Performance Issue: Square Services Disruption 7 Sept, 2023

[urs]

[The title of this post was updated by a moderator from "IS SQUARE DOWN, EVERYWHERE?"]

The Square Support Line says..."you have reached us during an unexpected closure..."  Anyone have an idea what is going on?

[TheRealChipA]

@urs all Square services are down for everyone, it seems.  Go to www.issquareup.com for updates.  Seems a data center is having problems.  My restaurants POS is working, at least, if I put it in offline mode by disconnecting it from the internet.  But so far nothing else is working.  And if the POS dies, I have a spreadsheet where I can keep track of cash in to enter later.

I’m in a chat group with a bunch of fellow sellers and they are all reporting the same thing.  All we can do is hang tight.  This has lasted an hour, nearly.  I’d recommend figuring out how you can do business with a paper and pen (or spreadsheet) until it is resolved.

[TheRealChipA]

And, yes, the issue is affecting support as well.

[TessC]

I feel like a fool for falling for Square's land grab for so many parts of our business. As a bookstore with a cafe/bar, we are in a weird hybrid space, and use Square for POS and inventory management for both retail and food & beverage; payroll; loyalty/CRM & marketing. I was considering Square online, but absolutely won't do that now.

I will continue to use Square for POS and inventory management with some redundancies, but everything else should be on the table. So, other than Stripe for CC processing, who/what is everyone using for the following: 

- Customer Relationship Management/Marketing: Specifically email & text marketing, and how are you integrating the names and information collected via Square's loyalty program at POS?

- Loyalty/Rewards: Anything compatible with Square?

- E-Commerce: Best tools, and their ability to integrate with Square for inventory management? 

And one snarky comment: For a company led by an individual who was a pioneer in communications platforms, the crisis comms during this outage has been abysmal. I'd say sophomoric, but that would imply they made an attempt. 

[Donnie-M]

I made another post in the thread and noted all of the major companies that have internet outages and have some of the best engineers money can buy.  It does happen, we don't want it to, but to say they weren't doing their best and communicating better than alot of companies is an opinion and not based on anything other.  I agree it can always be done better, but shoe on the other foot, I have seen much worse responses to service outages than this..heck try your local power company or comcast if you want to see poor response and information.

[WhitneyMaille]

It appears so.  I have just gone ahead and ordered my Paypal Zettle device so I can at least take credit cards when they have this type of failure in the future.  Once again I will be looking at decoupling my business from Square and researching the alternatives.

[TheRealChipA]

@WhitneyMaille Of course, we all do what we feel we have to do.  But, speaking from experience, this time was Square’s turn to have data center problems.  PayPal will get theirs.  Clover will get theirs.  Etc.  Right now we don’t know anything other than it is down.  Also, good for you for creating a backup plan.  I, too, have one if I need it — Stripe.  That is always a smart move made by smart business owners!

[WhitneyMaille]

Absolutely accurate.  This may be the impetus that helps me to decouple my website from Square and allow it to at least remain functional separate from the payment processor.  Currently that is not the situation for me.

[TheRealChipA]

Oops.  That was for another post!  LOL.  What I meant to say to you is that you are right.  Having all of our eggs in one basket is a calculated risk.  I’m sure you’ll figure out how to spread out that risk for your business once this is all over.  

[matheny00]

I get a web page from Cloudflare bad gateway Squareup Host Error or 

upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: connection failure, transport failure reason: immediate connect error: Connection refused

Bad gateway Error code 502

Visit cloudflare.com for more information.

2023-09-07 19:14:49 UTC

You

Browser

Working

Los Angeles

Cloudflare

Working

squareup.com

Host

Error

[kate151]

Same here...when I called, it said, we are unavailable!

[WhitneyMaille]

Same.  They definitely have an issue.  I'm unable to ship orders!

[Candlestore]

Same issue here, went to add a customer on my Stand and would not connect, thought I could on Dashboard... nope, got the 502 Error also.  Saw by the yellow banner that Square is having issues with services.  

[Candlestore]

Usually when I check for an issue there are 1 or 2 Yellow or Red checks if Square has an Issue.... This time it looks like EVERYTHING is affected and nothing is working correctly.  Square is recommending not to log out of devices.  

[FNPSRQ]

Is Square down today? Customer service hung up on me also....

[WhitneyMaille]

Square is down and they are showing their cards with total lack of emergency support.  Definitely time to consider alternatives while the memory is fresh.

[FNPSRQ]

Frustrating.

[PartyManiaMD]

One thing to keep in mind is that emergency support at any scale is going to be focused on getting the product back online. The last thing I want Square doing when an emergency crash or attack like this is happening is to staff the phone lines. Customer service support on any kind of global scale typically crashes and burns during emergencies regardless of the industry or product. A major airline recently cancelled on me and it took me 6 hours to get someone on the phone for them to hang up on me after telling me theres nothing they could do. 

To me it's more important in how they treat me outside of emergencies because during an emergency they should be focused on fixing the problem and afterwards making sure it is less likely to happen again.

Every alternative is just as bad when it comes to CSR, even the traditional CC processor I used to use would hang up on you if you call during an outage.

[WhitneyMaille]

What is the customer support phone number you use?

[TheRealChipA]

Customer support is also affected by this, folks.  They are on the same servers and data centers as we are.  Since this outage is system-wide, it’s no surprise that nothing is working.  They aren’t hanging up on anyone.

[GroomsbytheBay]

The SquareUp website won't even load.  My register won't load customers. Chat isn't working. Phone calls aren't available. 

It appears the entire server crashed.  Single point of failure isn't helpful for us business owners! 😞  PLS HLP.