Appointments is kicking out customers, blocking them from making a booking.

[DaoDeJing]

On my website, I use a link to send customers to my Square Appointments page. (I'm not embedding it in my own page.)

Over the past month, I've received numerous complaints from customers that when they click on a desired time the website kicks them off. The page goes blank for a moment then sends them back to the beginning of the process. Confused, they proceed to try again, only to discover the time they wanted is now unavailable.

I suspect the system removed the time temporarily, so that no one else would take it while they completed their scheduling. But now they can't take the time themselves! Sometimes they call me and I can schedule them manually from the back end, but several have told me they just didn't bother and gave up. I shudder to think how many customers I've lost...

What might be going on here? At first I assumed these were rare cases of user error, but now I'm hearing about it about twice a week! Who knows how many other times a week it's happening that I'm not hearing of.

Ideas?

[Chad · Accepted solution]

Hello @DaoDeJing! 

This sounds really weird. Especially the part when the time slots are not showing up after a customer selected them. While I'd love to try and troubleshoot this here, this sounds like something our Appointments Support Team will have to look into. 

It sounds like there might be an issue with your booking site that would have to be fixed on the back end. I can't think of any setting that would cause this issue. 

If you have any questions or need help getting in touch with the team please let me know. I would be more than happy to help out.

[DaoDeJing]

I don't think it's weird that it's hiding the time after they select it. I bet the system is designed to do that to prevent double-bookings if multiple customers happen to be trying to book at once.

All I find odd is that it's kicking them out of the booking process once they've selected a time. I've tried asking the customers what browsers they were using, but I haven't noticed a pattern.

I emailed support 6 days ago. No reply as of yet. But I also haven't had any complaints from customers in that time either, so eh. 😛

[DaoDeJing]

Just a little update, to say that since I've made the original post there haven't been any further customer complaints. No clue what was going on, but for the time being I'll consider the matter closed. Thanks! 😄

[Helen]

Glad to hear that @DaoDeJing!

It looks like our Appointments team did send you an email with some browser troubleshooting tips for your customers (switching browsers or clearing the cache should help!) If you do hear any more reports of this issue from your customers please let us know.

I also wanted to let you know that any time a customer selects an appointment it's reserved for them for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes — if your customer changes their mind or can't book for another reason — the appointment is automatically freed up.

Thanks for your patience with everything. If you have any other questions let me know! 🙂