the phone to again reach out to advanced support.  This time Advanced Support fiddled with my color choices for the website and left it in a broken state.  I assumed this was part of some troubleshooting process and tolerated it for a few days.  I finally emailed NaKenya again and they said that "Advanced Support has done some work and it will show up."  They then explained that the category was now empty and that I needed to once again fill the category with the appropriate items, unpublish and publish the site, and hopefully all would be well.  The category still had all the subcategories in it (I have no idea what NaKenya was talking about).  Republishing it worked for almost an entire day before the site broke again.  I remind you that they changed my color choices for the site.  As far as I can tell, that is all they have done.

My emails are no longer being replied to.

I thought I was finally going to get the proper attention to this issue, but it now seems to me that someone basically fiddled around with my site for a few minutes, shrugged, and moved on to another project.  They couldn't even be bothered to restore my layout and design.

I am actually in a worse situation than I was before "Advanced Support" got involved.

edit:  07-12-22 My site has been restored to the proper design is is currently working.  I have not heard from anyone on the "Advanced Support Team" so I have no idea if they identified a bug and fixed it or if my site was simply restored to the (frequently breaking) state it was in before "Advanced Support" got involved.

[JJ_]

After investigating the status of the case I had escalated for you, I discovered that Advanced Support wasn't able to identify the actual issue. They ran the general checks and were not able to identify a bug on your site that would cause it to behave how you have described. This is the reason they were requesting to be able to verify the site WHILE the issue is happening. 

Thank you for following up I will keep an eye out for your reply.

[danhinchliffe]

Thank you for your reply.  They have actually seen the bug at least twice.  Twice I have been on the phone with support who was then chatting with Advanced Support and the person I was on the phone with and Advanced Support were able to confirm that the issue exists and was present in that moment.

It has happened a number of times since I was told to republish the site.  If they haven't seen any of those, then they are not actively monitoring and working on the issue.

It has been ten weeks.  I understand that the system is large and complicated and these little quirks or hiccups will happen from time to time.  Unless they are happening far more often than I can imagine, I feel that this should be getting more attention than it is at this point.

I finally got an email response from NaKenya:

Thanks for reaching out to me about it. I have a bug written up for this issue currently and for now, the only thing we can do to keep you going online is for you to un publish and then republish. I can't give a time frame of when this will be fixed, but I can assure you that it is now on our radar.

This does not inspire confidence.  At the very least, I would think the process of me letting them know when the site is in a broken state could be streamlined at this point.

[danhinchliffe]

This is still an issue.  Nothing has changed.

[danhinchliffe]

This is still an issue.  Nothing has changed as far as I can tell.

[JJ_]

I am sorry that you're still experiencing this @danhinchliffe. Our team has worked to squash bugs related to categories, including those that disappear. I will recommend you reach out once again (I know you already did but circumstances have changed) so they can file a ticket for you in order to see what could be affecting your particular account. 

In case you need that number again is 855-700-6000 and they are available between 6 am - 6 pm Pacific Time Monday-Friday. If you call outside of these hours, you will be required to enter your Customer Code to validate your account.

[JITT-Tammy]

Are you still having this problem?   I am getting ready to launch our new site and am having the same issue.  Ii guess I'm going to move everything to top level categories if you are still having the problem.

[danhinchliffe]

Yes, the problem persists.  🙄

It's so weird. It's just the one category.  All the other categories that are set up the same way work perfectly.  😩

[JITT-Tammy]

Thanks for the quick reply.  I am just making all of my subcategories main categories then.  Messy, but it has to work now!