Overview
Unlike most Square reviews (squareup.com & square.com), this Square Up review primarily covers the topics that matter to most merchants and small business owners rather than Square’s technology. Square is often called “Square up” or “Squareup” because of the domain that Square uses for its website; however, the official name for this company is “Square.” For the purposes of this review, the two names will be used interchangeably.
Founded in February of 2009 by Jack Dorsey, who is also the founder of Twitter.com, Square has grown into a large, publicly-owned company (NYSE: SQ) in a very small amount of time. Much of the company’s success can be attributed to the fact that Square has ingeniously broken the mold of credit card processing by removing the traditional barriers-to-entry that restricted processing services to actual businesses and bringing credit card acceptance to the individual, or essentially anyone and everyone.
Signing up for the company’s payment processing service is simple: iPhone, iPad, and Android users simply fill out a quick form, download the Square app, and then await the arrival of the Square Up reader in the mail. They can also purchase the reader at several nationwide retailers. The Square credit card reader plugs into the headphone jack of the merchant’s phone or tablet, thereby making it a mobile credit card terminal. In fact, Square’s model has been so successful that it has inspired numerous clones both from big-name competitors and fledgling startups.
Related: Best Card Processing Apps for iPhone
Other Square Services
Since the launch of its card reader and mobile app, Square has rolled out several other payment services for both business and personal use.
Square Register (see review) is a point-of-sale (POS) system that provides extra features not included in the company’s mobile app, including analytics, sales reporting, staff management, and a customizable item library. The service, which is free to download and optimized for the iPad, also allows merchants to set up loyalty programs and send digital receipts.
Square Online Store (see review) is an online store directory for Square merchants. Merchants with an existing Square account can create an online profile for their store within the Square marketplace for free. They may then sell their products through their Square online store for 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.
Square Cash (see review) is a direct peer-to-peer cash transfer service that is linked to a user’s debit card. Square Cash sends payments via email and smartphone and allows for free transfers of funds between users. The service is not targeted at business owners, but they may use it to make payments outside of a business setting.
Square Capital (see review) is a merchant cash advance program that can be activated from the dashboard in the Square Register. Square Capital allows merchants to receive a large upfront cash amount and then pay that total back to Square over time with a fixed percentage of their daily credit card sales.
Square has also recently launched an NFC-enabled EMV chip card reader, an order-ahead app called Square Order, an online invoicing feature called Square Invoices, an online scheduler called Square Appointments, and an offline processing mode that enables merchants to capture payments even when their internet is down.
Top Mobile Processors
Top All-Purpose Merchant Account Providers
Square Bottom Line
Square is definitely on the right track with providing an easy credit card processing solution with no long-term commitments and no monthly fees. The service is proving to have some major drawbacks for higher volume merchants, though, because of murky fund holding policies and poor customer support. It appears that Square is best suited for individuals who have an occasional need to accept a credit card payment, such as babysitters and flea market vendors. The service does not appear to suit very well merchants that either have a high volume of credit card sales or that sell high-ticket items.
Top All-Purpose Merchant Accounts
About Phillip Parker
Phillip Parker is a former merchant services agent turned small business advocate and the author of "Fee Sweep," which teaches merchants how to dramatically lower their processing rates, eliminate junk fees, and avoid fine-print scams. He founded CardPaymentOptions.com to help merchants enact positive change in the credit card processing industry. Schedule a Consultation with Phillip
Schedule a Consultation with Phillip
I charged an existing customer a transation for
$3,935.00 , it took several days for me to find out why
my money has not been deposited in to my account .
After sending a email to square they email me back saying that I had to verify my account . I tried to speak
to someone it is very dificult I have questions about the
verify account issues ” it has been over a week and I
still don’t have my money ! I am considering going to another company .
Horrible experience
They randomly refunded 3 of 7 transactions in a day and froze the account at 2000 in sales.
WORST company I’ve ever dealt with trying to get to customer service. I was on hold for 3 1/2 hours finally hit option 1 to receive a call back. Another hour went by with no call. I and my partner used 3 lines to call again. finally got a call at 9;30 p.m. while i was finally home and in the shower and missed the call.This is a recurring experience hence the need to post this review.
Square just deactivated my account because I accept to many credit cards. I have 0 chargeback’s on my account. Avoid this company don’t waste your time. It’s worst then PayPal.
These people are absolutely criminals. They withhold your money whenever they feel like it trying to contact anyone to resolve anything is not going to happen.I would never recommend anyone using them and I don’t even know how they’re still in business.
I’m having a bad experience as well. Who would you recommend to use? They are going to withdraw for a dispute and the customer is holding my merchandise
I pre ordered the chip reader that bluetooths to your devices. I go to use it for the first time after finally receiving it moths ago just to find out that it doesn’t connect to my phone. How can a bluetooth device that runs their register app not be compatible with their hardware? It is BLUETOOTH for God’s sake!! I call them up pissed of making me look like a fool to my client when it doesn’t work. Just for the new age hippy way of patronizing a person that has every right to be upset. It isn’t like I am throwing a tantrum because I didn’t get a gummy bear snack in my lunch box. This is a BUSINESS and loss of money we are talking about folks. Do not patronize me or others when you have a crappy business that causes us to lose money and clients.
The lady said sorry over and over and over…..number ONE mistake in my eyes!
She offered me a puny 100 dollars of free transactions for my trouble…..number TWO mistake.
She said she would see if their plug in device would be compatible with my phone……I gave her the make and model and sure enough was untested…….number THREE mistake
I told her that I would no longer do business through Square, because when a company pisses me off this bad and makes me lose business then they lose my business in return. She got me my info for the return of the product so I can get refunded the 49 dollars I spent….MINUS the shipping and hassles…….number FOUR mistake.
I also got an email about getting 100 dollars of free transactions or 180 days which ever comes first. As often as I need to use it I would end up getting nothing in return……number FIVE mistake.
I have been very insulted. They have tried to pull the fast corporate smooth over a pissed off customer by offering a very tiny offer like I am some child that is a sucker. This to me proves that corporations charge for the value they think they are, but downgrade the consumer with measly offers to say sorry for wasting the consumers valuable time, money, emotions, and well being.
YES Square I do not fall for that slide of hand trick. I cut ties and say good riddance to the corporation that swindles me out of my value! If I did it to wal-mart 25 years ago. I will do it to you. Never again will I do business with you or any subsidiary company you may own.
Square has horrible customer service. I entered my information wrong one too many times, when i tried to go back and fix it the website would not let me. I emailed them for help and this is the response i got.
”Hi,
I apologize for the delayed response — thanks for your patience.
Unfortunately we can’t approve your application to accept credit cards with Square. We wish we could provide you with another chance to apply, but we’re unable to do so since Square can only provide a set number of application attempts.
While we’d love for you to process payments with Square, this isn’t possible.
We wish you the best of luck with your business.”
We are a non-profit mental health services organization that did minimal business with Square (<$1000) per month. However, for some of our clients, this is their preferred payment method. I received a "account deactivated notice" and upon querying the poor client service folks, they said "we cannot disclose the details".
While they can "legally" terminate without cause, apparently they don't care about the black eye.
I have had a tough week. Bought a dud car maybe lose about 4 k when I re-tade it back on one that’s worth it.
A month ago I went to the bank for a Eftpos machine. It used to cost $40 a month now they wanted $80 a month. ++ if you go over 6 k trans a month. Rip off, Square sounded great compared to that. Just sorry never read the reviews. (slow learner) they also never say in the beginning how much info they need for you to verify yourself either after you sign up.
Then yesterday I get a email that I need to verify my account and a customer who paid $2,600 into my my account via square. They are holding her funds back for the second time. 3 weeks ago this same customer paid me $4,500 had the same problem then except they tried to tell me it was a fraudulent transaction from Canada (were in Melb Australia) Aust bank and card.??? and this is a long term customer I have known for several years. At the same time another customer paid me about $1,700 hers was rolled into the same fraud. After many talks and getting info to them about these customers names add etc me supplying invoices (why) they after a week paid me many days later than they promised. So now same customer with the Canada fraudulent card. paid again and they want the same info back again. for someone they cleared 3 weeks ago. Tried today to clear up but it had to go to credit department With no return call coming from there. After reading these reviews for the first time. (Bloody idiot that I am) Once I can tolerate a mistake like that, but twice and to the same person again. Never she was humiliated having to identify herself and her credit details once to them, do I have to do this again. My customers are valuable assets to me. And Square is F—–ing them around and me as well. The penny has dropped reading these reviews. These sharks lend money to their clients for a healthy profit. Guess who,s funding the capital. Its all the customers that have have a $1,000 or two or more tied up in a 90 to a 365 day or more in transaction disputes. Or they are making money like the banks with electronic transfers, holding the money for 3 days on the short term money market laundering. But Banks cant hold disputed funds they have to pay the recipient then sort out the problem. But not Square. watch out they are un contactable. don’t return phone calls or Emails, when they have your money. Unable to sort a problems but create them. Melb credit card in Canada give me a break. Where does that bull—t come from. Watch out. I’m getting out I think they may only be good for a coffee shop or anything under a hundred. But after reading these reviews they will get your money one day and keep it for a year or so. The ACCC will be hearing from me about Square. Back to the Bank for me they cost,but are predictable and reliable. and assume responsibility for what they do. I will hazard a guess this this is a low capital tech company. clawing there way up to being a wanna be bank with their customers illegally held funds. “WATCH OUT” !!!
Square is a scam big time. Is been second time they took $400 from my customer and few hours later message appear: “Your account is deactivated, funds will be held for 90 days”. So I had to refund mu customer in full and keep communicating with apologies about this shit. So SQUARE IS HUGE SCAM. THESE PEOPLE MUST BE OUT OF BUSINESS ASAP. I m calling all people to do something against this scammer. SQUARE IS A THIEVE AND BULLSHIT!!!
This app allowed someone who wasn’t me to falsify identity and in turn steal hundreds of dollars from my account. This should be more secure.
Wow! Square (which I have used for YEARS in my business) just sent me a very disturbing notification. I read reviews on the product just now and they are not good. I have thousands of dollars they need to transfer to my account that they are holding. Any suggestions (oh, BTW they only have automated responses and even FB is automated). No Customer Service. Here’s their notice: Hello Christy,
Thanks for following up. We understand that this can be a frustrating experience.
Unfortunately, our decision to deactivate your account is final. Due to the obligations of our agreements with card networks and other financial institutions, we cannot reverse this decision and are unable to provide additional details.
For further information about our policies, you can review the Square Terms of Service on our website
This would be my 3rd year doing business with square I run a online virgin hair boutique My busy season is Sept-April every year. Everything seemed fine at first I processed more than 54,000 with square during 2014-2015 I took a small break from processing April-Aug 2016 I called into square and asked was my account still okay to process on. I was assured 100% your account is fine no need to worry the representative went over every inch of my account with me and said your account is perfectly ok. I asked would I have to go back through reverification of my business the representative said no. I said alright so I sent out my email blast & social media blast letting my clients know I was back taking orders. I ran my signature special of $50.00 bundles Sept 7- Sept 11 and bam………… September 11th I get a verification notice in my email I was upset because I had been doing business with them for years now. I had only taken in 1,000 from my customers at this time. I called customer service on Monday September 12,2016 and got the usual run around crap not to mention I was on hold for 2 and a half hours. I finally did the call back. They lady that called me back was very rude I asked when could I resume normal business she said they should email you today or tomorrow when your money should be deposited after reading all the reviews here I am less than hopeful about my account. I have a feeling im going to have to refund my clients money and look for another processing service since square has become so bad they are losing good business owners
I’m about to have a bad experience and horrified by these reviews. Any suggestions on who to use?
We rent cabins in a beautiful mountain area of Oregon and have been in business over 11 years. Two transactions were deposited to our account, great, right? Then I made several more deposits and immediately I am asked to send info on our business which I did. Two days later I get the famous email, “account deactivated, money held for 90 days, risky transactions.” Since you have been deactivated you will find there is no way to talk to Square, the phone number given is only for “active accounts” After ready the reviews I fear we will never see the money they are holding for 90 days. This puts small business owners in a difficult financial position.This is a scam and the owners should be in jail. Send a report to the Better Business Bureau, get that A+ rating down where it should be.
So I spent money and about 3 hours trying to connect my bank account to Square before one of our fundraisers. After all this..and telling me about a secret routing number from the bank they needed (and the bank didn’t know anything about a secondary routing number)–they decided we couldn’t connect the bank account. Their advice was to go to another bank! What a bunch of crap. They should warn people that they can’t connect to all institutions straight up. But it looks like straight-up is not in their list of virtues judging by some of these reviews.
I’ve used Square for a few years now and it seems their quality of service has hit the skids. I’ve just experienced what has been described in the forum here, ‘security holds’ on almost $12k of funds for no apparent reason. When I called I got the run around from four different people as to what was happening and when the funds would be released. One gent even went so far as to say I didn’t have to use Square if I didn’t like their policies – not a problem there Chief!
Having owned several small businesses of my own and working for one now, I can safely say that I would not get away with providing this level of poor service to my customers – I wouldn’t have any customers left. At this rate they’re not going to either unless they make some dramatic changes.
If this is the same square I use. It has held my funds for 2 months without depositing them to my account
I have been using Paypal and Square together on my Weebly site. They have my funds on hold now after using their services for three years. They promise two-day turnaround that was eight days ago and promises I will get an email Reading the other reviews looks like this is not a good company to deal with. I will be going with Paypal 100%.
Does not feel like an honest co.
I have had it with this company. Their customer service is pitiful. I go online to get a “ticket” which is required when you call, and it doesn’t load. it’s just a blank page. I have had multiple instances where whoever I send money to does not receive it, and when i get a return, it takes multiple days to go back into my account. I am fed up with square and I am done using it. After I get my refund, i will be deleting the app and so will the rest of my family.
I would NOT recommend Square to ANY business. We received an offer to add Square as a payment option for our clients, we had been using and continue to use the payment Gateway from Freshbooks. After putting a few transaction through Square with one client Square put a hold on our funds to “verify” the transactions. After answering many question and uploading and email several files Square closed our account, KEPT OUR MONEY and said it would not be available for 90 days. We are a company that does business and provides service with Fortune 500 company’s for which we provided AMPLE documentation. We are an approved member of the Ariba Vendor management portal which is used by our Fortune 500 clients. I WOULD suggest if you are a small business DO NOT USE Square.
Good product but the customer service and tech support definitely need improvement.They have all these young inexperienced support staff that are definitely not qualified to resolve complex tech issues.
These youngsters are rude and lack customer service skills. We all have bad days but from my experience, rude service is fairly consistent at Square Services.
I have had a few technical issues with my Square account. Speaking with their tech support yielded the same result. My issues is not resolved.
Their response… “We have done all that we can. Sorry.”.
They do not follow up.Repeated phone calls and emails were just completely ignored.
I have been using the cash app for two years free of charge, them all of a sudden in July of 2016 it began charging me 2.75% for every transaction sent or received. Because there is no direct customer service number I emailed customer support about the issue, however it took days before heading back. And when I finally did hear back it was generic response. Because the issue has not been resolved, I had to send ANOTHER complaint email and wait for who knows how long for a response.
They deactivativated my account without notifying me until i contacted them after a week or so wondering where my $1300.00 deposit went to. They said i would have to wait 90 days due to deactivation for patterns. They would not answer customer service and it took 6 times before i got a call back from them. They finally reviewed my account and decided to deactivate it.
SquareScam is the WORST Website for transaction in the HISTORY of the internet. I Sold some stuff back in April of 2016 and i have yet STILL to receive my money and its September 1st 2016. I Sold a digital asset back in April and because i did ten transactions of 1000 dollars in less than a day they said i was fraudulent and they where gonna hold my funds for 90 days! i said ok thats fine august 1st rolled around and i still didn’t have my money i have been contacting them all month to help and im getting 0 responses and they still have 700.00 of my dollars HOSTAGE! Im writing a review here and on every website that allows me to, im also reporting them to the BBB. AVOID SQAUREUP AKA SQUARESCAM AT ALL COSTS!!!!
I started to use square a week ago. I am HVAC contractor. The first transaction was 1700 and the day after I received a email asking for copy of the contract and my license which I sent them on Friday found out this a week later that they were deactivated my account and gave me one hour to refound the customer. Their email stated that my company is high risk. My company is 25 years in business. I recommend not to even consider a square account as they are a complete ripoff.
I used to think Square was the best. After processing over $500,000.00 over a three year period with no charge backs, I had grown accustomed to them. They offered me Capital Advances form time to time and I was really excited about the next day deposits. All this changed last Monday (8-15-2016). For no reason I got an email from Square stating they needed to verify my business. Moreover, they would suspend all deposits until this business was verified. Thats funny I thought, we have done business ofr three years and have spoken many times on the phone. Be it as it may, I sent in what they asked, fully expecting a thank you and your all set. No response. Two day later, they re-requested the information, I tried to call them, no response. No way to contact them by phone, no response to my emails. Immediately changed processors because I can not and will not do business with a company that can not take a call. Beware of them! This is not the first time this happened to good merchants like myself. They ended up deactivating my account, which was fine by me because I already moved on. Square = F- to me. Really disappointed.
Who are you now using for your credit card company?
I have ran 3500 with Sqaure not one dime reached my account does anyone know how I can get my money
I had dinner at a restaurant that uses Square Up and will no longer do business with them because Square Up shared my email address with them. I did not provide an email address when I bought my dinner and paid with my card. The next day I had an email from the restaurant asking me how I liked it – I didn’t because I did not share my address with them – Square Up did. I have been spreading this to my friends and warning them about using a credit card to pay for dinner at any establishment that uses Square Up to process payments – I did not give them permission to contact me this way and feel it is a breach of the anti-spam laws.
Square did not share your email with the restaurant. Square sent you the receipt on behalf of the Restaurant.
So what program do you guys suggest? What is the next apps for small businesses that accepts all forms of payment with no hassle? If your paying with a credit card, any program, any swipe, any computer transaction, HAS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH YOUR PERMISSION GRANTED AT PAYMENT and does not need permission to send a emailed receipt or survey. Your lucky that is all the information, which is sent to only you from square or ANY FORM OF ELECTRONIC PAYMENT.
Square is only good if you want them to hold your money for 6 months. They will hold deposits then say they want to do an initial review of your account after you email several times about not receiving your deposits. They will then close your account without notice and say it’s in their policy to be able to do so. They then give you the option of refunding your client and taking payment again, even if services were already rendered and it was after 60 days. They will then hold your money for another 90 days. They are a fraudulent company and I highly recommend everyone stay away from them.
SQUARE WILL NOT STAND BEHIND THEIR SYSTEM ERRORS.
Do your research before you sign up with square FOR THE FOLLOWING REASONS
1. You cannot find a customer service phone number in a timely manor
2. I was processing a transaction that had doubled because of square when SQUARE ISSUED a refund to the previous customer.
3. Square would not stand behind this system error.
4. After 5 hours on the phone with them they refused to reverse their error and I am out $80.15
BE AWARE
Stay away from this company. Read how square destroys small business accounts with no recourse. They did this to a company of disabled military veterans. We needed online invoicing for our small shop. Square let us set up, took money from a client on one transaction using American Express card then square demanded we provide supporting documentation for our business existence. We provided Federal EIN, copies of the invoice for the transaction and informed square we were small… And only had a web contact page as we were still building site. Square demanded the same documents TWICE from us. When we complained about that and refused to be extorted into taking out a company advertisement we do not need or want, the Square rep seized our money, closed our account and denied us the ability to even talk with anyone. We were toled the reason was “a pattern of risky transactions” how is ONE TRANSACTION … A PATTERN??? I used my personal account to get a phone code and was threatened by Square rep and led to believe that if I made another issue out of business account being closed, my personal one could be affected as well. SHAME, SHAME SHAME! If you have any connection to the military, close your accounts and take your business elsewhere. These people are the worst kind of crooks. Do a google search of this wretched company to learn for yourself the small businesses that have been destroyed without recourse or review by these people. Ask yourself if your business could survive having all your money stollen right now, your entire POS taken and you left with nothing and no appeal. That is Square folks… The cold hard truth. Check out their BBB NEGATIVE reviews and ripoff report. Eye opening. Glad we did not go all in with them.
very bad protection for merchants lost $1600 in dispute where square didnt even. better to have merchant account with some reliable company.
Hello people and businesses. Square is becoming a thieve big time. Square is holding merchants funds without any detailed explanation, they stating that account is under review for a weeks. This is most likely a big scam I ve ever seen. I had couple invoices paid by my customers and square placed on hold those funds for unknown time period, they lie over the phone that your funds will be released by end of the day. It never happened. I m very confident that square is steeling money and. This is big scale scam. BE AWARE!!!
I m going to file a law suite against SQUARE SCAM!!!
Square, Inc. makes no effort to resolve issues when its service fails. I have contacted square via email, Facebook, and Twitter, seeking to find out where my refund was and Square, Inc went so far as to block me from communicating with it through social media. Square lost my refund and I am asking it to help me trace where it put my money, but instead of assisting me, its blocking. Square block me from contacting it on Twitter and Facebook. Square has effectively stolen my money. Square, Inc. makes it almost impossible to speak with a live person and takes days before responding to your email and when Square finally responds to your email, it provides no answers.
I processed three invoices through quare for one customer with three properties, Each had to be invoiced separately and processed separately for each business my customer owns. Square allowed the processing, one being over $13k, and the other two were around $500. FIVE DAYS LATER, Square said they “permanently deactivated” my account and that I needed to refund my customer or they would hold the money for 90 days before depositing into my account. With N EXPLANATION, mind you. They just did it! Luckily this is for my mother-in-laws businesses, otherwise, I may have lost a customer over this nonsense, when I tell them “Square is great and we would have no problems processing her invoices through Sqaure. Well, this has soured me off of Square “permanently” and I would suggest no business with transaction over $50 use this service. They should have kicked back the charge at processing if there was going to be a problem.
This is SQUARE’s fault, not mine. the transaction was completely legitimate and LEGAL!
Do not use this company they are a joke they hold your money for 90 days even if you win a dispute you are putting your buisness in jeopardy if you do choose to you will regret it the are incompatance unprofessional read your paperwork because there is a lot of hidden scams in the contract if you ever listen to any review listen to this one
I NO I can’t get In TO my account with them and It hard to get some ONE WITH out a code and they got $150.00 of my money that didn’t go into my account yet what should I do
Square up has held our funds for over a year with no contact and we have little or no hope of ever seeing the funds
martin hook
i bought a square devise and attached to my phone and i was having problems entering my routing number, so i tried to call them and speak to a human being, it was impossible, There system is not designed to speak with a customer service, I wanted to know where my financial info went to, since it was not processed, who got my info, and what do they do with info thats not processed, since you are asking for personal info, dont like it at all.
I used to love Square because of its ease of use. When we heard they had a cash advance program for merchants, we decided to use it (despite the high fee) and we were delighted with how easy and stress-free it was to pay back.
When we were within a couple weeks of paying off the balance, we got an email inviting us to get another (higher) advance. We were thrilled, and planned to use the money to increase our stock in preparation for an upcoming busy season.
However, when we applied for the advance we were suddenly “ineligible.” I’ve now spent more than a week begging Square to have someone contact me to resolve this problem or at least explain what we did wrong to suddenly lose this opportunity. Their customer service people are very nice and apologetic, but apparently the people in the Capital Department are absolutely impossible to contact or talk to. Each agent I’ve talked to has promised to forward my request and explain the urgency, but the fact remains that over the course of eight days I’ve sent four emails and called four times and have been completely ignored. (They promise a 24-hour turnaround.) I am starting to research other merchant processing options today. There are lots of other options out there now besides Square. I highly prize loyalty but if they’re not interested in helping me, I’ll have to go find a company that’s more responsive. Not impressed!
squareheld our funds in january 2015 and have not released the funds it is now august so thats one and half years wih almost no communication legally you can only hold funds for 1 year from the transaction date
wallace consulting
I just read some of the reviews and my hopes of getting the close to $3000 that Square has been holding for a week are gone. We area small cafe and catering business. Not only are we out the money they won’t deposit into our account… we are also out the food costs we paid for and the staff costs. This is really crippling to a small young business.
My story is the same. After doing business for a year with Square, suddenly our “instant deposit” was taking a week. Then we started supplying meals for a local rehab. We had a credit card charge for $1840.00 and it never made it into our bank account. Then we were asked to verify our business by supplying 3 months of bank statements, our EIN #, and our food handling license. Really?? wtf? But we supplied everything they ask for.
Next day they wanted more verification. Had to supply our invoice to the rehab facility, and answer more questions. Still holding our funds. So upsetting and stressful. Can’t even make payroll.
PLEASE BE WARNED… DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH SQUARE!!!
It’s been 1 week that they have been holding all our funds, including the day to day cafe business earnings.
HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE. If you are a small business dont ever use square. It is so cool with white beautiful design hardware and fancy website but when you need customer service you are in trouble. Also they can just put a hold on your funds for their review like you are a hacker or thief stealing other people money. They are holding funds in my account today and I need to make a payment to other company tomorrow and guess what I dont have the funds available. I will loose my client because of square. I learned my lesson now. I was warned about square services how horrible they were and I didnt listen If you dont wanna be a victim dont ever use Square. They are super expensive and they treat their customers like they are thieves.
Square has had our funds held since march 2015 it is now july 2016 1 year and 4 months later and we have had virtually no response from square of when these funds will be released it could be another 10 years as far as we know
care cleaning
This company is a fraud, they will do nothing for you except steal your money. Finding out what thieves square is has cost me $520. I’m filing a complaint with the NM Attorney General. I will also file complaints with any other government regulatory agency. Do yourself a favor and don’t do business with crooked square!
Cannot contact and speak with a customer service representative. Apparently Square Inc. doesn’t believe in providing customer service like most other financial institutions.
Cannot do business with Square Inc..
Square is horrible. Not only would they not process a bill from my customer, it tool a week to resolve and the resolution was not to process. It took a week for the refund to transfer back to my customer. I refilled for the amount limit they suggested and they refused that due to frequency of billing. Under 90 days. Wtf…
I will certainly be looking for a different merchant. Square looses another customer
Very poor .Battery lasts for 2 to 3 transactions and goes dead.Disapointing .
Square is holding our funds for more than 120 days with no explanation no communication
We will never recommend Square to anyone This company is called this company is the biggest bully in the credit card market
You wear for your money will be gone for months you won’t even get it back
I have been with square a little over a year. Ran a large charge of 2000 paid by invoice and square froze my account. They have not deposited my funds nor will they allow me to refund my client so he can pay me by check. It’s been a week.thier rules promise next day deposit. Phone support is basically non existent for all practical purposes. It’s hours till they call back and they have no knowledge of your case. They appear to be reading from a script and have no direct knowledge of your case.They refuse to allow you to speak with a manager. They claim manager support via email but despite numerous emails sent I’ve yet to receive one reply so I assume it is a stalling tactic. As far as I can tell there is no other numbers to call. I have tried thier corporate office. It has an answering machine and if you don’t have an extension you can’t speak to anyone. Same with thier legal offices. I tried many extensions hoping to accidentally get someone. No luck. Messaged them on Facebook (where your not allowed to post directly to thier site) and was assured “someone would get back with me shortly”. When I pushed for a manager or someone who was actually working on my case I was told they couldn’t speak over Facebook about my account but someone would be with me shortly. ……..
They have overy 1800 simmilAR complaints on the better business Bureau who gives them a c rating.
When does this behavior go into the criminal relm? Any help you can give me toward resolving this issue is greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
Ray J hutcheson
Hutcheson Diesel
This square credit card processor is the worst professor ever… Please DO NOT use this products … Too many glitch…. The worst customer service and they hold your money for a longest time before depositing and sometimes nothing …. Do not use this products …. They are full of shit!!!!
Support code emailed Comes back as invalid when entering it no way to contact support. No response back from email to community or square
I have a small business and switched to Square this year from Chase Paymentech. I wish I had done this years ago as I have saved so much money. However, I notice that they take money from my customers and hold on to it for a lot longer than Chase did.
I had to process a refund for the first time last week. The amount was less than $100. The money was taken directly from my bank account and then not returned to the customer for over one week!
I wonder how they are using our money in the iinterim.
Square has been holding our money for 90 days. And they deactivated our account making it impossible to get in touch with a live person to find out what is going on with my money.
Square did the same thing to me, activated my account and told me to began using their service then sent me an email requesting additional information which I sent immediately then a couple days later, they email me stating that my account had been canceled and my funds would be held for 90 days and that there was nothing that I could do or say that would change their decision. Now as a certified veteran owned company contracting with the government this was such a shock and disappointment. I have not been able to contact them after this, my customer code does not work anymore. Wow, this caused major financial stress for me as a new small business owner.
I have been a square customer for almost a year without a problem.. Until now! I had a customer bounce a check for $5500 and so he called me and I keyed in his debit card for $2950 ( max per day $3000) and a credit card he gave me. Square debited his account and then froze my days deposits from my retail store as well saying they needed further verification. After a lengthy online form and No customer service… I still have yet to see my funds and this is a new week…. Also the next day’s deposits have yet to show up on my account as well! They allow me to continue to accept payments but are keeping the funds!!!! Do not go with this company! I am finding a new processor today.
Any company that does not have a person you can talk to should not be used by anyone. This company is crooked the took my money because of a dispute then deactivated my account with out a phone call just an email. DO Not use them and tell all your friends that are to stop before there out $8000 like I am
There is virtually no customer service from this company. Twice I have been promised that a return call would be made to me and that call never came. After several tries I quit.
Mu advice; find a company that actually wants to communicate with you!
Contacting customer service, getting straight answers to simple questions about services and costs (not fees) is next to impossible. You cannot speak to a human. It is no wonder that this company is losing customers left and right. People who are considering using Square should be warned about how poor their customer service is. Grade should be F
After reading all the reviews I am so happy that I didnt take a friends reccommendation and go with this company. I decided that PayPay was the company for me. 3% thats all. No different rates for this or that. No withholding deposits for 30 days. In the beginning cash deposits to my bank took 3 days but Ive been with them for a while now and usually only takes a day sometimes 2.
I used to think Square was wonderful never had an issue up until recently when a credit card company flag a charge and the customer call them up and fixed it immediately I’ve never had any complaints no problem but now they’re holding my money for account verification they want bank statements which nowhere in their contract does it say they need bank statements for verification it’s basically extortion and not only while the deposits are deferred they were still accepting money why wouldn’t they decline the charge
I bought square a week ago. started my own business. heard nothing but great reviews about them. opened my business account. linked my square to it. everything was good to go. did my first sale with my square. then was instantly notified that my account was on hold. they needed to verify me. and the funds were on hold. had to send all this information into them. I just started my company. I didn’t have a lot of the required stuff they wanted. I had to call 4 times. and each time I was on hold for at least 45 minutes before someone picked my call. then to only find out I had to send more information. I gave them everything I had, it still wasn’t good enough for them. then they wanted copies of license. that still wasn’t good enough. they then wanted more time to verify me. shortly later on that day after the fourth call to them. I was again on hold for over an hour before they took my call. only to find that they decided it was in their best interest to shut my account down. they never asked what my volume would be. or how much I would be running cards for. I’m sorry I have a very expensive business and my customers pay high dollar for what I offer. shortly after they decided that I was a high risk for fraud and risky activity, they shut my customer id down. and I couldn’t contact them. I couldn’t call and talk to a customer rep. I know I would have had to wait like an hour to talk to asshole but still. there was no chance to explain my business or anything. too bad I cant show up to their location and set this stupid square on fire! other vendors I deal with that recommended their product to me. they are highly disappointed in their piss poor support. I guess I should really thank square. thank you for making me choose a better credit card company. one who understands that I have high dollar swipes and deposits.
WORST COMPANY EVER! They took $31K from my customers, then suddenly, mysteriously, are holding it while they “verify” my business, after doing business with me for one month, and having two people come out and visit me (at my request). NEVER DO BUSINESS WITH SQUARE – I can’t WAIT to talk to Jack Dorsey!! I’ve been in the financial services business for 35+ years – i have NEVER seen such a terrible experience for the client – I will make sure EVERYONE knows what I think – i can’t even get anyone from Square to talk to me.
This is what i had to send to customer support, still no response and no answers. Now i have to look like an asshole to my client and ask then to cancel there credit card purchase to me through squareup….great job Jack Dorsey….ScrewedUp better name….
To:Square
From:[REDACTED – personal contact information]
Subject:General – Get Started
Absolutely ridiculous. I set up an acct and verified my checking acct. Accepted payment from a client and all went well. Then a month later had another catering gig and tried to process payment and after my client made a payment, Square decided at that point to clarify information and jump through hoops before i could accept payment to my already setup bank account. my food safety docs, three months of bank account statements, my EIN, my documents from the stated for gaining my EIN…all of these documents showed my name and systematically proved who i am and what i am doing, TRYING TO RUN A CATERING COMPANY!!!!!!!!!!! Well, you guys are making it real easy for a small business to collect money from clients. Im not sure why this account verification came up after i accepted my first clients money….only after that did these questions come up. Now it says that my account is permanently disabled. Not even a phone call or an email to ask a question or verify if something was wrong. Do you actually have people doing this or is it an algo doing your work for you. I am beyond disappointed with how this went down without even a supv or manager calling me to help in the process so that this wouldn’t happen. Furthermore, at this point im told that I cant get the funds for 90 Days, you must be kidding me. IM A SMALL BUSINESS TRYING TO SURVIVE AND YOU FOLKS ARE CUTTING MY LEGS OUT FROM UNDERNEATH ME!!!!!!!! Please respond with a person that can explain this to me and why when i put my trust and business in your hands you treat me like a number and feel like you can bully a small business around. Please, give me the benefit of the doubt and let me know exactly why this came to be. Its the VERY LEAST that you could do.
Complaints and Service section should have an F rating, not a C.
Their customer support is non-existent. If a hospital only provided medical care for people who are perfectly healthy, it would be just about as helpful as Square’s customer support.
Our account was deactivated with no warning, and no explanation. Frustrating, but technically their Terms and Agreements say that they have the right to do that. HOWEVER they took money from our customer, and canceled our account before paying it to us! Sorry Square Inc,, I don’t see anything in your Terms and Agreements that says you can steal money.
OUR STORY: After taking a legitimate payment from our customer, we were asked to provide highly confidential information to “legitimize” our business.
I replied with a request for support contact information, in order that they would explain their request. I got a canned email in response saying “your account has been deactivated for suspicious activity.”
I sent another email asking for explanation and support. Their one sentence answer was “Support is only available for active accounts. Sorry for the inconvenience”.
To put the cherry on top, they DID remove $3,700 from our customer’s bank account, and have not deposited the money into our account.
But WE are the ones being told our activity is “suspicious”?
This is not a legitimate company. These are professional scammers.
Hey there they did the same thing to me they have held 3000 for 6 months now did you ever get your money?
CHOOSE AN ALTERNATIVE!! i would stay away from square if you own a small business and need to accept credit cards from your clients. The customer service although very nice, very unhelpful. They kept the money owed to my company for over a week asking me to jump through hoops only to deny the requested transaction. I would look for alternative sites, let any other entrepreneurs know if an alternative is available they should go that route or it will end up costing more in the long run.
Over charging. They constantly exceed the 2.75 percent. I do not do instant deposit now as the charge an additional 1 percent. New rule without notice. I have requested an audit if my account to no avail. If you want customer service or set fees I recommend using another company. If the BBB gives this company an A + after over 1600 complaints all that means us they paid their dues with the BBB. Business owners beware you have no recourse without a lawyet
Absolutely stay away from this horrible company. They have no customer service if you are not a merchant,so if there is ever a problem with a transaction you have no recourse other than emailing them and waiting several days to possibly get a responce and then the responce is inadequate to solve the problem. They are holding money for days and days when there is no reason to do so. I just got burnt by buying something for a friend who was going to pay me back right away. they did but squarecash decided to hold the transaction. I dont have a lot of money I cant afford to have my money floating in space and unable to do anyth8ng about it. its only $160.00 but still if they are doing this to thousands of people daily they are making some big bucks by making there networth seem larger than it is. for all I know they might never give me my money and I have no way to contact them and no recourse whatsoever. very stressful for no reason. they need a customer service number available to anyone who uses there service. I have used them for a while now and have had too many problems like this. I will never use them again.
Whatever you do, do NOT use Square! I’m not sure what their issue is. I used them for years and they have profited from thousands in fees off o my business as we ran close to $200,000 total thru then. All of a sudden, they closed my account for violating “Section 47” of the user agreement? There is only 26 sections!!! I took a card from a family member who bought a service from our business. Legit? We are radio stations. They had the same last name as me so they said that I was advancing myself money? WHAT??? DON’T USE SQAURE!!!!!!
I agree, this is an awful company, They literally stole money from me and I have no way to contact them, my only recourse is to report them to the BBB unfortunately that will not get my money deposited to me. They are thieves.By being impossible to contact they have created a situation where they can have a “glitch” and take a persons money and that person is unable to do anything about it. I will never use this company again, I am so unbelievably angry .
This mobile swipe company SQUARE is HORRIFIC. DO NOT USE THEM with YOUR FINANCES.
1- they have NO real customer service. This point is widely advertised. And it’s shocking the way they will treat you when it’s not to give them your money.
2- they are being investigated by the federal government for appropriating people’s fund and holding them. THIS was done in preparation for their public stock release in order to make themselves look like a bigger company then they were. This practice apparently was highly illegal.
3- like Nordstroms their ” charge back ” return policy is a joke. They will take money out of your bank account FIRST before even speaking to you as a merchant / provider. Then they make you chase your money just to try and get it back. To add to this issue SQUARE is not real financial corporation. They only use your money as a go between and take their VERY high fees then send you the rest. This matters because of this.
When someone purchases something from you any other company that takes mobile swipes has a computerized system that applies an ISBB electronic code to your company name and you have to be approved to seek with any other company. When an item is purchased you companies name appears on the sale !! NOT WITH SQUARE.
THEY SEND PEOPLE RANDOM ITEM / or GOODS RECIEPTS. IN OUR COMPANIES CASE THEY WOULD REPORT PLACE IF SALES AS ” grocery store “.
You can only imagine how many fraud issues we had to deal with not to mention charge backs. ALL BECAUSE SQUARE LIED AND MESSED UP and offer no real support.
AGAIN STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY WITH YOUR MONEY AND BUSINESS if you value growth and your time and reputation.
Their attitude is putrid and they feel they can not be touched so they do not care they are rude and offer no support.
We understand all companies are busy. And seek to save money. But SQUARE is truly and capitalistic greedy company that pretends to offer ” support ” but in reality offer 2.75 to 3.4 interest charges and give you the middle finger while they are at it
Very sad.
Thanks for reading and we hope this saves another company the pain of dealing with SQUARE.
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We started using Square in 2012 when we opened up our barbershop. Each year of service, Square has done great things with POS and many useful tools to help our business. Many of the new tools are “FREE”. Square is very simple to use and our customers love it. We also enjoy the fact that you are only charged 2.75% per transaction. No other lame fees like other processing companies.
Hi Jese,
Please reply to this comment with your business name and location in order to authenticate your testimonial. Thanks!
I have been using Square on and off again as I am used car dealer and use it for down payments and other forms of payments. Last week Saturday, a customer bought an Aston Martin that I had (rebuilt title) for 26k and paid on his AMEX card. I contacted Square and they said it should be fine, and I processed the transaction and it was approved. 3 Days went by still no funds. I call up square and they say I need to send my Bank account statements and proof that I am a dealership and proof of the sale. I explained to them to let me know if there is a problem as I need to reposes the car, they assured me the funds would be in my account at the end of the day. The next morning still no funds and I get an email at 1:53PM saying I can’t make transactions over 10k then at 1:55PM I get another email saying my account is deactivated and I need to issue a refund. They also deactivated my customer code so I can’t even call them to see what happened. The customer called AMEX and they said that they paid square and can’t issue him a refund. Square has my money and they told me to issue a refund which will come out of my account now. THEY STOLE FROM ME AND WON’T CONTACT ME BACK… I have sent many emails and no repsonses I would call but they have the WORST Call support ever and took away my customer code so it just hangs up on me. I guess I have to get my lawyers involved now…
I’ve had a dozen transactions with square that went smoothly but # 13 didn’t which is why I’m giving them the lowest grade available. The justification is that when you have credit card services at a bank the failure rate is 0%. Square the supposed miracle upstart came in at 8% which is very high. It’s for businesses that are so small that the owners can barely afford the rent on a cardboard box. Or some college grad who’s leveraging $500 to get his new business off the ground. It isn’t for people who run a professional business and need to know when they are going to be receiving the money and when they aren’t. The website says one thing but when the rubber meets the road you may be waiting an extra day or two on your money.
The worst customer service ever anywhere!
I have been a Square customer for 6 years.
Had no problems… over the last 4 months Square has allowed $6500.00 of charge backs for services preformed 3 months before. Send everything to challenge the dispute! No customer service whatsoever and then force me to re verify my account then close ot with no explanation holding $2500.00 of my customers money and refuse to release it.
DO NOT USE SQUARE!!!
CAN ANYONE HELP AND RECOMMEND A CARD READER COMPANY WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE I’LL SWICH TODAY!!##
SQUARE IS SCAM
I’ve been a customer with square for several years and I never had any chargebacks whatsoever. one weekend I did a blowout sale on my merchandise and sold all of my products at a super low discounted rate. square deactivated my account because I processed to many pre paid cards that weekend.
I did not know you could take pre-paid cards, what about those visa, MasterCard, etc gift cards that people purchase? Tried to take one and it wouldn’t go through so entered the card numbers and it still would not work.
I have lost a lot of money because of Square. Their contactless/chip card reader is a piece of junk that will not connect to the app when you need it. I have had customers standing there when the reader would not connect and I lost the sale. It’s junk. Never use Square under any circumstances.
Absolutly hands down the worst company I have ever done business with. Opened me up, did my first transaction no problem. Took a 15k order from one of my really good customers then got requests for all sorts of documentation. Customer service, or lack there of says they will take 2-3 days to get back to you. not an option in my business. Square cost me an order and a customer. Beware of Square, they are not what they say they are!
I have been using the Square to process credit cards for a year now and have not had one problem with SQUARE. My customers love it and I like the fact that I don’t have to rent an expensive terminal to process credit cards. It is awesome!!
Hi Dorothy,
Please reply to this comment with your business name and location in order to authenticate your testimonial. Thanks!
We are a growing company and were deactivated without any recourse today. We tried square last year and found that customer refunds are very slow, and switched back to PayPal. Additionally, it is virtually impossible to contact them by phone or email. Additionally, we have had 2 instances that we were supposed to get a refund on transactions where the money was held for over 120 days… still waiting for the funds to go back into out bank account. I recommend PayPal and Stripe or getting a retail merchant account with Heartland Payment Systems. Square sucks.
I accept Square since October 2015 until present in my clothing store. I’m giving them 5 stars. Never had problem, always next day Square transfer money to my bank with weekends exception.
No extra fees! Love it.
I am a consultant in the software industry. I started using Square’s POS transaction service last fall for my business, Xigent Media LLC. Between November 2015 and February 2016, I collected approximately 3000.00 in fees from various clients for jobs that I completed.
As per Square’s requirements I connected my business checking account at BoA to my Square acct. It was verified by Square in early November, before I did my first transaction with a client using Square.
Over the following 2.5 months I used Square a dozen times or so. It was not a good model for billing clients. Normally I invoice for hours and they cut a check or direct deposit; my customers were not accustom to paying vendors with credit cards.
Twice charges were approved by one person and then disputed later by someone else because they didn’t know what the transaction was for. Both times the client’s bank inquired, as well as Square, and both times the dispute was settled in my favor.
There were a number of times when cards were declined–probably because the project manager was trying to use a company card in his name (that they use for business expenses) and there was no room on the card. Or whatever. I was later paid by check.
But about 3k did get paid through Square. The money accrued in my Square account and the web site indicated it was it was available pending set up of the automatic deposit, which was nothing more than setting a time to be the end of the business day. Done. Square seemed a little slow but I had no reason to believe that I would have a problem.
Imagine my surprise this month, in June of 2016, when I get notified by BoA that they are closing one of my Small Business checking accounts because it’s had a negative balance for over 90 days! The negative balance was a result of unpaid monthly bank fees; unpaid because Square never made the deposits. 7 months had gone by since the first charge went through them, and they still were sitting on my money, and they never notified me or said anything.
When I realized what had happened, I reached out to them and was shocked by the way my inquiry was handled. Their phone number (that you list as a customer service line) is a dead end. A recorded voice tells you to enter your customer code, and if you don’t have one, it hangs up. It does tell you where to get a code, on the Square web site.
However, the page to which it refers does not contain a code. There is no code, there is not a link or a sub page or anything there to provide a code. Not anywhere on the site. If you don’t believe me, I invite you to call the number on your own web site that you promote for them. Follow the instructions and enter the URL for the page on the Square web site that is supposed to provide the code. You will see that what I am telling you is true.
Perhaps it’s an error on Square’s part that they direct their customers to a dead end loop that does not provide a way to actually contact them. From the customer’s point of view, I can tell you that this is a bad thing. Imagine if the bank stopped providing a way for account holders to contact them directly. They are a bank. They would lose all their accounts. The FDIC would inquire. It would be a completely unacceptable situation. They would either start answering the phone, or they would go out of business.
Why then is okay for Square to do it? They apparently are not considered to be a bank from a regulatory POV, so they don’t have to answer to the FDIC (who would be worried about insolvency if a bank stopped answering customers’ calls). And they don’t have to answer to me, the customer. Why? Because they have made it nearly impossible to get through.
I say nearly because I did eventually get a customer code sent to me by an email, a half a day or so later. And since they were holding my money, I was waiting for it (unlike most customer service complaints where hours or days later, I’ve no time to revisit).
I talked to 2 different customer service reps who acted surprised that the money was just sitting there, and they seemed to agree that 7 months was a long time and that fixing this should be a priority. The second one, Billy Joe, said that it would be referred to some ‘Resolution Department’ and that it would probably pay over night. The web site said that it would pay by June 15.
After a couple more days, I called back to follow up and found that my customer code was no longer working. When I logged onto the site, I found that my account was deactivated and there was a message that they were holding my funds for 45 days to allow time to dispute the charges!
Never mind that they already did this to me 6 months earlier. Never mind that any disputed charges were found in my favor and were paid. Never mind that they then held my money for three or four months longer than the dispute took. Never mind that seven months have gone by and I still have not been paid.
On top of all of that, I feel sure that I was lied to by the customer service rep, who then fed my ‘request’ into the Dispute Resolution queue, and the ‘department’ to which he referred (which may exist in name only) then rubber-stamped its response, which is to freeze the funds for an additional 45 days while it allows time for the payees to dispute.
Then they revoked my customer code so I couldn’t even call them back.
This is intolerable. They have already demonstrated a failure to pay at all, after indicating that all was well and the auto deposit was set up etc. 7 months goes by and apparently they felt that if I wasn’t going to complain, they were going to keep my money.
How many people do they do this to and get away with it? For me, three thousand dollars is a lot of money. I want my money and I am not going to let up or go away. But at what amount do you write off a disputed transaction that Square has frozen, and not bother to jump through the hurdles they create, in order to get paid?
I wouldn’t go through this for 50 bucks.
We all know that 50 here and 50 there….before you know it, Square has found a new profit center! And a motive to treat their customers rather shabbily. But, since they don’t answer calls or talk to customers unless they feel like it, it’s not that big a problem for them.
Open account about 1yr ago, it was great most of my swipe was only $20, i do state inspections on autos. About 2 weeks back i do a sale & it said my account was deactivated. I only had 1 $20 sale so i tried to get a code to call well that didnt work. So after about 2 weeks i open a new account, tried a $1.00 test and avery thing going good did one inspection used square seems to work ok. The next day i was going to get a code and call to check on my 1st account BUT i did another inspection thats when i find this new account was deactivated. So they got about $62 in both accounts that they are holding. HOW can they hold money with out telling you & what can you do? I run a STATE INSPCETION
BUSINESS if i didnt do things right the state would fine me close me down & some have been put in jail for doing things. So i guess SQUARE can take money keep it, You think the attorney general in the state they in would look into Square & find out whats going on.
I was using the Square and I was happy but I get charge back dispute and Square didn’t help me and takes so much time over 2 month I gave the Fedex tracking number and CUSTUMER email Messages and phone number invoice shipping billing address I give all the information I lost my items and money ! Disputes services A To Z 1 star !!!
This company is terrible you cant get through to anyone.
There numbers don’t give you an option
They are terrible
I own a bail bonds agency and was looking for a better option to process credit transactions. Huge mistake. The sign up process is too easy and doesn’t do enough to qualify the merchant. Hey, if you don’t want to deal with bail bonds businesses, then tell me up front. No problem. But don’t lead me down a too-friendly path and then dump me when I have thousands of dollars on the line. That is just so unprofessional. So, I sign up and run a test charge for $1.00 to make sure the account works. No problem. I get an email from Square stating that everything is good and I am ready to run transactions. So, I get a client who wants to put his bail premium on his credit card. Great. I run his card and get approval. I post his $50,000 bond and he is released. I ran the card for $5,015, which is my 10% fee. I now owe my surety $1000 as their fee. Cool. My $5015 should hit my account in a couple days, right? Wrong. Square puts a hold on the funds and asks for my business license, proof of customer interaction and three months of bank statements. No problem. I have all this and deliver it to them via their account validation option on the dashboard. Then, the next day I am informed via email that my account has been deactivated and the $5015 minus $175 fees will be held for 90 days. But get their reason: their fraud team has analized my transaction history and detected a pattern that indicates high risk. I remember from high school math that a single point cannot define a line, much less a trend. Some fraud experts. I am deactivated after my first transaction. Meanwhile, I owe my surety $1000 and my client got out of jail free. Whew. Insert Chevy Chase’s Christmas Vacation rant here.
We use to have Wells Fargo merchant and process about 15K a month with $545 in fees. With Square is simple and much less, about $410-420 vs. $545. We standing with square. The apps is much easier to use and we can accept payment on the go vs. Our machine stay one spot inside our salon. Square make our business 10x easier!! Thank you so much.
Hi Christina Salon Inc,
Please reply to this comment with your business’s location in order to authenticate your testimonial. Thanks!
Contracted a property inspection, and a kitchen remodel. Square is holding 3500.00 dollars after deactivating my new account for risky banking practices. Client is angry that I cannot complete contract without payment. Square is the risky banking practice
Any way to make them release my funds?
Daughter gave sensitive info like birthdate and SS # to start an acct. however, square said they couldn’t confirm and deactivated the act. Problem is she can’t get customer service by phone or email without an acct #! Sketchy and unacceptable! I’d hate to have to try to settle disputes with this company if this is how they treat people! I don’t like that they now have her information as I do not trust them.
The same thing happened to me. No reason or explanation was given. When I persisted by email for an explanation, the response was that none could or would be given and that I should find another service provider. Be glad that you never really got involved with this company. Since these fraudsters have sensitive personal information, it would probably be prudent to sign up with Lifelock.
Total fraud! DO NOT USE THEM! We had been using them but anytime we get payments over $1000, they froze they account . The final straw was they told us they had to do a total customer verification and asked us for all types of personal information. We sent them everything they needed, then they deactivated the account with over $9000 in pending transactions. Then to make it worst you cannot contact anyone there without a pin code to get through, no customer service line at all. Meanwhile or money is stuck in limbo. And there charges are outrages!
Horrible Customer Service, can not get a “customer code” if your life depended on it. They hold your money and don’t even try to help. I’ve never seen such a bad way to do business. Jack Dorsey should be very ashamed!!
Square shut down my account for “suspicious activity” and will not reopen. Do not waste your time using their services, because they do not have ANY. It use to be great for small businesses because it was basically a no approval process and free reader. I have only used the swiper a couple times and sell nothing high risk or suspicious. My company sells holster cases for runners and some other products like Bluetooth Headphones. They have now turned against their merchants and will not get my business back.
I have 3 square card readers including 1 chip reader and most of the time they do not work. It takes 7 to 20 tries. I get it to work on 2 out of 10 credit cards. My customers are not happy. The chip reader has never worked at all.
I would rank this company a ZERO across all levels of service. They charged my client on May 10 and as of today, the funds have still not been deposited into my account. I have called numerous times to listen to the “10 minute wait time” that is actually “1 hours and 10 minutes” or the “press 1 and you will not loose your spot in the queu” message but receive a call 2 1/2 hours later, only to be in a meeting or driving at that time because of their ridiculous pacific standard time hours. I have had to repeat my story numerous times, I’ve been hung up on, I’ve received over 15 emails going back and forth and still no money. The attachments on their forms don’t work, can’t find a person with any common sense to talk to and the list goes on. My bank tells me that they are getting a lot of new business from small business owners like myself because of Square’s horrible service. Deal with a company far more reputable than these guys. They’re brutal!
I never heard of this company before last Wednesday, but I already despise them beyond belief.
Without my ever giving out my e-mail address or ever requesting an online confirmation of any credit card purchase, Square, Inc. confirmed one of my in-person purchases by e-mail. Where they got me e-mail address I have no idea. I certainly never gave it either to Square, Inc., nor to the vendor whose credit charge they confirmed.
This is highly alarming to me, that Square has my purchase information including my electronic signature, my name, my credit card number, and the amount and name of the vendor (which I had never bought from before).
To make matters much worse, Square, Inc. takes great care to ensure that no one can reach them by phone. So they obviously do not care about rectifying a situation such as this.
NEVER USE THIS SLEAZY COMPANY FOR ANYTHING!!!
I have been accepting payments via Square for 2 years and do about $75K a year with them, no problems… no complaints. Always paid on time every time.
I also have accepted Square Capital 2 times and again, no problems at all… it has been a life saver actually.
If you run a legit business and no bull**** then Square is great.
I have a legitimate business for 8 years. So don’t throw that at me. I the most honest person who would never hurt anyone. Definitely not worth being dishonest. Carma is a b. Have you ever read any of the complaints. You’re lucky fellow. Be careful because there definitely up to no good.
Square, Inc. Committed Fraud!
Do Not Use Them!
Back on Saturday, April 30th, 2016, I used my American Express Credit Card to pay my contractor $20,000.00 for a job that has Not Been Finished!
The way that I paid for this amount of money was by receiving an Invoice that my contractor sent to ME, however, Square, Inc. is the actual company that Charged My Credit Card and is the Same Company that is Responsible For Transferring My Money To Whoever I Wish To Pay which In My Case Was NEVER DONE!
I have waited Very Patiently For MY MONEY to be transferred to Mr. Justin Rivas, the Contractor and at least 18 Days Went By and Square, Inc. Deliberately and Purposely REFUSED TO TRANSFER OVER THE MONEY!
This Unprofessional and Dishonest Company was Illegally Holding My Money In Their Own Internal Account 100% Against My Will And Without My Legal Permission, Consent, Nor Authorization!
What Square, Inc. Has Committed Was FRAUD!
I can NOT tell you and reiterate on just How Many Times I Have Contacted The Horrible Square, Inc. No Customer Service Phone Number Of: 1-855-700-6000 to find out Why They Are Not Sending MY MONEY OVER TO MR. JUSTIN RIVAS, THE CONTRACTOR!
Guess What Their Response Is? Answer: We Can NOT Discuss This Issue With You and Can Only Talk To Mr. Justin Rivas About It!
My Response: That Does Not Make Any Sense Since It Was Me Who Initiated The $20,000.00 Payment To Begin With and It Was Done With My American Express Credit Card Which Is In My Name, NOT HIS!
Square, Inc.’s Customer Service Department did absolutely Nothing To Assist Me, Nor Help Me!
Furthermore, I did speak to Mr. Justin Rivas about it and he also called them many times ONLY to receive a Runaround, Lies and Mind Games stating that he did Not Fill Out The Paperwork Properly, or that he Needs To Resend Some Of The Same Documents Over And Over.
Even though he did as he was told, Square, Inc. still REFUSED TO SEND THE $20,000.00 DOLLARS OVER TO MR. JUSTIN RIVAS, THE CONTRACTOR!
I was so Angry and Pissed Off over this Type Of Abuse Coming From Square, Inc. that I tried to call their Customer Service Department back again and Dispute The Money and Have It Go Back To My American Express Credit Card and this is What Their Customer Service Screwed Up Department Told Me!
Square, Inc. Customer Service’s Response: They told me that they can NOT Dispute The $20,000.00 for ME On My Behalf (Even Though I Am The Payer) and said that I need to contact American Express To Dispute It!
Well they are also 100% RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS SINCE THEY TOOK MY $20,000.00 ILLEGALLY AND COMMITTED FRAUD BY HOLDING MY MONEY IN ONE OF THEIR INTERNAL ACCOUNTS WITHOUT SENDING IT TO MR. JUSTIN RIVAS AS IT STATES ON MY CREDIT CARD STATEMENT!
Please NOTE: I have NEVER had an experience like this one before and hopefully NEVER AGAIN!
Moving Forward: Back On, Monday, May 16th, 2016, I finally decided to Stop Waiting, Hoping and Dreaming for Square, Inc. to Transfer This Money To Mr. Justin, Rivas, The Contractor and instead I called up American Express and Filed A Dispute Against Square, Inc. For FRAUD!
Please NOTE: I Refuse to Pay For Fraud and Refuse to Pay For Something that I NEVER RECEIVED and Square, Inc. Must Have A Reputation at Doing This To Many Of Their Customers!
The Problem Is That Many Of Their Ex-Customers Are Afraid To Post Reviews On Their Negative Experiences because they are either Afraid or Scared Of The Outcome, Including Retaliation By The Company Which Rarely Happens, or Just Do Not Have The Time or Maybe They Simply Do Not Care To Let The Public Know On What Happened To Them And Would Rather Just Keep It Private!
However, I Dare To Be Different and I Am Blowing The Whistle Loud And Clear Against Square, Inc. To Let Them Know That You Can NOT Get Away With This!
At The Present Time, I Am Still Waiting For This Fraudulent Money Of $20,000.00 That Square, Inc. Stole And Held In Their Internal Company Account To Be Returned Back To American Express Since I Will NOT Pay For FRAUD!
I am also Making A Very Serious Recommendation To American Express To Cut Their Ties And Business Dealings With Square, Inc. In Order To Prevent This Type Of Fraud From Happening To Their Other Customers Like It Just Happened To ME!
Enclosed, in the attachments, please find seven (7) pages of communications that I had with Square, Inc., American Express and Mr. Justin Rivas, The Contractor for your reference and further review.
Final Thoughts: My Advice To Anyone Searching For A Way To Pay Somebody Is First Of All “NOT To Ever Consider Using Square, Inc.”
Thank you.
Sincerely yours,
Howard Paul Shore
Angry, Unhappy And Pissed Off Ex-Customer Of Square, Inc.
/HPS
Enclosures: Please See The Attachments For All Of The Communications That I Have Had With Square, Inc., American Express And Mr. Justin Rivas, The Contractor For Your Reference And Further Review. Thank You.
I did a payment, for mistake the person refuse and the money desapear I tried to call they ask for a code they gave a site who don’t work . Is impossible to talk with them
Square is a joke! Opened an account and sent my very first invoice to my customer, which he promptly paid. Then I get an email from Square stating that my account shows a “pattern of high-risk transactions.” Really? After only ONE invoice!? So they deactivate my account and are currently holding my funds for 60 days. May they rot in Hell.
HORRIBLE customer”no service” plan to wait hours before some yo-yo cant help you with a simple fix. THEN they will not connect you with a manager, nor supervisor and then they hang up on you. when the founder makes over 6 million a year, someone better address clients problems with the service they provide. I would never recommend this company! They requested all my information approved a credit card , took their money, then held the deposit for days, THEN told me to refund the customer, yet keep processing credit cards through them. Now they have enough info on me to commit IDENTITY FRAUD. WTF?
I was just informed by a client that his credit card had been charged twice for the same amount that appears on an invoice. This prompted me to ACTUALLY look at my Square account and I an SHOCKED to find they are holding over $25,000.00 in “Pending Deposits” since the 30th 0f March and it is nor May 25th. I have tried every number I could find on various forums and all I get is a recorded message telling me I need a CODE to talk to a human. I enter all the crap on thier help page to request a code but I never get it. Only an email with a case number which is NOT the code. How am I supposed to pay my vendors, if I can’t collect funds that were payment for product I purchased!!!! This A HUGE SCAM> NO idea how Square could stay in business. I just wish I knew WHO to CALL. I need to get this resolved. ASAP
DON”T EVER USE SQUARE – USE ANY OTHER SERVICE OUT THERE BUT THEM. THEY ARE A RIP OFF. Been in Business 21 years and now that I need to use them because Comcast hasn’t transferred by services yet to use my regular card reader. Square has been holding my money for 23 days and because I’m complaining – Can’t reach any customer service person on the phone – they have deactivated my account and are holding my funds for 90days!!!! BEWARE!!!!!
I’ve been using square for over a month and have done three transactions so far and my third transaction has not gone through it’s been almost a week I’m still waiting for my money Square is still holding my money I don’t know what’s wrong with square but they keep telling me that they are handling it but I still don’t see my money at all or no email
Bad experience with Square. Would say I will never use them again, but had a bad experience with Pay Pal some years back and haven’t used them in over eight years. As someone stated, your first transaction goes through fine. I am billing a customer each week and I did not find out my second transaction did not go through until I checked my account and the funds weren’t there. No communication to say as much. When you call the customer service number they require a code, which if you don’t have you can’t get through. They wanted all of this documentation. Fortunately, I had it because I am a business. But what if I didn’t have a business? Awful customer service. Square should be further regulated by the feds and should not be allowed to be in business when dealing with people’s money and you can’t get through to speak with someone.
What a horrible organization! Held my funds, demanded invoices, business description, method of marketing, shipping methods, etc. Then told me they would not support my business. I held a square account for a few years, and they pull this crap. Never again.
My customer cleared funds of $1992.00 being held no less than 150 days. This means they use my money for at least 5 months and who knows because heard of stories where it’s been years and people haven’t gotten their money. I saw their stock is way down so maybe this is how they stay afloat by using our money. I can’t find anything to do about it. Told my friends that I talked into using Square and they tried closing their accounts but evidently you cant close. They say just don’t use the account. Small business rely on funds turning over to keep going. They are getting away with theft here.
Update: I had gotten an email from them to try for 30 days Square Marketing and then 2 days later I realized my funds hadn’t deposited. I logged into my computer app because nothing showed on the smart phone app to discover they wanted information about website, advertising, invoice, business license so I figured just a way to get data to get me to use Square Marketing. I didn’t want to be forced into that product so I refused in several emails my account ended up closed with note that I would receive my money no sooner than 150days. I talked to my lawyer and she wanted to see the user agreement so I reread it and realized what a fool I was to ever let them have access to my money based on what was in the agreement. I can’t believe I used to love them and got friends signed up with them. I sort of remember reading these things thinking it would only happen to people doing fraud. That wasn’t me. Well it happened to me. I was cut off no response to emails. Couldn’t make the uploads work. I just wanted to meet with someone and say I’m real and legit and here is my proof but you can’t. They are basically in lock down funneled through a small opening in a lobby with badge reader access only. I ended up emailing data since I couldn’t upload and I did get my account reactivated but I don’t trust them based on user agreement that is completely biased in their favor. I guess a business does what a business needs to do but I can’t see them staying viable long with those type of business practices because word does get out!Especially as the numbers grow. My friends that trusted me to join now trust me to leave them. I think verifying a business could be done in a much better way. I’m back to my tried and true bank of many years. Why did I ever stray. It’s worth the monthly fee for peace of mind that my money will be there. I still can’t believe this happened to me. You will feel the same when its you. In business I save every thing all the receipts, emails everything so I looked back through all the email to see if there was a email notice of issue with my funds and nothing. Only find out by seeing no funds deposited. I have so many more things to say how this could have been done better but I’m done wasting my time. Good luck everyone getting your funds.
After approving a sale of $400 plus tax at a trade show took back the money and said it was fraud. This is b.s. What do we pay for? They approved the sale and then 4 weeks later say that American Express decided to take the money back because their client “claimed they didn’t make the purchase. I am going back to cash or checks and will tell every merchant I come in contact with how I was treated. I am recommending they don’t accept American Express and change from Square to someone else. I see hundreds of merchants and until they refund the money they stole from me I will not stop,
They did something very very similar to me. Twice I got a fraud alert saying a client claimed that They never authorized the charge(s) on their card
I’m a massage therapist so I know the contact info of all of my clients and I called both of these clients and they were absolutely clueless
It turns out that in both cases when my clients paid me and left a tip it put their credits into an over limit because of the way square allows charges to happen – it does not work like PayPal
SQ works like a gasoline station or a restaurant…If you charge somebody $50 and they leave you a $60 tip… All thats authorized to card is $50 TEMPORARY charge.. Which actually allows for the final charge to be different to allow for tipping or like a gas station where it pings your card credit card for a dollar and then when the transaction post it post for the actual amount
So in my case, one of my clients had about $60 on your credit card so the $50.00hour session fee was authorized, and win the entire transaction posted it build a card 110$… Normally a card going over limit is perfectly OK and that is his issue between the cardholder and the credit card companies… But went to credit card companies did is they sent of false claim of fraud to square saying the customer complaint when the customer never dead
I disputed this with Square and explain the situation and even put Square in contact with my clients who said that these were authorized and that is their credit card company that was causing the problem.
I went back-and-forth and back-and-forth with square for five months over this issue – and in the end they said the credit cards company’s decision stood and they could not do anything about it….and since the credit card company was doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing – square should’ve told them where to go stick it
So before I knew it squared took the money out of my checking account which did not have enough in it and it bounced, and square did this every day for 10 days and I racked up $350 in overdraft fees
And then square permanently disabled my account, and they are still after that money and tried sending me to collections. So I got fed up with them and took them to small claims court and I won and a judge ordered them to give me my money back
This is one screwed up company and I advise people to be very cautious – do not use the tip feature or you will get into trouble. If you want somebody to tip you or you take tips make sure the tip is included in the actual service charge – that way if a person does not have the proper amount on their car the transaction will not go through … But I under stand what most people and merchants out there do in a situation when it doesn’t go through – the customer will usually asked the merchant to just run the service charge through which gets excepted by Square, and then they tell the merchant to go ahead and add the tip which is excepted and it puts the cart over limit – most credit card companies don’t care but there some pretty bad ones out there
Reason why I recommend PayPal now versus Square is when you enter your service charge plus a tip into PayPal, PayPal all the rice is it as one total charge that’s not a temporary authorization … This way your transaction either goes through or doesn’t and you do not have to worry about credit card companies causing problems because square claims that they will come to your defense and even paid if square decide you were in the right… But in reality that never happens and there’s a little teeny tiny clause in our user agreement that says no matter what the credit card company decides is what Square will do
After a payment dispute by a disgruntled customer, square debited my bank account for the entire amount disputed. Because I didn’t not have the opportunity to gather necessary paperwork in time (Less than a week) square didn’t stand by me. I’ll be looking for another processor ASAP.
Opened the account and got a $433 debit on my account right after opening. No help with them at any number. Filing fraud suit with California Attorney General. Absulute trash of a company!
Walk, don’t run as fast as you can away from this company. Not sure how they stay in business. Basically I finally found a live person to talk to and they said, we really don’t care about you or your business. They would rather walk away from a $700 profit to them on a $20,000 transaction than to deposit the money to my account as they should. I have been working with them for a couple of years without any problems. Obviously things have changed there. BYW…..There are other professional businesses out there that do the same thing for half the fee. I believed long term relationships were important. Square doesn’t feel the same. Horrible, HORIBLE customer service is what you can expect in 2016.
Well your first transaction goes as smooth as butter very exciting but then comes the second they wait until you do your second transaction and then tell you you cannot have the funds until you give them all your documents and invoices proofs of purchases. For a small business that in some counties does not require a business license or a federal employee number makes it impossible to receive your funds and then when you reach out to try and get help there is nobody for you to ask. You can email but no response you can call a phone number but you have to have a code which you can get I am currently out $1,600 because I can’t get in touch with anybody I will never use this again. Keeping in mind that I may be due to transactions a month because I do it in my spare time makes losing $1,600 a big deal
I would strongly advise against using a Square!!!!! Our business had an account set up, and successfully used it 2 times, then the third time was a $5208.00 sale and funds were never deposited into our business account. My husband made several attempts and spent many hours trying to get someone to help with this, but he was told through email only that a live person was not an option!!!! We are not tech savy people and would have never entered into this agreement knowing there was no way to receive help with such an important issue. We are currently seeking the help of an attorney to straighten this out.
We are in the same boat, out first transaction was 5k, no problem, several days later 10k. It’s was never deposited to our account. I called and they said I had to add more info such as 3 recent bank statements, government issued papers, invoice reciept, we sent all that they asked for, later that day I checked and said account deactivated. We were confused so I called and the idiot on the phone said the code number was wrong, and my account showed only 1.00. I have no idea what they have done with our 10k but I finally called back and talk to Jordan and he said he could see my money and it saus pending deposit but he couldn’t transfer me to the risk department that is handling this. They will call. He said worse case scenario it could take 90 days for them to send me a check. I’m advising my customer to file fraud claims with them because I can’t release his product to him until I have his funds. Once this is over I will NEVER us or NEVER refer square to anyone. My company handles over 500K a year and they could have made alot just off my fees. I have no idea why they would do this to a legit business. The longer they hold our funds the more interest they are collecting of our funds they are holding.
I MUST AGREE WITH OTHERS HERE AND SAY PLEASE DO NOT USE SQUARE!!!!! They recently sent my account three requests for verification for my company and subsequently a recent charge we had run. Each time I promptly replied with the requested documents, yet today I received an email that my account had been deactivated with no explanation as to why and their customer service has been utterly non-existent, conveniently (not to mention they’re now holding my account balance for the next 90 days which has been a substantially higher, even detrimental, balance for others who have expierienced this). I understand holding questionable funds for 90 days is standard, but what I don’t understand is how this is justifiable given that I gave them all the documentation they requested and, from their own policy page, what I provided should have been more than sufficent to verify the legitimacy of the account and charges. I would strongly urge anyone attracted to Square’s low rates to read this article before signing up for thier services, or just google Square to see how common this corrupt process is and how unprofessional this company operates. http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/11/20/456635063/square-goes-public-and-fields-a-flood-of-customer-complaints
The same thing has happened to me. I was done the same way. However, my funds were to be released for deposit on 5/17/16 into my bank account and I am still waiting. My account was deactivated after I sent in requested documentation showing the ligitamacy of my bisiness.
My account was deactivated today, After I gave them all the information they requested, Bank statements, invoices. Makes no sense, We are a non-profit charity organization and they are holding $4100.00 for the past one month and no communication from their side. This is all donation money.
I’m a small roofing contractor who just recently started accepting credit cards, what I didn’t know is that after several transactions, they decided they needed more info from me and held a large amount of funds from the customer to me without warning, send me an email the next day noting my account was inactive, I would have to spend two days gathering information, emailing back and fourth, 2 30 minute waits to speak to an idiot that couldn’t help me! After a week of waiting o relieved an email stating the funds would the deposit in 1-2 bus days? I still have not seen the deposit? I will never use them again ever!
DO NOT USE SQAURE. I made a transfer from my checking account using square cash. It was for 1000 dollars. They made the deposit into the account I sent it to. Then they turned around and took it back out of the account I sent it to for no apparent reason. Then they turned around a few days later and took another 1000 out of the account I had sent it to. 2000 dollars just vanished. We have been trying to get resolution for over 14 days. The main problem… there is not phone support for square cash so everything is done thru email – only email. They respond 1 time a day only with a cookie cutter answer – I sent them a copy of what the bank gave me that shows the deposit and the withdrawals but they still have done NOTHING to resolve the issue. DO NOT USE Square services unless you want to give away free monies. There are so many dissatisfied customers. Never been so frustrated. Some people have wrote that they have been trying to get issues resolved for over 6 months and the only way to communicate is thru email so they just keep waiting. Sad situation. Sad service!
GET YOUR BANK INVOLVED. Dispute it. Do not let these losers play with your c v v number and take what doesn’t belong to them. they will not give you your money back, get your bank involved. Square is a fraud. It’s imperative to me that Apple and other retailers need to get Square readers out of their stores. Innocent people don’t deserve to go through this and have to pay them for it.
DO not use the SQUARE..the will keep your money and not return it.
They have NO phone number to call and will not return emails.
stay away
Worst company ever. Do not use this company unless you want zero customer service, no access to a human, just emails and they take days to respond. They will freeze your money for no reason, ‘deactivate your account’ and offer no resolutions. They SUCK.
Square Is the worst merchant credit card company ever. After using them for five years just a few days ago I had a Platinum wedding package and charged the client $7644 which she paid with her credit card, the following day I got an email from square stating my funds were on hold and that they cant deposit it in my account until further verification. So they requested Invoices, Bank statements, business license, tax id and a few more things. I supplied them with all this info but blacked out anything on my bank statements that was nothing of there business which were Balances deposits, withdrawals. The following morning they sent an email stating they the transactions of the bank if not for me to do a return of the money to my client. My financial information is none of there business dont know why i changed over from Bank of America merchant to Square. I guess some things are to god to be true.
Stay away. They have a verification process that does not work. Their objective is to keep money as long as possible, They cost me a huge sale due to this process. You have been warned.
Square deactivated my account recently without giving a reason other than claiming that I violated a section of the Seller’s Agreement. However, while Section 17 of said agreement allows Square to hold funds, it does not give a time period for such holds. Square is holding over $2500 usd from April to July. There is no way to contact them by phone and when I was able to contact them they were not willing to discuss the reason(s) for the deactivation of my account. Is this something that the Federal Trade Commission can handle?
I’m having the same problem, what have you come up with?
I have been an active Square merchant for more than one year with no issues. That is – until recently!
My account was placed in a “Review Status” after I completed a 26K single CC transaction. Square requested that I submit various financial data on two occasions this past week. I complied on the dates of the request. I have received NO follow-up emails or any communication from Square. I have sent ten emails to Square (non)Support of which not one has been answered. This is bordering on criminal.
Another comment To add to the pile of negative comments about square. I had the register and used it on my iPad. Worked OK for 2 years.then my square account was hacked. Only that account, nothing else on my computer. The customer service was just awful. Ridiculous answers to e-mails, like they were not even read, many, many phone calls, no one able to help, waited on hold for hours, dropped calls and rude people. This company is not worth the trouble and wasted time.
I am very unhappy with your service, you accepted the cards money and deducted your amount but never sent mine to my approved account.
This is 2 weeks ago. You are holding on to my funds of $501.00, I have sent 3 faxes and tried the verification on the webpage 4 times, it will not take my documents by your website. I was never given a customer code when I got on your phone iy just shut me off. please take care of this right away. I just sent in my 3rd fax my number [REDACTED – personal contact information] Herman Polen Sr. Helping Hands Security Services
This was the worst decision we ever made choosing square… I wanted to switch to another company months ago and decided to give square a 2nd chance and now our funds are being held and our account has been deactivated!! Of course there is no live person to speak with! I will tell everyone I meet to NEVER choose the Square!!!! This has been a nightmare
Account was closed because I was doing business as usual don’t understand them They held funds for 5 days then sent an email to refund your customer’s…
Not a happy client and will not recommend them to anyone I come across in the future… In fact I’m going to have my friends and family who use them switch to a different mechant system.. Because of the lack of communication from them..
We signed up with Square in late March of this year to be able to provide the convenience of accepting credit cards at our outdoor festivals. At the time of account generation, no verification was requested by Square other than what we registered. This was this way for 3 weeks as we invoiced vendors for booth fees and accepted a small number of payments. We used Square registers at our event bars to accept “card in hand” transactions for bar beverages over a 3 day period. Immediately following this Square asked us to jump through hoops for 3 weeks verifying our company (25 years old), our business (did and sent copies of invoices, noted that our use was for vending fees an bar transactions, copies of our bank statements (with Bank of America for over 20 years had it all lined out well) and then deactivated our account this week noting “high risk” business and is holding our $11,900 in funds that we require to pay event staff this weekend. As everyone else here noted, cannot reach them. Deactivated without warning, then say they can’t speak with us because we are deactivated. I think it’s time for a Class Action Lawsuit after reviewing the comments here. It is corrupt and fraudulent behavior. They are holding other businesses funds, making interest off of them, I’m sure using the cash and not holding it in trust accounts until they release it. Given the increase in complaints year over year noted here, it is a big red flag that they are getting more comfortable with this practice and are not being checked.
Square took payment from my client then immediately deactivated my account without paying me the funds. They will not answer customer service phone calls if you don’t have a customer number (which one doesn’t have if their account is deactivated), so they have essentially stolen money from me and my client. They only send form emails in response to online customer support attempts.
This is an unethical company with horrible practices and I would strongly advise against using them.
Not Squared …But SCREWED By Square….
Hi,
I verified my bank account on 4-26-2016 and made several $1.00 test charges to check my business’s invoice and receipt content was correct. I then sent an invoice to client which they subsequently paid via CC to my square account for $2,871.45. Square asked for additional verification which I supplied. I was then sent an email with a customer code which I tried to get support with to no avail it said my account was deactivated? I had the account for 5 DAYS and they deactivated it and now I have to wait 90 DAYS to get paid and I already paid my vendors…I’M Screwed…!
The question I have will the funds I received from my customer ($2,871.45) be deposited into my verified Chase bank account in 90 days as stated in the deactivation email I received?
How come none can get a human being over the phone anymore?? Why square is making difficult to talk with them? we are the customers! I don’t think that is right. You sign into your account and Square still not realizing your code or MID (member ID) WHY??
Hello- Can anybody tell me how quickly after 90 days will i get my money? They have $32K of mine that they said they’re holding for 90 days!
Square has a non-existent customer service approach. If you are a small business do not use this as your third party payment method. You’ve been warned!. Square held funds in excess of $3500 for days. Not unti threatening legal action, posted bad review om FB and finally called their Sales Dept did I get a response. Is anyone surprised I could get a human in Sales but not in Customer Service? If you are, here’s why. Sales make money, but Customer Service probably means complaint. Square doesn’t care about paying customers only acquiring more paying customers. I’m all for technology, but when you only rely on it customers pay the price. Square, do better…be better or I can assure you, your lack of customer service will put you back at square onw.
I am not happy at all with square and would not recommend it to ANY business owner! I have been robbed of $6,000 on Friday and could not get anyone on the phone until Monday! I called the customer service number and we hung up on because I didn’t have my customer code!! Not for nothing but as a small business owner trying to compete with cooperation a I would like to be on an equal playing ground with customer service care!!! I wou never recommend this to anyone and suggest all small business owners to find another company for credit card transactions
Terrible. My law firm has been using them for a few months, and while they do provide a useful service when it works, their FAQ is woefully uninformative, and in many circumstances is directly unhelpful, referring the user to supposed features that neither exist on the website or the app. I’ve spent over an hour today trying to figure out how to refund a payment that was made yesterday and has not been processed. No luck whatsoever, no possibility of speaking with someone or even chatting with a bot (which at this point I would take). The client is furious, and I will have to find an alternate means of refunding the fee. I will be terminating my relationship with SquareCash as soon as I can extract myself from this morass. STRONGLY DO NOT RECOMMEND.
This company sucks, STAY AWAY!
We are a medical clinic and our 3rd day using their merchant processing application we charged a little over 5K in sales. The next day we received an email that they froze our account and will be holding on to our deposits until they “review” our transactions. They were asking for our medical licenses , detailed descriptions of our patients information and treatments. Long story short our attorney is going after them as they are with-holding payment for no justified reason and trying to acquire HIPPA protected patient information that has absolutely nothing to do with credit card processing.
This company is a bunch of scam artists. Go with a different processor, one that actually has a live human on the phone to discuss any issues that my present themselves with processing. Square Down is what it should be called. Stupid company.
Extremely frustrating experience with Square Inc. I’ve never had such a difficult time trying speak to a company rep or agent in my life. And for the type of service that Square provides for people and businesses, that is just inexcusable and ridiculous. None of my funds have been released, since my first customer charge 30 days ago! And currently those charges totals over $3k. And now, after countless back and forth useless & auto-generated emails, 1 actual phone conversation (with a useless agent at that), they decided to deactivate my account…..and hold my funds for possibly 90 days!?! Absolutely absurd!
SQUARE INC is a sorry, shameful, and faceless company. Any company that tries this hard to avoid their customers SHOULD and WILL be terminated eventually. On a positive note, i’ve realized there are many companies providing everything Square can offer but with far greater service and respectability. I selected PaymentDepot because they are locally based and I spoke directly with a helpful representative. Wish I had done my research from the start, I would have seen that all my issues I had with Square was a very common occurrence. Shame on you Square Inc., shame.
Square deactivated our account even while providing tracking confirmation for every customer, and has now held our money for over 1 month. I’ve emailed several times and they won’t speak to me because our account is not current. I am so frusterated, and i feel so helpless as i do not know what to do about this!!!!
Our Law Firm had been using Square for several years then suddenly, without notice, we received a notice of immediate termination because we handle bankruptcy matters, including creditor representation. Square has apparently determined that bankruptcy representation, even of creditors, should be classified together with “escort services” and the like. We are pleased with our replacement company, which has much services and more competitive rates, however, the manner in which our firm was handled was highly unprofessional and inappropriate. I will be certain to advise all of our colleagues NOT to use Square and will be selling my stock interest in the IPO asap. Highly disappointed with Square.
I run a service business and have recently deactivated my Square account because I have found a much better company with lower rates.
Today I received an email from Square about a client requesting a refund. The problem is, I stopped using Square more than a month ago. This client has enjoyed the services I provided and now is wanting money back. I would like to know who was not satisfied and what the true problem was. Square emailed me from an email I cannot reply to and the customer support number will not put me through to a representative because I deactivated my account. Lesson learned, Square doesn’t protect the business that have invested in their services. And because of this, I will spread the word to other business owners to never trust Square.
Heather, before you start hating your clients know that they take money from people like you and me then blame our clients for chargebacks they did not dispute.
They did this to me nearly 1 year after a friend and associate reimbursed me on Square. Turns out, he doesn’t have a SquAre account anymore and neither do I. Banks allow about 60 days for chargebacks, some processors up to 120. Square went ahead and extracted over $500 363 days later after funds cleared.
While I am fully aware customer service can lead to chargebacks Square not only tries to break small business owners but destroy their rapport with their clients as well.
And yes you bet I confronted my customer about the year later chargeback, and he was stunned. He felt so bad about it that he reached out to square telling them he did not dispute charges on me. And they responded with a copy paste email that had absolutely nothing to do with the matter.
Dispute the chargeback with your bank and get a new debit card. They cannot debit money without your numbers and c v v. Report them
Now and get a new card!!!!! ASAP
THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING!!! not able to to talk to any support members is a big lost. We have used Square for 3 yrs and never had any reason to believe that our funds will be on hold and need documentations to prove our transaction. This is bullshit! we have transaction all our costumers credit cards through Square and now this! The phone number provided with a need of a code in order to supposedly speak to someone is just a why to frustrate you even more! this is a joke! and fraud fixing to happen. BEWARE EVERYBODY!!!! you cannot and will not talk to anyone in their company RED FLAG!
Well I am no longer an active square customer we have had our money held by square since 2014 two years the money being held is only 2,100 dollars so that amount is not high enough too get a lawyer so I suspect they think they just ignore our company send over 100 emails and no response
our company is called wallace consulting
Square DOES NOT do what they say.
I own a small handyman/ construction company. I just started with a new client. I have done 4 charges with him $15,000.
It has been over a week and square still has my $$. I tried calling!! You need a customer code. Filled out form for code! NO code my account is under review 2-4 days and they’ll get back to me. We had to stop work. My bank account is overdrawn and I can’t pay my employees or my bills either.
use ANYONE else DO NOT use Square
UNBELIEVABLE!!! This is happening to me too. We have over 40,000 that is on hold cause we need to verified documents from our bank statements accounts, contracts from our clients and other documents. I now have to call my costumers to cancel all transaction made from us. All bills have to be on hold, can’t pay my employees for the jobs we just finish, my bank is running negative wtf! I am pissed! I will have to now fly down to San Francisco and kick some asses the old school way. CONSUMERS BEWARE! RED FLAG, RED FLAG, RED FLAG!
On April 11, 2016 I reached out to square in order to get some advice about a transaction i was about to process using their services. I asked if it would be suitable to sell a vehicle in the amount of $4,000.00 USD as long as i had all paper work, including bill of sale, and title transfer signed by both the seller and buyer.
Square assured me that there would not be a problem. That same day i sold the vehicle and processed the payment of $4,000.00 via an American Express card and everything was approved.
While the buyer of the truck was still in premises i called square to follow up and make sure no further steps needed to be taken in order for the money to be transferred into my account, which i was told i did not and by the next evening the money would be in my bank account. So away the buyer drover with the truck.
Later that evening, around 9:00 PM EST, i received and email from square stating that they needed further verification from my end. Which included my last 3 bank statements, a government ID, BIll of Sale, and any extra paperwork that was signed by the buyer, which i had every single one of those papers under my possession and quickly emailed them over Tuesday April 12th, 2016.
On Wednesday, April 13th 2016, i get an email from square alerting me that they would not be able to process the transaction and i would need to issue the buyer a refund.
Called into Square, and for the second time was transferred to a CSR by the name of Zayn, which has to easily the one of the most disrespectful and unpleasant people to speak with, seems like his job is to be short and not have any questions from the merchant end answered.
At the moment the vehicle is being driven by the Buyer, the payment has been cancelled, and as told by Zayn, i need to have the buyer pay with Cash, which obviously would of have been my go to choice if the funds were available by the buyer.
This has to be one of the worst experiences i have ever had dealing with a CSR by the name of Zayn, and the Square company overall.
Simple stuff here – it is a very, very high risk credit card transaction. The buyer has up to 90 days for most banks to dispute the transaction. So if anything at all went wrong with that car, all he had to do it call his credit card company and claim misrepresentation on your end. The credit card company claws the funds back from Square and if Square can’t claw it back from you, they eat $4,000. Bottom line is you only accept a cashiers check when you sell something like a car. If they can’t give you a cashiers check, run away very fast from the transaction. If the buyer says he “has” to use his credit card, I’d tell him to get a cash advance and bring me a cashiers check.
As for Square? The CSRs have no idea which transactions will get flagged by their underwriters, so calling them before a transaction doesn’t mean anything. And for what it’s worth, I can’t imagine a single payment processor who wouldn’t flag that type of transaction.
I received a package in the mail, I have not opened it. I can not get ahold of this company to send it back . They are taking $1.00 out of my bank account each month. I have a product that I am using SO now I am being charged for an item I do not want and did not order. I need to know how to connect by phone to SQUARE.
Have had Square for more than one year. It just stopped working when I attempted to manually enter a card number. There is no support. Both the telephone number and web site are a joke only this is not funny. You cannot speak to anyone without a customer code obtained from the web site, but you cannot navigate the site to obtain the code.
I totally agree. Not only can you not navigate their site to get that mysterious code to be able to get through on their customer service line, once they deactivate your account for no reason, you can’t even log in and ask ‘the community’ a question. I would love to warn every small business owner I know to avoid Square completely. Now what to do with all the components of the lovely Square Register. Cha ching.
So we recently started taking credit cards at the ranch. I’ve worked with Square in the past without issue, but after taking a $1,700 payment, Square decided that they all of a sudden needed some sensitive business documents from us before they would deposit OUR hard earned money. After they held our money hostage for a week, we finally broke down and gave them our documents. This is my response after they sent an email stating that our funds had been deposited and thanked us for our cooperation…. This is how the free market is supposed to work…
Thank you for finally giving me my money. I know most people don’t care or notice when they are being extorted, but I do. This little bullshit move you made has cost you my business.
Bill S
This is the worst company out there, I don’t know how they are still operating. I will do everything in my power to share how a horrible company they are. I have been waiting for weeks to get W2 for employees and Taxes are due in just two weeks! I have been e-mailing them everyday hoping to get a response from them and nothing so far.
I used Square Reader sporadically for insurance copays recently I realized that my last two transactions were not credited to my account. I called Square, not able to get through, e-mailed and was given a customer number. It turns out that since November 2015, my account has not received any of the transactions I processed and someone charged a TV to my account. The name, the phone number and the receiving bank was changed in my account. I did not received any e-mail from Square notifying of any changes to my account. Now it has taken several phone call and emails to try to decipher the problem. The account was hacked. Now Square says they will reimburse the money but not the fees. Just one day ofter I spoke to them about the account being compromised and they assured me they would put a hold to the account, I received another email with another charge that was going to take place. The crazy thing is that now I cannot deactivate the account because the last fraudulent charge (400.00+) is still pending and they would not release the account until that goes through. So they want me to allow the bank to process a fraudulent transaction and place my account in jeopardy of being hacked again, so that then, they can close the account. I called my bank and put a stop to any transaction coming from Square. I cannot get anyone on the phone and they’re not answering my emails. I will file a formal compliant with the BBB in California.
I WOULD NOT process with square. You are guilty until proven innocent and then when American express tells square that the dispute was reversed in your favor square will take four months to return your money. You can’t call any one and talk to them about any issues. You have to do the work for them. They lie about defending you and sending in documentation. I had to send everything in myself and took care of everything in 1 day verses the four months square wanted to take. What a JOKE. DO NOT process with Square.
Took over $2000 from me and refuse to disclose why they’ve closed my account. No way to call them, no way to dispute their claim of “suspicious activity” (this was my first time using the service, which is apparently a problem.)
They’ve stolen money from me and unless it is returned within 30 days I’m pressing charges. Horrible company, do NOT use Square!
I had the exact same thing happen to me. Brand new account, had already used for four days when I got the ‘account has been closed permanently’ for ‘suspicious activity’.
The email claims they will hold my funds for 90 days, then release them.
I tried to call customer service, which does NOT exist. I could NOT get the ‘customer code’ from their website either. And they have never responded to my emails. Basically, you are suddenly cancelled with no explanation whatsoever.
I would just like to warn others, because when you are standing at your ‘Square Register’ with your customer’s card in hand waiting to check out, it’s a really bad feeling to see that your account has been ‘permanently closed’ without any details. What a MESS.
Did you ever receive your money?
I’m curious also. Did you? I turned in tons of paperwork proof and still waiting on my money. Wondering if they are needing all of our funds to stay afloat because this is a lot of complaints! Especially when I saw the one they did to a law firm. If they can hold their money, we are all screwed.
Square is stealing money from small businesses. I applied to there web site. They gave what looks like an approval. Then they sent solicitations for me to start processing credit cards. I allowed my client to pay me with a credit card $1100 dollars. Square approved the transaction and removed the money from his card account. Then kept it! They said we need more information to approve you. Then declined my application sending me a n email saying that the money would be held for 90 days!
If I refund my customer it will take him sixty days to get it back!
This is called floating they are stealing small hard working people’s money and keeping it for literally months while they use for whatever.
They are a bunch of stealing SOB’s I am interested in any class action suit.
This really hurts me and takes food from my table!
I have been trying for over a week to get in touch with customer service in regards to a transaction whose funds never made it to my account. Unless you have a customer code, you might as well forget it. There are a lot of directions as in click here for your customer code, but noting leads you to the code. I believe that this company does not want you to call them, nor do they want to help you. I’ve emailed them for several days in a row, only to receive a canned reply. No one ever calls you back or reply’s to your message.
The worst service ever!! I’m going to have to go with a better service. In fact, any service would be better then the service I’ve received from Square.
Horrible Customer Service, in a world where Customer Service counts. There are too many companies that pride themselves with great customer service practices, that we don’t have to put up with companies that really don’t value your business.
We’ve been with Square for two years, and in trying to find an answer as to why it takes a week for our customers to receive a refund the rep. tried to make up some random answer. When my husband replied, “so apparently you don’t know, please give me a supervisor.” The rep. responded he didn’t have one. So maybe my husband was talking to the founder himself. So when my husband said we would be moving our business elsewhere, and he could pass that on to his non-existent supervisor. He said ok.
Square is a complete scam. I keep getting emails about $1,000 plus deposits that can’t go through and I don’t even have an account with these pathetic human beings.
And there is no way for me to stop these emails, as none of them are legit and wiped out after they are sent.
DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THIS COMPANY!
Square has the worst customer service ever, these guys have proven to be crooks,
They are holding my funds for 90 days for no reason. $4190.00 of my hard earned money and for no reason,
My client confirms that the money has been deducted from her account, so why is square squatting on my money?
They sent me an email saying my account had been permanently suspended so I can no longer call them either LOL
Gangsters without any remorse
I applied and was originally told my bank account had been approved but when the reader did not show up I tried to contact Square customer service WHAT A DISASTER that is. No phone support for people who are not existing customers, you have to use email. Basically I was told FU by square for some unknown reason and when I repeatedly asked why Square never returned an email. I have never bounced a check, gone bankrupt or had anything that would exclude me from any other CC processor or financial institution.
Square.com is a real pain in the rear for the vendor, I am a contractor and when I receive progress payments from customers they are usually at least $4k. I will process a payment on Thursday at 2pm for example and I should expect my money to hit the account by the next business day right? Well no guess again, you see they have tied up my funds multiple times for one reason or another, making me jump through hoops and whatnot, in the mean time they comfortably sit on the interest earned by my funds releasing them from Thursday till Tuesday
I joined Square in late November 2015. Until March 28, 2016 at 11;53 a.m. I was singing their praises. I once contacted hone support and got a call back within an hour or two. At 11:54 a.m. I was abruptly terminated under “Section 6” of the agreement, which relates to “high risk” activities. The only category that seemed to fit was “bankruptcy law.” I practice in bankruptcy courts but not representing debtors. In short, it is no different than representing people on speeding tickets.
I was unable to contact them by phone and two requests for communication via their customer assistance site has led to a black hole. I would be happy to resume using them and if they actually new my business I’d make money for them. This has put me out of business until I replace their services.
Square is a “bad hell “company. We are lucky to flee from Square because we got bad guts when we were curious surfing the website. Oh, my gosh! Square does not have a real rep and does not communicate with anyone by phone. Even they do not communicate and do not respond to inquiries. It is SCAM. We emailed a basic inquire to Square 3 times and never heard back from Square. At worst of all, we requested the Square sales office to call us for opening account because there is loop to run. The sales reps did not contact us anyway. It is 100% SCAM!
DO NOT RECOMMEND! We read the reviews a lot before purchasing and unfortunately we still did it. I regret it!
We have been back and forth with customer service and the dispute team and it has not be helpful. Our company is suffering because of the Square’s lack of communication and actions. It took about 4 days to be contacted by the Square after seeing a withdraw of $5,745.66 on our account from the Square. You cannot get a hold of customer service without a code and I could not find my code anywhere. I called several times a day and emailed at least 5 times and was still not contacted by anyone.
We are a small family owned business who had a stubborn customer who made a dispute, but it did not take long for them to realize they were wrong and cancel the dispute. They made our account negative a few times and tried multiple times to take out the money. The dispute was canceled by our customer and the Square still took out the $5,745.66 from our account. The Square should have canceled the debit immediately but instead debited our account 3 days after the dispute was canceled.
This has taken up a lot of our time and we cannot conduct business without that money. We are a small business and something like this puts us in a bind. We have vendors to pay and projects to start and we can’t run smoothly because of the Square.
I am very disappointed and will be looking for a replacement for the Square. I will not be recommending the Square to anyone and I will be reviewing on every page I can find to stop people from getting the Square. We just started our business and the Square has made this nothing but difficult.
Dispute it with your bank. They’ll get your money back. Square did this crap too me numerous times. I got my money back every time, and finally closed the bank acct. To this day, months later, square is still trying to debit the bank acct that was closed. I know because they keep sending me emails. customers stole from me, and square allows it. Now they had to refund the customers, they were attacking my bank account
Max, they did it to me on 3/9/16. they claimed my original sender for money sent to me in March 2015 disputed charges. I contacted the original sender who is a friend. He said he can’t dispute bank charges past 60 days and didn’t want the money back. Plus, the Square website says refunds can only be processed through them in 60 days. They violated their own policy by extracting funds 363 days after they cleared AND blamed the sender! The sender has yet to hear from Square because he never filed a dispute!
I reported it to my bank and disputed these charges. I hope the odds will be in my favor and I will get my money back. 363 days! Let’s think about that for a moment…everyone get a new debit card if you’ve ever had a Square account with your existing card. spare yourself the annoyance of this floating money fraud company.
This has been one of the worst most hurtful experiences ever. I finally figured a way to make extra money out side of my regular 9-5 and for a brief moment the square really seemed like a blessing . As soon as I got to a good point and had a very successful day my funds were put on hold with no warning . I tried getting the elusive customer code with absolutely no luck. I sent an email to the “customer support ” and in response I got an email back stating my account will be deactivated with no chance of a reverse decision and my funds will be held no less than 150 days possibly 180 . I feel helpless and robbed.
Square let me process 4 transactions. on the 5th they said i was a high risk and holding my funds for 90 days now i can’t get a hold of a human in the company how is this allowed??????
Hello Nicholas,
Do you have a update on your situation with square regarding them holding your funds?
This is the most awful experience I have ever had with a company. We signed up for a square reader and I had to dig around on the internet for a phone number to talk to an actual person instead of an email. The customer code was no where I could find (which they require to talk to a person) so I emailed for the code. The wrong one was sent. When I called the 855 number and entered the code on prompt the automated line said it was wrong. Back to the drawing board of sending emails and begging for the right code. I have not even received my square reader in the mail yet and at this point they can keep it I am going with some else. They can keep their free website and business help I am not dealing with this. Not a good experience so if you are low on patience don’t bother and if you happen to have a lot of patience it will be pushed to the limit with this company.
SQ is the worst company for customer service I have ever seen!!!! We made a mistake in setting up our account I admit! But they collected money for our Charity; then deactivated our account! Now they want answer the phone to help. We collected money for the University of Missouri Athletic Department last week & thought this process would be easier! Boy was I mistaken they don’t pick up the phone & if they deactivate your account they for sure want talk to you!!! I went to their office yesterday in St Louis to speak with someone & they wouldn’t talk to me!!! I did get mad & frustrated but they said if I didn’t leave they would call the police! We are going to do a tweeter champagne against them starting today!!!
THEY ARE THE WORST! Don’t use them unless you want FRUSTRATION & PAIN!
I was trying to switch to Square. I processed a few cards but had some questions about the verification process. I sent a request to have someone call numerous times. I got an email with a phone number and a code to use that was invalid. We are not a virtual company. I process over $1M per year in Credit cards and insist on customer service.
I was told they were going to hold my funds for 90 days. My business is high risk. It has been over 90 days. I have not received my funds. When i call the customer service number i need a code. I have my code. I enter my code and it says that’s not it. Its not it because they deactivated my account. Now with no way to contact them except through email, they are keeping my money. They don’t respond through email. I am contacting a lawyer today. This company is a scam!!!
I had the same thing happen!:( what did your lawyer say?
I am going thru this right now except they say they holding mine for 180 days..I have been using square for 4 years now and I have never had a problem until now..please keep us informed on what your lawyer has to say!!
FYI I have been fighting Square since 09/2013 and have never EVER received any of the $8,000+ they withdrew from my business account. I contacted a CLASS ACTION ATTORNEY in Columbus, Ohio and he was very interested in the case. After sending him Squares contract he contacted me several days later and said they had an iron clad contract, basically saying they can “deactivate and withdraw funds” at anytime for any reason. I have been blocked from all of their websites/forum/facebook accounts because I will not stop until Jack Dorsey and his company is exposed as a PONZI scheme. Worse than Madoff, at least he went after the millionaires and not small business
does anyone know if they consider account that they closed but that appear to be open considered dormant i got this from there terms and conditions
paragraph 32
Dormant Square Accounts
If there is no activity in your Square Account (including access or payment transactions) for at least two years, consecutively, and you have a Balance, we will notify you by sending an email to the email address associated with your Square Account and give you the option of keeping your Square Account open and maintaining the Balance, withdrawing the Balance, or requesting a check. If you do not respond to our notice within thirty days, we will automatically close your Square Account and escheat your funds in accordance with applicable law, and if permitted, to Square.
ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE!!!! They deactivated our account without any notice, saying that our funds would be held for 90 days and there is no way to reverse this decision. WE ARE A LEGITIMATE BUSINESS. There IS NO FRAUDULENT activity on our account whatsoever, so the fact that they are suggesting this is ABSURD. We are reporting them to the Better Business Bureau. DO NOT USE SQUARE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. We are contactin our attorney tomorrow.
We were just deactivated today as well but we were not told why. I don’t understand how they can deactivate and not tell why. They made good money off of my company & now all of a sudden they are going to deactivate????
Purchased the Square device last week. Set up account. Took first payment from a customer on Saturday. Checked account Monday morning March 21, 2016 only to see no deposit. Checked Square account. Had a notification that they needed more information (government ID, receipts, invoice etc). Sent what I had. Called them at 12:00PM my time which is 9AM their time. Said they received the information. Got an email a few hours later that they needed bank statements. Sent them VIA fax. Called them back 45 minutes later. The guy (very rude) said once I hung up with him he would process the information. Here is the swift kick to the butt, they sent me an email saying they had cancelled my account due to suspicious activity. How the heck is their suspicious activity if I only made one transaction? I had done one Saturday but cancelled it because the device wasn’t working. Got it to finally work so their was only one transaction showing. Contacted the customer and let them know that I was issuing a refund. Then find out it takes 2-5 days to do that. So all in all, I have to wait over a week to get paid for work that has been done which was a residential repaint. So as far as I am concerned, if you want to waste your money on a Square device and only be able to contact someone IF you have a customer code, go for it. THIS WAS A BIG WASTE OF TIME AND $10 +TAX FOR A PIECE OF PLASTIC TO PLUG INTO MY PHONE. “SQUARE” CAN SHOVE IT AS FAR UP ITS BUTT AS IT WILL GO. WILL NEVER WASTE MY TIME OR MONEY ON THEIR CRAP AGAIN!!
This little card reader is only useful if you have zero options other than the customer’s card.
They charge way too much ( like real estate agents) and offer nothing in return except taking days to process your charge and, there is no phone help unless you are a paid member.
Where does all of the millions of dollars go that they are making off us?
Pay a person to answer the phone. This sucks
Worst app you could ever use. dont even think about contacting customer service because they wont message or call you back.
I do not use square up and I receive unsolicited emails with no link to unsubscribe. How can I stop this annoying action on their part. Will never purchase ANYTHING that is processed through square up.
I am getting the same unsolicited emails indicating they are taking monies from my bank account. I have tried unsuccessfully to reach these individuals because I am unwilling to sign up and get this customer code they require to answer the phones. This is beginning to really worry me and I refuse to sign up for this service just to be able to contact them. Thinking very hard about reporting them to the authorities, if I can find someone that can help me. I would never use a service like this that has access to my monies, but won’t even allow you to contact them!
I have had the same problem. I have never had an account, but receive approx. 3 e mails a week requesting my info. I cant stop it.
I did two transactions with my card reader last week and the money has not been deposited. I see it in the history of my account and sent both customers receipts. I tried to contact customer service and call the toll free #855-700-6000. I was instructed to get a code to talk to customer service and followed their directions to go to http://www.square.com/code to get my code. The link brought me to a login page and then instead of giving a code, it brought me to the “Contact Us” page. This is so annoying that you cannot speak to a live person and get customer service.
Square’s Non existent live Customer Service is a joke. I’m a current Square Customer – I’m out shopping around because of there lack of Customer Service.
I Hate them!!
While I enjoy using Square for payments taken in my art studio, my experiences with customer service related to their online store have been shockingly poor. I can spend weeks hounding them for the answer to a question about my online store. You’d think that only 2 people work in customer service. After complaining about their slow customer service on Twitter, I would hear back from them immediately, but the person they’d have contact me (via email) would give pat answers that were irrelevant to my question. So, I’d have to say my biggest frustration with them is not being heard. Their responses seem scripted and designed to shoo the customer away as quickly as possible. It is one thing to send cheery responses (with exclamation points!!) saying they’ll be getting in touch soon, or to feel free to send any further questions their way, and it is another to actually listen and take steps to be helpful. I would like to continue using Square, and I like the look of my Square online store, but I’m losing my respect for them due to how they handle customer service. It was very interesting to find this article and see that so many other customers have had similarly poor service.
I am sick and tired of receiving emails from these people. I have no earthly idea who the hell they are or how the hell they got my email address.
It’s always something to this effect, and they always threaten to take money out of my bank account: “We have not received a response from you regarding the $1,973.27 payment dispute on a transaction that was processed on January 24, 2016 If you would like to challenge or accept this dispute, please respond to information Request Form within 24 hours from the date of this notification.” There’s more, but I’m sure you get the idea.
I have emailed them about this but they have never acknowledged any of my communications. This is irritating and makes me more than just a little bit nervous. I have had the same email address for about 15 years, and it worries me that they have it and that they seem to have an account attached to it. I have begun changing my password quite often.
I have been with Square for a few years now and have not had any issues. I am a one man automotive repair shop and use Square once or twice a month. On March 2nd I used Square for a credit card transaction with the customer present for approx. $1600. I was notified by e-mail that the transaction was successful and the money would be in my account. Later in the evening I received an email from Square saying they needed 3 months worth of bank statements, a government document showing my business is legit, copy of an invoice and a copy of a purchase order in order to receive my funds. So by Friday, March 4, all the documentation was sent and was told it would be sent to their review committee. I received an email Friday at 7 pm (the time they close) saying ” We’re sorry to inform you that we are deactivating your account. Our Account Services team reviewed your account and found a pattern of transactions associated with high-risk activity. For further information about our policies, you can review section 42 of the Square Seller Agreement. We regret that, starting today, you will no longer be able to process transactions using Square. Any funds currently in your account will be held for 90 days before being released to your linked bank account. ” Not sure what the high-risk activity is since we only use them once or twice a month and the charges are usually $200-$300.
Therefore, this means I cannot have my funds until June 2. Just like all the comments I have read on here, you can’t call and talk to anybody without a code, and you can’t get a code when your account is “deactivated”. So in the meantime I have vendors that want money and I have other payments due and if payments are not made on time that creates more expense for me. I have sent Square an email asking for a better explanation of the deactivation, but doubt I will hear anything. So needless to say I am in the process of looking for a more reliable credit card company without monthly fees for my small business.
Please notify me of followup comments via e-mail. Janna
Unfortunately I doubt you will Ebert see your money in June. I was told the same thing in September 2013.
Everything you said here is exactly what I’m going through, the money better be released to me June 8
NOT as advertised. Downloaded APP, verified account and went pretty smooth.
Good luck getting your deposits within 2 days, make it 3-5 days if you have charges on a Friday!
Customer services is ridiculous! They enforce priority call backs and literally takes 2-3 days! Was I supposed to wait on hold for 3 days if I didn’t choose the call back? HORRIBLE!
THEN, once your up and running, they interrupt your business after a few weeks to RE VERIFY and hold your deposits????
Don’t know how much longer I’ll be with them. Aside from the RE verification, I can’t be with a company with zero customer service!
They are holding thousand of dollars because they decided my account was a high risk account and I won’t get my money for 60 days?!?!?!
The absolute worst company I have ever dealt with. They are completely incompetent, don’t know anything about how to use or work their product, and when they don’t have an answer they say they may be able to fix in the future but not now. I wouldn’t recommend them to my worst enemy. Complete morons.
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Square customer support is completely terrible. Go with Shopkeep.
If you have an issue with square, don’t expect to ever get a human on the phone to help you.
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No one works there. Can’t get customer code. I leaving company.
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Horrible company. I ordered my square card reader and they took $49 out of my account on 1/12/16 and said they shipped it 1/22/16. It never showed up ao weeks later i was asked to private message on face book and they said they reordered me one on 2/7/16 and then took another $49 payment and said it shipped on 2/13/16 and as of 3/3/16 still not here. I then went back to there facebook page and then they blocked me right away and now im out of money twice and no card reader, Does anyone know a phone number where i can actually talk to someone??.ive called the number on their site and it wont actually let u talk. Also im interested in any info on anything with filing a suit against them..#Scam#Liars#Thieves
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Mark in Compliance replied to my email inquiry concerning deactivating my credit card processing.
Please be advised, Square will deactivate credit card processing, reply to to email 4-6 days later, and will never give you your customer code to call in and speak to someone!
Sqaure does not want to speak to you.
They will tell you that your activity is “generally associated with high risk activity” = but Square won’t ask for nor has seen a single financial document.
YOUR LEGITIMANT COMPANY WILL BE INSTANTLY CRIPPLED!!!!
The following is my reply to the Compliance Department:
Mark
Interesting feedback,
Wells Fargo Underwriting approved Virtual Terminal as my new credit card provider and other of my vendors that were using my American Express as payment for services to them, but Square deactivated services.
My financials were provided to WF underwriting.
What I don’t understand is how a close look at my form of payment to a hands on underwriting department found no issues, but a service provider like Square who has never seen a single financial document can tell me that my practices are generally associated with high risk activity.
After fees collected on hundreds of thousands of dollars processed, you would think that before deactivating my account Square would ask for my 800+ credit score on all 3 credit major credit providers, I have $200k of available credit lines with some of the highest profile banks, including a $100k spending limit with American Express per month alone
I phoned American Express to go over terms and conditions of my card and activity = no issues found. But Square hasn’t seen one financial document – but my activities are are deemed High Risk
Wells Fago Underwriters looked much closer – including pulling my credit = no issues found. But Square hasn’t seen one financial document – but my activities are are deemed High Risk
Individuals associated with High Risk Activity do not have 18 years of established credit accounts with $200k in credit lines = NOBODY!
Individuals associated with High Risk Activity don’t provide financials
*I don’t expect a response and I’m sure no one after this email has the $&@” to call me*
*Should Square contact me = I would love for you to be provided what was given to Wells Fargo Underwriting*
Assumption is the mother of all screw ups
Call me = PLEASE
I’ll give full disclosure for Square to speak American Express, get all 3 credit scores, and contact Credit Union of Denver = be prepared to to get laughed at!
Call me = PLEASE
I’ll hand over all my fully compliant licenses, general liability, insurance umbrella, Colorado state certificate of good standing with the Colorado secretary of states office including no complaints ever filed against myself or my company that began in California in 8/2005.
Let’s square up
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Try this number for Square – (415) 375-3176.
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Square is unable to stop unauthorised charges on my account. I have to call them every month to get it stopped.
They will not help ! I have used this service for years and they are not keeping up with their own growth.
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Go to your bank and have them put a stop payment on it
I work building websites. I charged a customer $2000 for work which was completed. I had paperwork, emails, etc to verify work was carried out. One day the customer decides he no longer wanted to pay. I got a 1500 chargeback. Square took the money right out of the account without warning and overdrew our account so I shut it down. Square still tried to take the extra $500. Now Three years later square is trying to get the extra $500. The offered no support or resolution service and no response at the time.
This is the email chain
“From Me”
This customer stole the services from me and you provided no support whatsoever. We provided you with paperwork, contracts, emails and various other means of proof that the customer had used the services we offer and you did nothing. The Better Business Bureau took my side on the matter.
At the time you provided no phone support or mediation services to assist us as your customers. In fact at the time of the dispute you provided no phone contact for us at all and there was no even a listed number for the company. Your support was weak at best which is well documented on the internet.
I consider this a terrible disservice to us followed by no resolution. In face we lost much more than this $500 due to you pulling the money out of our account with NO warning. You didn’t even hold the money in an escrow account pending resolution.
You lost us as a customer due to this and I have moved all my business to Paypal who do provide support and resolution.
Perhaps you should consider either eliminating this balance completely or drastically reducing it before I will even consider settling with you and am prepared to take this matter to a local small claims court
From Square
Thanks for writing in. As a point of clarification, all cardholders in the United States are afforded the right to dispute any and all transactions appearing on their statements that they do not agree with. This right is protected by Federal statute and enforced via the card associations. The responsibility to address billing disputes remains incumbent upon the merchant regardless of which issuer, acquirer, or payments service provider you elect to do business with.
Please note that all the information you supplied at the time of the chargeback notification was used as part of our case. The cardholder’s credit card issuer is ultimately responsible for determining the resolution of the chargeback.
Square does not control the outcome of the chargeback decisions reached by the issuing bank in a credit card transaction. By accepting the terms of the Square Seller Agreement, you agreed to accept liability for your chargebacks.
If there is some reason why a payment cannot be made immediately, please respond so that we can make arrangements that will be mutually agreeable. Perhaps we can work out a payment schedule that would be realistic for your present circumstances.
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The BBB should be ashamed giving this company an a rating. Zero customer service. This is one of the most fraudulent companies I have ever come across. They can just take your money and never talk to you. It tells me a lot about the laws in the cc industry and about how little a BBB rating means.
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Can’t get my square wireless reader to pair with my phone. Have updated everything. Trying to contact square but cannot get a customer code. When you go to the web site they tell you to get your code from you get an email form. Fill out the email form and you get a canned reply: We will respond shortly. NO CODE no way to get in touch with them. This is a stinky system!!!! Will be moving my business to Pay Pal!
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Square’s customer service is terrible. There is no live help. Imagine this…all of the transactions from your business for the week are automatically deposited into your checking acct for the week…except…the money is not there in your account. You attempt to call Square and day after day they report they are not accepting phone calls. You email them your issue and days later still no response. Pretty scary right? Well it’s been reality for me. Stay FAR away!!!
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Im having the same problem.I had to refund my clients money this morning.
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As with many on-line companies, they have poor customer service. It’s difficult to reach anyone. Having a few FAQ’s on your website is not customer service. I’m trying to give you my business, and you’re making it as painful as possible. I may have to go back to Pay Pal. They charge more, but no problems and good customer service. Jack Dorsey is ruining this company through poor execution and management.
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I do not own a company and have no reason to accept payments from anyone. But this company as well as one called Stripe send me sevearl emails every single day. They want personal info. Can anyone tell me how to ge them to stop sending me emails? I have marked them as spam and they begin coming to my inbox within a couple of days. Frustrating.
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We created a Square account and ran a few transactions everything looked good. We then ran $8000 through the system and they indefinitely held the money. There is no one to talk to. When you go to the website to resolve an issue they require a code to call and when you follow the link to get the code it goes to an FAQ and there is no code. This is a fraudulent and non-responsive organization. We are reporting them to all of the state and federal agencies that regulate the credit card industry. Do not make that mistake we made and think it is a fast way to start taking payments. Take the tie to get with a real processor or work with your bank or even Paypal. Square is bad for business we still do not have anyway to get the $8000 back or speak to anyone. When we send in emails we get non-responsive replies. Stay away from Square.
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I cannot reach a person at square. All I do is send email after email. Someone hacked into my account and changed my bank account. No one will contact me back. meanwhile my money is on hold.
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This exact thing happened to me last week and I sent email after email, after the sixth email I sent to them by that time I was very angry , I said I was gonna contact the better business bureau because I couldn’t even get into my account , not only did someone change my banking information they changed my email, this was just unacceptable , the costumer service is beyond ridiculous, why would we have to get this angry to hear back from someone. And to top it off when I did get in touch with someone she told be they would send my money within seven business days. Smh I’m taking my business elsewhere.
Square was a great idea. There are a few things that have become so onerous, it may well be worth finding another payment option. When it is available, support is atrocious and of very little to no support.
1) Customers can avoid ultimately paying for merchandise bought with Square by simply alleging their chip enabled credit was not chip transacted. At least in Canada, Square has no capacity to accept pin enabled cards, so every transaction is little more than a crap shoot and rock solid sales agreements and proof of sale are summarily ignored in favour of returning transaction amounts to dead beat customers.
2) Most notably you can rarely, if ever, reach anyone on the telephone with a question or concern.
3) The verification process is cumbersome, one dimensional, subjective and ridiculous. It contemplates that we are all selling widgets and has little capacity for verification of a lawyer, Dr. or personal reseller account.
4) The exchange of information is faulted. When there is a problem with a transaction, Square gives you very little information with which to determine who the ‘Disputing’ customer is. They just you and amount and a date; and the amount of not what you charged the customer, but that amount less transaction fees. God forbid you should have multiple transactions of the same amount on the same day.
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I would never use square again. They let you open an account only to hold your funds. It has been 91 days and I can’t speak to anyone nor get a refund. I would never use them again. They are scanmers
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Square is a truly substandard and non- responsive company. After discontinuing our service shortly after set up, they subsequently and continually attempted to debit our bank account for a card reader that had been on back order when we first applied with them months ago. We can no longer use, and therefore no longer need any of their equipment. Understand that they tried charging us for the equipment over two months after letting us know they couldn’t accommodate our business. We notified them by email before their first attempt to charge us that they had declined our business and that we didn’t need their equipment. A live person responded by email that they had forwarded our email and that we would hear back directly from square shorty. We didn’t receive the promised response and instead they began hitting our bank account. We have now sent three email and attempted to call with extremely long hold times that had to be discontinued. We are still waiting for any substantive response or responsible behavior on their part.
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They fucked me over $884.26, I hate this company now with a passion, they ruined my life, I created a small business and put everything I had into it and they deactivated my account without reasoning after 3 days and I have $884.26 pending for 3 months, I needed that money !!
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They did the exact same thing to me How is this possible? What laws are they operating under?
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Did you ever get your money?
Great set up and easy to use. But should you ever need some support or an actual person to help you, GOOD LUCK!!! I have never experienced such HORRIBLE customer service from anyone let alone a large company I have been trusting with my money. Seriously, take your business ANY WHERE BUT SQUARE!
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square is a piece of crud. first of all they want more information on everything and anything i bought it to use it only for a weekend when a lady paid for my translation and paralegal work by credit card using square it wasnt that much it was arround 2000$ they want a copy of the reciept which was a custum amount .. now they want a copy of the damn receipt and a copy of her card i never knew i needed to keep a copy of the lady’s card cause it wouldnt be safe for a custumer to keep such sensitive information….. now second of all contacting custumer care is a pain in my neck being asked for a custumer id so you have to file a question wait hours for them to give you a custumer id then wait the next day cause they responded too late their buisness hours were over so had to wait next day issue is still not resolved
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There customers service is the worst, I got an email a few days ago stating that I need to verify my account information, and they want my SSN # and some other personal stuff, I didn’t feel comfortable sending any of my personal info over the bet, especially when I’m not 100% sure it’s not some hacker trying to get my personal info, and also there would be no reason to verify my info when I did that over a year ago Sqaure already has my business EIN # and bank info and I have been using the credit card reader on a regular basis, so anyways I called them up to make sure they sent me the email and if they did I would just verify my info over phone. Oh also the email stated that if I don’t contact them within 1 – 2 business days they will put a hold on all future transactions, so I called them ASAP yesterday morning, I was on hold for 30 mnutes. Then there recording tells me that due to high volume calls if I leave my number I will not loose my spot and they will call me back, well I did that and never got a call back, it’s now been 2 days and still no call back, I even went on there website and left an email and still no return email or call back, so I did my part and contacted them or tried to contact them so now beings they never returned my call according to there email if I try to use the credit card reader the funds will be on hold, so if I don’t hear back from them by the end of the day, I’m going to get online and look for another mobile credit card reader and I’m gong to close my account with them, to be fair. Every time I used the reader it worked perfectly and the funds were deposited into my account fast , but if I can’t get through to customer service when I need to then it’s worthless to me to keep using square. After all your dealing with people’s money here.
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There is a notice on their website that alerts customers to the fact that this is a phishing scam.
I don’t even have a Square account and they claim they are going to take money out of my account. You can’t even call the company and resolve the matter. I have tried to e-mail them also. I guess if money comes out of my account, I will be talking to a lawyer.
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I am getting the same emails. I also don’t have an account with them.
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on 2/15/2016 I had to have my dog put down. I paid my vet with my bank card. He uses Square. Square declined several times. As of this morning 2/17 Square is still telling him I was declined. But my bank shows they took The $495 out not once but twice! So neither of us have the money in our accounts! My bank checked into it and said the two payments were accepted then immediately reversed by square with no reason given as to why and that it will be two weeks before the money goes into my account and back on my card. So evidently they told him they declined but actually approved it then reversed so they could make interest during the hold? All I know is since they did it twice I am broke. I’ve been through a VERY hard year and just getting on my feet financially. I’m in the middle of a move so on top of losing my much loved friend,I now have no funds to turn utilities on or pay other fees to move.I could actually end up homeless and lose everything I have left because of this company and I don’t even use them. Not the vets fault at all. In fact after reading these comments I wouldn’t be surprised if he has further issues beyond my payment with them.
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They have held over $6,000 from our small business for two months even after we have submitted the requested documentation – they just keep asking for more. They are impossible to reach by phone and throw up barrier after barrier to obtaining payment. I wish I had read these comments before using them. A frustrating mess and terrible experience. We will never use them again and I would never recommend them to anyone. Not sure how we are going to get our money out of them. They have managed to make it extremely difficult to resolve issues.
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has anyone received the funds after the 90 days??
ive been waiting for over 6 months they owe me 44k
Not only is it impossible to use Square , they send hundreds of Spam emails.
Just received two emails from Square today speaking of thousands of dollars of charges and chargebacks that will affect by bank accounts. The only problem is that we don’t have a Square account and never gave them any of our bank info. We don’t have one of the readers with which to charge folks credit cards. It seems that Square has a big problem. One Fraud by one person cost them over $4,000,000. It seems like the justice department needs to shut them down until there is a resolution to all of their problems.
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Not easy to get hold of. My Square app is’t working and I tried on my laptop with no help signing in. Requested password reset ….still
problems. They need an easier way to get hold of Customer Service!
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We have been loyal customers of Square for 2 years now. We get our money 24 hours after the sale. Now all of a sudden we are not getting our money. It has been 7 days and Square now has $19000.00 of our money and they will not talk to us. They are in “meetings”, their support staff in New York doesn’t know what California is doing. I think they have absconded with our money.
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you charged my credit card $30.00 for no reason. I am a retired single woman on a fixed income and have absolutely no need of your product or have I ever used your product ,whatever it may be. You not have a customer service phone number leaves me to believe I have been scammed by you and will be contacting the authorities
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Terrible mailing and customer service. I no longer use them or recommend them to my clients. Trust me, you don’t want to hear the long list of complaints I have. A nightmare I cant get away from quick enough.
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they are my card processor, they hold funds all the time and make my bank acct go neg, they say they dont cover that , but they cause it.they cant be reached by phone, you must use a code and wait for a call back. they finally called me 2 hours later, i told them to release funds, they dont need to hold my money , never had tis happen with my bank processor. they cost more but i can go there or call them
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They held my account for verification and holding $2000 of mine from my online store. The guy from Square called me to verify my company, and said today we will release your funds. Then 3 days later, deactivated my account saying the hold will be for 90 days and then I will get my money. Stay Away from this Company.
This is the email they sent me – after 10 days of no Person On The Phone – They have no customer service at all.
Hello Amna,
We’re sorry to inform you that we are deactivating your account. Our Account Services team reviewed your account and found a pattern of transactions associated with high-risk activity.
For further information about our policies, you can review section 42 of the Square Seller Agreement.
We regret that, starting today, you will no longer be able to process transactions using Square. Any funds currently in your account will be held for 90 days before being released to your linked bank account.
If you’d prefer to receive funds more quickly, you should consider refunding the payments back to the original cards and seeking alternate forms of payment. (Please note that we will refund all the fees, too.)
Refunds are available within 60 days of the original payment. To process a refund, log in to the Square dashboard.
Use the date selector tool to locate the specific payment.
Click the payment you’d like to refund, then click “Issue Refund”.
Select the reason you’re refunding the payment, and click “Issue Refund.”
Unfortunately, our decision to deactivate your account is final. Due to security reasons and the obligations of our agreements with card networks and other financial institutions, we cannot reverse this decision and are unable to provide additional details.
Again, we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Sincerely,
Square Account Services
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I to had the exact same email. Only difference is my name. Word for word. They are holding $6000 of my hard earned money. So if this is happening to a lot of small business owners than square is making a lot of money off our funds. Example if they have 1000 people like me that ran a $6000 transaction than they now have $6,000,000 to play with for 90 days. They are making a killing. I can’t believe this company is on the nyse. Some one needs to step in on this practice. This can’t be legal.
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HAPPENED TO ME ….HELD 3000….. i went balistic on twitter and facebook for 2 days in a row
and they finally contacted by about resolving ” my problem” still never released the funds to me , but sent
them back to the customers….luckily they still did business with me after all of this mess….
they are a corrupt company MAKING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OFF INTEREST WHILE HOLDING LEGITIMATE
FUNDS of hardworking small business owners….. donot do business with square!!!!!
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Just now involved in the same situation. I am frantic. How are they allowed to steal people’s money?
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Me too. This just happened to me Tuesday. They said my money won’t be available until May
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Terrible customer support, it looks like my account was compromised, I can not log in to my account and that’s why I can not access customer support by the phone, I wrote them 5 emails so far 1 week ago without any response.
I hope they lose a lot of customers, because they are just collecting the money without providing any support to their customers!
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Square deactivated account after sending numerous emails asking for purchase orders and invoices. I sent all required documentation and square deactivated account for no legitimate reason..
Find another way to get your money….. Square is on the way out and there are cheaper methods anyway. Save yourself the hassle and the problems they bring to your business.
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Square will not take me off their email list. No way to contact them directly without an account. They are not the kind of people I do business with. Tried to block their emails, they change their email and continue.
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Poor customer support, rather no customer support. Squareup lists a phone support number but requires a Customer Code in order to accept the phone call. I have an active account and have logged onto the site and searched through accounting and dashboard pages and found no Customer Code. The support page doesn’t even provide instructions on obtaining code. It appears to be purposely hidden to reduce support calls from customers.
I’ve had an account for almost 3 years with Square and never really needed to speak to customer support so this was a complete surprise when I noticed my deposits were no longer being made but my customers were being charged. The funds are just sitting with Square in pending deposit status. The only option I had was to submit a service ticket through the online form which generated a case number but that is not accepted by the phone filter system.
I expect better customer support from a financial service company.
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I have the same problem now with square and I have been emailing them for the last 4 days and I got no response from them .what can I do to get my found from them?
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Did you ever get your funds?
Square’s customer service sucks!! can not get a phone number, doesn’t respond to email request for help!
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I just signed up for Square. How do I get this allusive customer code to call a real person? I click on the instructions to sign in to get customer code and it just puts me in a loop to keep signing in. If you’re gonna offer eBay like features, please have eBay like simplicity.
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I have searched to find three different customer service numbers – each have the same recording to enter a customer service number-that forces you to provide your information to sign-up.
I don’t even have a SQUARE and I just want to ask some question – not sign up!
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Beware if your business is an LLC, corporation or partnership.
When one of your officers or employees who is not an owner of your company or its bank account goes online to set up the Square account for your company, and that person provides their name, address and last four digits of their Social Security number to “verify their identity,” your LLC, corporate or partnership Square account will then and forever be tied to that person’s individual name and Social Security number, no matter what tax ID information you provide to Square for your company then and thereafter.
Square lies when they say that the only reason they need the name and last four digits of the Social Security number for the person creating the account is to “verify their identity.” Actually, on Square’s books, that person is designated then and forever as the sole OWNER and controller of the account, no matter what differing account information you provide.
What then happens when that officer or employee of your company is sued or divorced or gets into trouble with the IRS or whatever? You guessed it: You and our bank account are in trouble.
Square deceives LLCs, corporations and partnerships into believing that their Square “business account” is a Square commercial account. But it’s not a commercial account. It’s actually a personal account, then and forever tied to the person who provided their name, address and last four digits of their Social Security number to “verify their identity” when they set up the Square account for their employer.
The same is true with one or more other companies that provide these types of services.
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A month ago I noticed that our daily summary hadn’t included a huge tab from the night before meaning, we looked short. I called Square and they apologized profusely saying the transaction wasn’t “captured” and they “will push it through now.” Had I not called, we would’ve been short thousands of dollars. Fast forward 30 days, and here I am today – this time for over 8K in funds from last night. “I’m so sorry – the transaction wasn’t captured. This NEVER happens.”
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What number did you call or how did you get a response???
How did you call them? All the numbers tied to them seem to require a code that you don’t have access to once you log in. Please let me know!! Thank You!!
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Doesn’t post Immediately as advertised….. Charges extra 1% … Takes days to show up in account.. Support is full of shit and placates you all the way… I’m sure they are paying for positive comments on site…
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I loved square for 6 months. Then out of the blue they want me to verify my account so they can release my money. They have held it hostage for over a week because as much as you verify and even try to call you don’t get answers. When calling they want you to type in a customer code that doesn’t exist. Very frustrating, I hope I can find a more reliable company.
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sadly, once they ask you to verify your account = they have already closed your account
pointless to submit any info they ask. they just keep it on file, and close your account
file a complaint with the BBB
Make sure you check the box “would you like to talk to the media about your situation”
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Same with me they have aprox 18,000.00 of my money with no way of contacting them. I have tried a few numbers and they all will hang up if you do not have a customer code. I finally was sent a customer code and called them back 1-855-700-6000 Im sure you all are familiar with that number and the number they provided was invalid. I tried this several more times with the same results. If anyone has any better luck please post !!!!! My blood is beyond boiling at this point !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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They are hold 1,500 of my money deactivated my account and the reason was high risk activity.
Fuck these people the should go out of business. Bbb need to review the shady ass service they offer
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How about this and others beware. I just received and email that Square up attempted to take money out of my banking account and it was declined. I have not bought anything with anyone who used this type of processing, nor do I have an account with them. Never have. But they want me to verify my banking information. No phone number to call unless I sign in or sign up. How bogus.
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We received the same email and we are at a loss? We never even heard of them????
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I have had a similar experience. Scammers are impersonating Square and are asking for verification of accounts, reporting deposits to accounts, notifying of holds place on funds, and even alerting to suspicious activity – all on nonexistent accounts – in what I believe is a well-crafted phishing scam. Such emails began arriving in my inbox a couple of months ago, and because I do not have a Square account, I just marked them spam without opening them But they continued to come and did not go directly to my spam folder. Finally, a week ago, I contacted the real Square, and they confirmed that the emails were not legitimate. However, they certainly look legitimate. I wonder how many account holders have been duped by these bogus emails and have clicked on the links and given the scammers verification information. I believe the real Square has an obligation to take whatever steps are necessary to bring law enforcement down on these scammers because they are stealing Square’s identity. If anyone who has an account with Square receives these bogus emails, please pressure Square to report the problem to the appropriate law enforcement agency.
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How did you contact them?? We just got this weird email stating that our bank account had been verified…..well, we have never signed up wanting the square, let alone gave info regarding our bank info. I have tried 4 different numbers and not having this “code” can not speak with anyone…thanks for letting me bug you!!
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I have the same issue – what was the result?
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I applied for a Square Credit Card Account and was sent a Square devise. I opened the account, had my bank account verified then took my first payment of $2,500.00. Square contacts me after the invoice was paid by the customer to verify my business account again (which has all the same information as my bank account that was originally verified by them) then informed me they are going to cancel my account because I am considered “high risk”. They give no definition or explanation, including why they didn’t categorize my in the first place as such and cancel my account BEFORE I took a payment. I have been selling online for over 15 years, have Platinum status, an impeccable business record & excellent customer service. So now I have the awkward situation of a customer who paid and Square is suggesting I ask him to cancel his payment and pay via another means, or I have to wait 90 days for the funds to clear before they are sent by Square to my business bank account (in the meantime, my Square account is still closed). This is a ridiculous situation to be in, it’s makes my business looks unprofessional. Square is the one who is “High Risk”, stay away and find another Credit Card Company to do business with.
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same thing happened to me. file a complaint with the BBB. Square will only reply to someone higher than them. They always reply to the BBB. You ill see hundreds of complaints like yours, and they get their money back faster. Square likes to hold money to collect interest on it. This keeps them in business
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Yes, I just went through this yesterday. It is so rude of them to let you accept payment from a client and then want to verify you. I even sent my client the invoice and she paid herself, which clearly tells she was willing to pay since I am a reputable supplier for over 5 years. I am going back to PayPal, square has a lot of drama with them. I immediately issued my client a refund through their site. I hope she receives it on time because they may make an excuse to hold that too. And now when I call to check on the status I can’t get through to square. Please stay away from this company because they will make you look bad in your customers eyes when you are honest. Luckily my clients are sweet but other clients are not. Bottom line STAY AWAY FROM SQUARE!
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This company is a joke just like all the other ones. They all follow the same protocol. They will freeze your money with no explanation, close your account with no explanation, request personal information, then shut down your account afterwards, they all read the same script for liability issues. It’s like talking to a robot. They just repeat everything off 1 piece of paper to prevent any lawsuits he said vs she said scenarios. They don’t think outside the box, putting themselves in our shoes, because that would just make too much sense.
After 5 year with no issues, they started asking for all kinds of documents, and i actually sent them everything. Had $1500 in the account and they shut my account down thinking they can keep my money. Filed a case with the BBB, and they quickly responded and said they will release the funds
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Square holding funds with no warning. I’m a very small businesses needing those funds daily. Thanks Square for screwing me up!!!
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Square has debited my account $1,000 because a customer falsely notified them that they were entitled to a $1,000 refund for a hotel stay. Squares response after 90 days was that this was an airline ticket and the ticket was not used. Square is either confused, engaged in overt fraud or simply a defrauding entity engaged in fraud. You cannot speak to anyone, you cannot get anyones’ name, there is no recourse to this firm stealing your money other than arbitration.
Stay away from Square, they are dishonest, devoid of communication and dishonest. They should be prosecuted for fraud.
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Yes just found out that square debit my account for $32; for their device that was never shipped to me as of 11/09/2015 and that I have never used as well and I was only to be charged per swipe 1%. a BUNCH OF THIEVES. I called my bank and they canceled the card and the pending transaction; 3 month later want to charge my card; they were hopeing that I wouldn’t notice. but the devil is a liar.
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I have a billing problem – the invoicing function isn’t working correctly – and to call Square you have to have a customer code, but there is no way to get one; all links send you to a generic online help, and none of the topics is the customer code. HORRIBLE.
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Last October I looked into the avenue of taking credit card payments and was immediately solicted by Square. over several months of being reminded if you will that i had not yet “Activated my account” the opportunity arrose to use the service and since i had received two card readers by this time figured why not? I on the spot listed my info a bank account ,did the test deposit that was ssupposed to take 2-3 days and accepted my first payment within 15 minutes… No problem this is great right…. not so fast… My next project and client are here on business of the late mothers estate and we negotiate a fair and acceptable deal… I then call square to ask abount deposits and turn around times etc. and informed we are good to go as stated in the agreement. plus i have indded used the service prior… Now my client is back in Texas where he resides and gives me written signed authorization to use his card as he wishes to finance this work, great option, and so i do and his card monitoring kicks it back and calls him before i could even dial…when i do he tells me run it again i just ok’d it with them… perfect and its done… since the work to be done is on a time sensitive schedule I again contact Square whos account rep informs me yes it went through 1-2 days and no problem this is on Jan 6th, Jan 8th i see no payment or deposit and go to the Square site where I find the Astris saying that a review is needed prior to releasing funds…just routine get some info and we will release the deposit… I inform them of all the details including my clients phone number the documentation and the time sensitive nature and the fall out that would happen should it be a problem… and again am told there was not even an issue and it wont happen again just a one time thing…. 4 days later I recieve an email 5 minutes before the close of their service hour informing me that I represent a fraud risk and they are permanantly and irrevocably closing my account, forcing a refund that will tie up the very funds needed to honor my contractual agreement and that they regret this but thats it thats all… They have no held my personal finances and the work due my client hostasge for 5 days and then inform me that im to issue a refund that will take anothe 10 to 14 days to process… Really? I have never in all my days been so blatantly humiliated and so shabily treated by a company that perform a service for monitary gain… I will indeed follow the words of advice and as it seems will have plenty of time to dedicate to the cause of making sure Im heard… Very diappointed and hopefully not ruined by bad practices and lack of fair dealings with Square…
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This is a shady business. Joined because a fellow co-worker recommended it. All was going well and processed over $2000 in sales in my first month. Got an e-mail stating I was in violation of the Terms of Service. Requested to have the Terms of Service sent to me outlining the allegation. They refuse to provide this documentation and stated I needed to refund the money. So they are now holding my money hostage with no validation. I contacted them stating my case, provided all the necessary documentation and still no answer other than it violates the Terms of Service. Let me be clear, these are valid transactions so let’s not go down the road of fraud. The only fraud being committed is by Square. STAY AWAY FROM SQUARE!!!!! They are shady, shady, shady!!!!!
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After receiving my first three payments the first day, they decided for unknown reason to terminate the account stating we were engaged in risky transactions. Before they deactivated the account they asked for every piece of paper you could ever imagine stating it was to verify our account. Despite the submission of all documents requested they still terminated the account. We have decided to not even pay any merchandise using square.
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I got the Square but then sales dropped off and I have not used it. People are only paying me with check and cash. The Square appears to be deactivated. It disappeared from my Iphone. But I was still charged $50.00 for the new version! I want my money back! There is no customer support at all! I feel like I was ripped off. I will never attempt use their service again.
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The most infuriating experience I have had to date with any company anywhere. The customer service is non existent while seemingly helpful they are actually only working in their best interests. They arbitrarily closed my account and froze the funds for no reason after I supplied everything they asked for and now I am forced to wait 3 months for the funds – a total nightmare !
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Carole – I AM GOING THROUGH THE SAME THING RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!! INFURIATING IS RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m absolutely mad about it. Please tell me how you finally got through to them.
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I do not have a Square Account, but a couple of months ago I began receiving emails from Square with captions like “Account Canceled.” I ignored them (did not open them) and marked them as spam. Since I don’t have a Square account, I could care less if it has been canceled. Yet the emails have continued to come, not in my spam folder, and the captions continue to warn about account deactivation, but some of them (e.g., today’s) concern “Payment Receipt.” I have no idea how Square, or an imposter, got my email address since it is a dedicated address. An internet search has not turned up any similar complaints about Square, so I am beginning to think someone may have set up an account under my address. Any suggestions how to get this to stop?
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I’m a health care provider. I try to use visa cards that are from health savings accounts. These cards have never been accepted by square and I can never get answers, or a live person for any help at all. I miss out on a lot of collections. This seems to be a serious fault in Squares services and i’m looking to jump ship to another company that can at least provide help via phone. I hate being left in the dark…
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I have been using square since 2012 and have never had anything out good experiences with them. I have had a couple of disputes but they made the process easy and took care of the entire thing for me. I always have my money in the account the next business day and the instant deposit option allows you access immediately to the days sales. The square capital is so great for small companies and I have used it three times with much success. I think some of the reviews posted here are competitors.
Hi Brandi,
Please reply to this comment with your business name and location in order to authenticate your testimonial. Thanks!
DO NOT USE SQUARE!!! Nothing but horrible experiences with this company. You will run into a problem with them and when you do, there is no avenue for support.
What happened in my case is they out of no where froze my accounts and to reactivate asked for every piece of information you could imagine. This included: all of my corporate documents, bank statements, LinkedIn information, scans of every document you could imaging, more than the government asks for.
They may have had a good reason for asking for all of this, but who knows, they never told me and there are no avenues to find out. I have had to deactivate my account and get my clients to contact their credit card companies to remove the charges held in my account.
Nothing but horrible experiences with this company, I would recommend using any other company before giving them a try.
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I could not agree more. I am going through your scenario right now. Unfortunately for me, this is my first transaction for my new business and it was rather large in my world. I have no answers, I do not have my funds, do not know when I will see them. I have unloaded everything you can think of to them, and NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO way to get in touch with them. My first and LAST transaction with these people.
I LITERALLY FEEL SCAMMED, AND THIS COULD DOOM MY BUSINESS DUE TO THE LOGISTICS RIGHT FROM THE STAR!!
IF YOU ARE A NEW BUSINESS……………… TRUST ME,,,, STAY AWAY FROM THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS REAL!!!!!!!!
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I own a furniture store and Square deactivated my merchant account in October 2015 because a customer’s card failed to process a few times. They sent me an abrupt email saying that the decision to deactivate the account was final and that they are holding my funds (from the same customer that actually successfully processed the payment finally) for 90 days until releasing it to my bank account. In addition, I was left with no way to process credit card payments from my retail customers for a week until I got a replacement solution (Shopify). Today, I found that that not only are they still holding on to my money, they continued to charge for the Customer Engagement Pro tool on my DEACTIVATED account for the past two months. This was the last draw and I had to write this review to warn others of this inconsiderate company.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the great design of the product, but Square falls way short of actually understanding a customer’s true needs and they left me stranding at a crucial time of my business, with no real support available. I am staying far away from this company and will advise all of my business owning friends to be ware of them as well.
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Hello JL , Did they ever release the funds to you ?
Hello JL, did they release your fund by now?
Square’s is making unauthorized use of my email address. Unknowingly I recently made a purchase at a “square” customer’s retail business. I was asked if I want a receipt, I said, “Yes” and was handed a paper receipt. Much to my surprise, within a couple of hours I received an email receipt for the same transaction. I did not ask for an email receipt. I did not authorize anyone to use my email address to send me a receipt. My credit card company tells me that they do not release this information to Square. Where do they get it? More importantly, How do I stop this unauthorized use of my email address? Square appears to have no customer service for the customers of their retail clients. This is an unauthorized use of my private information.
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I was with Square for a little over a month when out of the blue my account was terminated. I called and emailed without any success then finally received a form email stating I was in some kind of violation of their legal terms of use. After reading over those again I was still confused as to why they had disconnected from the Square service. Should they have felt something was awry with my use of their service I would have appreciated a head up, an email, anything. Very dissatisfied with Square!
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Someone has tried to hack my account. There is no support phone number that you can talk to someone. Don’t use!!!!!! There are much better company
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I had this account set up for a little over 24 hours – took $900.00 worth of charges and then it was decactivated. I was told through an email that the decision was Final and that MY money will be credited back to my bank account in 90 days! How can they do this? They cited section 42 of their agreement. Not only will I NEVER do business with these people – I will avoid them at all costs for any merchant using their system.
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Square just cancelled my account after 2 months stating my business was ” high risk “. Said their decision was final and cannot be reversed.. The company took in more than $15,000 without one dispute or concern. The company cancelled their other card service and has now left the company out in the cold. Be careful people as square can cancel you without notice and without reason anytime they want.
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WARNING WARNING WARNING. Stay away from this company. They will hold your funds for 6 MONTHS without even the courtesy of advising you. Just try to get any type of customer service. Forget it. Call the support number and you cannot proceed with a “customer code”. They instruct you to log in to get the customer code, except when you do, there is no option to obtain a customer code. There is no way you will ever speak to a live person. If you submit an email, you MAY get a cryptic response directing you to the website, which of course is no help. A real horror show.
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I got defrauded out of $1200 using SquareCash to accept payment from an individual for a camera I was selling privately (I’m not a merchant)
No customer service at all from them, no explanation of what happened, and of course the scammer who has my camera has disappeared.
The police and DA have no interest and won’t let me file a report. They don’t consider it a crime.
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I have bad experiences with square. Last week I got chargebacks from goods I sold. I provide them all the documents to fight for chargebacks even with photos from security camera proof customers did purchase and left the store with the items. Yesterday morning they send me a notice telling me to update information about my account for verifications. Business name, business address, EIP, government documents and 3 bank statements. In the same day, 5 P.M they send me another notification and telling me they deactivated my account a put a hold on my money in the account for 90 days. The reason they provided was a pattern of high risk activity and tell me to look at section 42 on their sellers agreement. I tried to call them this morning, but they delete the customer code they provided to me and I have no other way to speaks to them from phone. The only way to reach to them is from their question and feedback section via email, but they did not respond back to me. Now, not only I didn’t make any profits, I lost $2000 on the goods I purchase to resell to customers.
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This is how they do business
Fight back and get your money back. File a complaint with the BBB
Make sure you tick the box about “would you be willing to talk to the media about your situation”
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Our company was told repeatedly that our bank account was verified. They lied several times in thier emails. After they said our bank account was verified, we began using the Square to conduct our business. Now we are fighting Square to get our funds and they are sitting on over $7,000.00 in deposits. All they tell us now is that our bank will not receive our deposits because of a glitch in our bank’s electronic ACH department. Today I had our bank ( Y12 Federal Credit Union, Knoxville Tennessee Phone 865-482-1043) a conference call for an hour with Square and myself and nothing was resolved. The Square agent said we must wait until Square verifies our bank account. Square has sent multiple emails saying our bank account has been verified and that are deposits have been made but then Square won’t release our funds. Square communication and emails have mislead and misrepresented their service. We are regretably forced to pursue legal action to collect our funds. December 17, 2015
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Beware about Square’s “Instant Deposit” for an additional 1% charge. It’s not “instant” at all. Normally money gets to our account on the second business day (charge Monday, money appears in our account Wednesday). Yesterday we had a large sale and the money was due to be in our account tomorrow, but there was an item we wanted to buy today for our biz that might not be around tomorrow. So I flipped the switch for “Instant Deposit” and paid the additional 1% for the “Instant” transfer of funds. When the deposit never appeared, I called Square. I was told “Instant Deposit” means next business day, so I basically wasted an extra 1% on misleading advertising. Square had no ability to reverse the transaction and didn’t offer to waive any processing fees to make up for the money I wasted thinking “Instant” meant “right away”, not overnight. Not cool.
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This morning I received an email telling me $21.58 was charged to my credit card via Square. It was obviously fraud from an air conditioner maintenance company with a disconnected number and a web site that listed offices in multiple states with only partial phone numbers. I called the credit card company and they cancelled the card. I have a message sent to Square and I’m curious to see if I even get a response, there wasn’t a fraud reporting option on their support questions.
I appreciate this is a small problem compared to others here but I wanted to point out that the scammers are working around (or with) Square. i assume Square makes money from scammers just like the credit card and phone companies do so they have less incentive to catch some of these crooks. I was almost ready to eat the charge rather than having to get a new card. It’s profit for all when enough people miss the charge or don’t do anything about it.
At least Square sent me an email, which makes me wonder, where did they get my address from? From the scammers or did they match it up from records they have stored? If it was from the scammers why would they give my real email address? I also get alerts from my bank on my credit card use but, strangely, I didn’t receive a message on this charge.
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This is very bad company!!! They closed my account with $1260 in it. They stole money from my account!
Never do business with them again.
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Thanks to all of you for your comments here. I wish I had seen them before I went ahead and signed up for a free Square account and wasted time on the hack job of a joke they call their “online store.” It’s hard to believe they’re actually in business to do this kind of thing. I have seen a lot of cafes and independent freelancers using Square, so I figured it was OK. I no longer believe that, especially with the issues I have seen described above. Because really . . . if they can’t avoid wasting my time creating my online store, I wonder what DOES work in their business model.
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Yes, all of you here are so right! this company is the worst of the worst! i feel like we should all do something about this on change.org and have them listen to our voice, full force!!!!!! listen to this; I also had problems and they are as of now holding $2,200 on my account, after they already claimed to have refunded the costumer. then they say they had a problem with their portal and i should disregard the other email……..not one word they say makes sense!!! EVEN WHEN I EMAILED THE CEO, DIDN’T HELP! I emailed Jack Dorsey ([email protected] ) about this issue, and all he said is “will look into this”, but never came back to me. I try emailing him a few times this week, but he still doesn’t respond!!! I’m filing now a BBB complaint with this company and I just wish that we all do some class action against them and get our money back for all our frustration and wait time!!!!!!!!!!!! hate them with a passion!!!!!!!!! they drive your business south!!!!
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I never received my Square despite ordering it well in advance of my event. I live in a small town in Alaska where people do not have mailboxes but PO Boxes. I tried to adapt my order, but apparently it was for naught. Fortunately I was able to borrow a Square for my event.
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We have used Square for 2 years now and have not run into any of the problems that are shown on this web page. We do sell high ticket items, but our volume is large and we have had complete success switching from First Data to Square, and have saved tons of money not having to lease portable credit card machines, paper, tons of fees per transaction, foreign cards, ect. With Square, the amount comes out immediately, I know exactly what I will be getting the day of the deposit, Square is excellent for a company doing less than 500,000.00 in sales.
Patrick…I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who has had nothing but a good experience with Square. I don’t know if you saw my comment below but I recently had to go through their verification process for a payment I had processed from a regular customer of ours – as a matter of fact, it’s pretty much the only customer we have that pays via credit card, so it did seem a bit odd for them to hold up the deposit but I provided everything they asked for and within a couple of hours I was advised that they had completed their review and released my deposit. Simple. I’m not sure what the criteria is for flagging transactions, but I would rather put up with a little inconvenience now than to have to deal with a problem later on.
If you had ever tried to call their customer service line you would understand why everyone is so frustrated. Or maybe you know a way to get this elusive customer code, without which you cannot get through? If you know how, please tell us!
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This company blows. They offer no protection for it’s sellers, despite the fact, that it’s the sellers that pay their bills. I had a customer who used his mothers credit card to make a purchase. Mother claims fraud. Kid got to keep the product and mommy got her money back.
Again, someone made a purchase 5 months ago. Customer today, files dispute, “item not as described”. Square sends me an email stating they will deduct the funds to refund the customer in 2 business days. 5 months later? Really? So how did i protect myself? Since square gave me a heads up, i called my bank and closed down my entire account that is attached to square…LOL. KARMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I will never use Square again, or pay them anything for their failure to protect it’s sellers. I looked into Stripe, but they don’t offer protection either. Too many complaints as well for the same thing. Heck i think, all these companies do this. Nobody offers seller protection. The only way to protect yourself is money orders and cash.
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Well, apparently this individual has never dealt with Merchant Services (MC & VISA)….through a bank…..I will tell you, I processed some high volume charges for garments I was selling – 5-6 sales around $1,800 – $2,200 each, received an approval from MC/VISA when processed thru Merchant services, done right??? NOPE almost 3 months later Merchant services contacted me and told me that these charges were fraudulent and that I (the shop owner) am responsible to contact some 800 number to ensure the credit cards are valid….so I am out the merchandise, out the money paid to the distributor and now I have a $15,000 bill that I have to pay to MC/VISA because it is the merchant/shop owners responsibility to ensure the card is good, the only think the approval code is for is to say they have sufficient funds available on the card to make the purchase????? so how is this any better than anyone else???? I have used square for over 6 years and have not had one problem…..my money is always there the next day and I do not do any type of business that would require them to put any holds on my account…..I guess the secret is, you just have to stay within the rules, when you push them, you have to suffer the consequences….they are in business too you know and believe it or not, they need to make money to survive and provide a service.
We had a chargeback with Square. For the dispute process, we provided a signed agreement, invoice, sales receipt with a live signature, 3rd party verification that our agreement was actually signed, email cc… well…, we still lost THOUSANDS!
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Yep, this just happened to me today. NO seller protection.
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Square would not correct an accidental refund from a customer
Don’t even bother with Square. Go to your bank that holds your business account and open a POS with them. The very first transaction we did with Square was held because it appeared to be fraudulent according to them. We are very fortunate that it was our first transaction and our vendor was willing to pay us in a different form because we could refund the transaction and avoid it being held for 90 days. How can they even get away with that? Good luck trying to get someone to help you. We have had no problems with our current POS and we are able to get someone on the phone right away to help even with random questions.
Hello Joan. Did you get your money back after the 90 days??
Used Square for about a year, worse company ever! Took back monies that were authorized and never had ANY phone customer service. It was all email and nothing helpful. I recently (11/2015) got a notice from IRS saying I owed on a second 1099 on Square from 2013 which is infuriating because I have no record of these transactions. I have emailed Square on getting a copy but of course have gotten no reply as of yet. I need help from Square on getting a copy of this second 1099-k which I never received.
I just had the most unpleasant experience with Square. I charged an amount totaled $3100 to a customer for sale of equipment on 11/11/2015. They started by asking me to fill out a verification form and provide them with an Invoice, my ID and 3 bank statements which I did immediately. I get an email back asking me to provide more information about my relationship with the customer, which I found pretty strange, but yet, I provided them with that. Today 11/16 and after 6 days of holding my funds, they decided to reject my transactions and asked me to refund the money to the customer. The reason they say is that I am violating the terms of service agreement. here is the email I received “Under our Terms of Service, you cannot process prepaid cards, gift cards, or your own credit card using your Square account. The Square Terms of Service also prohibit using Square as a money transfer system. You must provide a legitimate good or service in exchange for every payment processed with Square.” ,So I read the terms of service agreement section by section and did not find that my transactions violate any of the sections in the agreement. My sale was for equipment and an invoice was provided. I did not charge a gift card, prepaid card, nor it was my own credit card!!! and definitely that was not a money transfer!!! Asked to speak to a manager, they refused!!
I process over $40,000 a year of transactions using merchant services. I thought switching to square would save me some money. But it looks like the money I would save will be spent on medications for headache caused by Square’s complications. I think I will stay with Bank of America merchant services. Business owners beware
Prepaid are No-No and the now one of the most common forms of fraud. Sorry, but all prepaid and gift cards should be marketed clearly and additional form of ID should be required from your customer….Counterfeit card are quite common and mon and pop shops are a great target, sometimes even the card holder doesn’t know it was counterfeit, especially online programs for discounted gift cards…….Also you also tried to process a amount almost 8% of your total in one transaction…. anything over one or two % should be flagged as unusual.
Same thing happened to me. They gladly took the payment from my customers credit card but failed to deposit into my account. I sent all the verification documents and they sent me an email telling me to refund my customer because they think he might do a chargeback. No live phone help, just emails. This company blows and I’m filing a complaint with the better business bureau.
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Square is definitely the worst.
They went ahead and closed my account for no reason… Oh because of verification purposes…
After using Square for over a year, referring 12 People, including family and friends.
Now they do this to me… Not to mention that they have $432.95 of my money held.
It’s ridiculous… Trying to call these guys is absolutely mind blowing honestly… it really is. Why you ask?
Because, I always have to wait on hold for 45mins – 1hr. Always.
I cannot believe how bad they are with their support team.
Scammers, cheaters, and I don’t like them. Switching to Paypal Here.
At a recent large trade show event, Oct 25-26 2015, Square “lost” over 70 transactions totaling over $5000.00 from my merchant sales account. They have been extremely poor to respond or rectify my missing funds! The service I’ve received has been horrendous to say the least!
All transactions went through my account and receipts were sent to customers yet Square claims they have no records. Any email receipt should be recorded on their server.
This has caused major damage to my companies reputation..and Square continues to not return my calls with updates as they promised or find my funds!!
Holding funds for no reason. Opened account October 2nd 2015 and verified bank. Account active. Processed a payment October 31st in the amount of $850 for my business. I get an email from Square November 2nd that my account is deactivated because they cannot support my business type. And that this decision is final. Said to either refund payment I received and use another processor or wait till 2-3 business days after January 31 and a this amount will be deposited into my bank account. Its obviously fraud, you can’t close down someones bank account with money in it and hold onto it, nor can a processor hold money. This dates back to the early Paypal days when my companies small business was crippled by a 10% reserve holding of the average balance. I’m looking forward to the day I get a class action lawsuit email, for now I have no choice but to put this on every site possible since they have no customer service. This is a huge win for independent processors, don’t use Square, don’t put your business at risk.
This just happened to me and I discovered what happened although after finally being able to speak with a live Square person and Square did fix the problem and refund my lost money, they do not claim any responsibility and claim that Square’s systems have not been compromised…. humph!
I discovered I was not getting my square transaction e-mails 2 weeks ago and the funds were not being deposited into my bank account. My clients all showed that the charges had gone through on the credit accounts. I tried contacting square but my e-mail addressed was not recognized and I could not log in. After 2 days of e-mails to square I was finally able to talk to a live person. My e-mail address to my Square account had been changed to another address and my charge funds were being deposited in a Discover bank. Square claims they sent me an e-mail almost 2 weeks prior of my e-mail address being changed. I went through all of my e-mails including deleted and spam e-mails and I DID NOT receive notification of my e-mail address being changed.
Square support over the phone with me changed my e-mail address back, I changed and greatly increased my password and I increased all of the Square security settings to my account. Square then told me that they would reimburse me by mailing me a check. After this I was scrolling through my Square account tabs and click on the “list” tab. I do NOT sell anything through Square. I only use it for customer payment transactions. Well in my square list was several big screen curved TV models for sale!!
I clicked on these items listed in my Square list and it took me to an Amazon sale listing selling these TV’s. My name was listed as the seller with some TV show’s photo shown as my profile photo. So on this Amazon listing I clicked on this fake sellers name and a FREAKING street map with my business location where I used Square from pops up on this fake sellers listing!! On this fake Amazon sale listing was a phone number for information so I searched the phone number and it came back as a phone number from Colima, Mexico!!!
So these fake selling thieves are somehow getting into Square accounts, changing the owner settings, setting up fake online items for sale and using a Square customers account to funnel the stolen money through which is then deposited into their account in some other bank. But any sales I ran trough my account were also going into their account.
Here’s the kicker. I received my reimbursement check today along with a letter from Square stating that they had investigated the matter and found that the square system was NOT compromised and that Square was NOT responsible to refund my money but they were refunding it anyway. I’m wondering if it was a Square employee involved with this scam. Anyway this is what happened to me starting Oct 22, 2015′.
I can’t believe they did that to me …
They froze my funds after i sent an invoice from their website, after 2 days the client paid and they accepted the money without any hesitation … the problem started when they had to forward the funds to me. They first asked a bunch of information about my business, and after they decided that the transactions follow a “suspicious pattern”????????????
How can be suspicious an invoice sent from their website and paid on their website??? It was normal until the client paid and become suspicious only after?
they refuse to give any other explanation and after 1 month I still not have idea where my money are and when I’m going to receive it.
On the other end Amazon register and Paypal here never give me any problem of sort, they forwarded to me transaction higher than the one Square is holding and they are way more transparent on their policies.
I bought some furniture at a small resale shop, and they use Square on an ipad; an email of my receipt went to the car repair shop I’d used a couple weeks before, though I had not shared my email address with the furniture shop. I won’t be using a credit card on Square ever again. Sloppy controls somewhere.
We began using Square a year ago when a municipal customer indicated that the agency preferred to issue payment via credit card; as they were a return customer and there was a possibility for a long-term business relationship, we signed up. While we did offer it to all our customers as a payment option, I had very few take advantage of it until a few months ago. We expanded our business through the purchase of a similar existing business and one of the contract customers whom we deliver to on a bi-monthly basis decided to try out credit card processing as opposed to issuing checks. They are thrilled with the option and for the past four months have used this form of payment exclusively. I have never had an issue with receiving my funds (they have been available the very next business day) and the customer reports there have been no issues on their side either. I did just have to go through the verification process this morning for a payment I put through yesterday, but did not have any of the issues that other users have noted. I provided the documentation requested and within two hours I received an email back from Square indicating that they had completed their review, returned my account to active status and resumed regular deposits. All in all, I would say that my experience with Square has been very positive and I regularly endorse their services to friends and business associates.
Hi Shannon,
In order to authenticate your testimonial, please respond to this comment with your business name and location. Thanks!
My company name is Weatherford Woodworks LLC and we are located in Plainfield WI
I have nothing good at all to say about this company, I should’ve just known better and went with PayPal from the start. The only reason I picked square is because they were running a promotion that had no fees attached for your first $1,000 received when you referred a new user. I used square to accept payment from customers that were using prepaid cards. Square instantly locked my account, stating my account was terminated, freezing all my funds saying I violated the Terms of Agreement by accepting prepaid cards. They said they were holding my funds up to 180 days (but not less than 150 days) or depending how they felt, they were holding my funds until farther notice. Really?! Funny thing is, the seller agreement literally contradicts itself, it makes absolutely no sense! Section 6a states prepaid cards are not a acceptable form a payment, yet section 11 says they are. Who writes these things?! I tried reaching out to them, which you are forced to do via email because their phone number requires a customer number, which is impossible to obtain (trust me, I requested one many times). I’m convinced their customer service department doesn’t even exist because they never both to even acknowledge their customers. After many emails to them over the course of almost 2 months with no reply, I threatened legal action in an email and got a reply stating my account termination decision was final. I replied back stating I didn’t care about my account termination, only my funds and wanted to know if they would be unfrozen within a realistic time frame and if they would still be fee free when they were released. Needless to say, they never replied back. Thankfully I was still within the refund period so I issued all my customers a refund so I could accept payment from them another way. Talk about a pain, you try chasing down 15 customers that you did business with nearly 2 months ago telling them you need a new form of payment. In the end, I’m thankful that square terminated my account, they were only doing me a favor, saving me from their complete lack of service!
After signing up with them and taking my first payment I was sent a Verification by Square. I have a LLC registered with the Secretary of State for 13 years and have been in business for 13 years. I have filed all my taxes federal and state. I have been very profitable for 13 years too. My company has never gone bankrupt or been sued. My company doesn’t owe a penny to anybody and has over $500k in assets. I was just informed by Square that they we deactivating my account due to a pattern of transactions associated with high-risk activity. This decision is FINAL. I now have $500 taken from my customer 4 days ago sitting in Squares bank account and I cannot get it for 90 days. THIS COMPANY SUCKS AND IS NOT TRUSTWORTHY!!!!!!!!!! Use Intuit or Amazon, they are both great.
Worst mistake I ever made by purchasing this card reader. I will make sure to post my complaints everywhere that people can see. Beware this thing is a scam! I purchased this product for my small business to help make things a little easier. After the first transaction, they flagged my account, deactivated it, and took the money without it ever going into my account. You cannot even contact customer service since it keeps telling you to input a customer code that never seems to work and you cant speak to anyone unless you have one. They got me for 8k. I will make sure that my complaint is heard. I hope this company is put out of business soon so no other innocent people get scammed out of money. Beware of square!!!!
Impact Originals, Inc. operates ImpactTactical247.com and several retail stores. Our experience with Square has been extremely positive. Funding is extremely fast and their customer service is exceptional. Brian in particular in Customer Support has been outstanding as has their Capital Funding Team. I cannot say enough positive things about Square, their support, and how wonderful the people are that work there. Everyone has problems with credit card processors from time to time and a lot of times it is user error, not the fault of the processor. Square has been a blessing to our business when large companies let us down. People typically only use online forums and the BBB to complain, but companies also need positive feedback when they go above and beyond.
A+
I would tend to avoid Square right now, it’s a great idea but needs to really improve on its service. I used to see Square itself make large deposits and then large withdraws to my account not initiated by me or by credit transactions on my square reader. It wasn’t a “hack” by someone using my accounts … originally I changed all my access information to square. I never lost money on it, it was the mysterious additional deposits that weren’t mine that were then withdrawn by Square 24 hours later that happened every couple weeks. Either Square was messing up in its collection system and depositing to wrong accounts … or someone internal to Square was trying to launder money using Square. Either way, I closed out and went back to the expensive card processing service where I never saw this happen again. You get what you pay for.
Was hoping to use this to sell my stuff at a few festivals. I purchased a square then tried to sign up only to be rejected! I double checked my info, then triple checked it, they even asked for my SSN! After several attempts I was locked out. I tried to find a number to call for help but apparently you can only get access to a number IF you are signed up, which they wouldn’t allow me to do. Emailed them for help and received this: Unfortunately we can’t approve your application to accept credit cards with Square. We wish we could provide you with another chance to apply, but we’re unable to do so since Square can only provide a set number of application attempts.
While we’d love for you to process payments with Square, this isn’t possible.
Why was I rejected in the first place???? I’m furious at them and am returning the reader I bought. I’ll find another way and square can go stuff it.
I wish I had read these reviews before attempting to use Square. I am a sole proprietor, and they don’t seem to be accepted at Square. The first transaction I did was flagged and rejected, now a question of what happens to that money. I can’t get my pay and lost good will with a client by convincing them to use this mistake of a company.
I understand if they don’t want to accept individuals and very small businesses but SAY SOMETHING BEFOREHAND.
How are freelance workers supposed to get paid anymore? Scamming us seems to be an entire industry!
I have used Square for a little over a year now. I am thoroughly impressed with the company. When researching processing companies I came across a lot of bad reviews on the company. I called them; which I got a human right away, and asked them why I should choose them since they had so many bad reviews. They addressed everything I had read and gave examples of how they have either addressed the complaint or why they do certain things that were the heart of some complaints (holds on funds).
I have had nothing but an excellent experience with Square and they only get better over time. I process transactions manually and by swiping that range anywhere from $2 to $2,000. This year alone I have processed over $370,000 with Square. I have never had any problem with any transaction or refund.
Lastly, I have always been able to contact a human being quuckly when I called in. I was just at a tournament where I was going to sell my product and needed to change my prices. I was having trouble and called into Square. I was connected to a representitive within 10 minutes and he was able to walk me through the process of changing my prices.
I give Square an A+!
Well please provide the number you called because currently the only number they list as a point of contact requires a customer number, which you have to request via email! They literally make it nearly impossible to call them unless they allow you to.
Please share the phone number that you use to contact them as every number that I find I a black hole. I am so frustrated with this company right now. I am planning to tell people that I’ve invited to use them to cancel because of it’s non-existent customer service.!
Someone with a Sqaure made 7 withdrawals and deposits in my account in one day. None of these were authorized and it is my concern now that someone is going to hack my account and take all my money. I tried getting someone on the phone to find out which business or square holder had made the transactions but they have no customer service number for everyday citizens needing assistance. I sent an email and I am waiting to hear back from someone, anyone!!
This is what Square did with my money…
someone paid for a service, i did the service, and turns out the card was a fraud even after checking ID. They took $1,400 out of my checking account and never put it back. I am still figuring out the best way to sue them. I know there is a class action brewing as I’ve spoken to several people with Square problems.
The exact same thing happened to me, except it was $500. They took the money 4 months after I cancelled my square account too.
I had a very bad experience with Square. Someone hacked my account and took my $5,877.29 they also, made 7 deposits of 8.500 on a Sunday. I tried contacting Square but wasn’t able to. I went to their office in San Francisco, CA. I spoke to an Eric. Eric told me that they would over night me my fund by the next business day. It’s been about a month now I receive nothing yet, but lies and most lies. PLEASE DON”T DEAL WITH THIS COMPANY!!!
Please do your research before using this credit card processing company . They should not be used for large transactions . Their policy seems to be to tie up for money . When you have had it with them and simply want to refund the customer the money and collect from another source , their answer is we will try to refund the money . The money is taken from the card holder and not put into your account and they will “try to refund the money .” Please learn from others misfortunes and stay from from this company .
I used the Square interface and billing services, as I initially liked the way it gave me a virtual online store. I had the site – which was advertised literally everywhere – for MANY years. They were excellent about depositing my funds for sales the very next business day. But one day, Suddenly, it was gone. They gave me NO notification, but my clients who were trying to make purchases, suddenly could not. Square literally shut down my store, and each time I tried to create and send an invoice, I was given an error message reading “please activate your account to accept payments.” My account had been active years! So I contacted Square (they NO LONGER OFFER A TOLL-FREE NUMBER TO REACH A HUMAN BEING, THE CUSTOMER SUPPORT – IT IS ALL FORM LETTERS NOW VIA EMAIL AND TAKES 3x TO GET AN ANSWER.) Once someone wrote back, I received a form letter stating that they had deactivated my account. NO warning, no contact, no nothing. I wrote asking why – I received the following: “Square reserves the right to terminate any account at will without notice. There is no appeal process and the decision is final.” MY ACCOUNT HAD NEVER HAD A CHARGE BACK, NO FRAUD, NO BAD CARDS, NO ABANDONED CHECKOUTS. MY CREDIT RATING WAS EXCELLENT. So, why this termination?? I switched to another online solution (Shopify) and it’s not only better, but more user-friendly. My sales skyrocketed. I asked my clients why. I was told that Square wouldn’t allow them to process transactions with discount codes, and that they always had glitches and hold ups in the transaction process. Shopify is not free as Square is, but with this new increase in sales (I went from selling about 20 sessions per month to 15 per week) I am starting to enjoy this other site much more, so maybe Square deciding to close my site was a good thing. Another thing they did to me was hold my funds when they shut my site down for 180 days. That said, I think Square sucks.
Haven’t read this site in quite a while. I’ve been using Square for abt 3 yrs and other processors for previous 15 yrs. Had some serious trouble at first related to the merchant code processors attach to a business. Some cards are code sensitive and Square was designed around glass blowers and pastry shops, and their assigned default code of “gift store” was unacceptable to government cards. They were not well prepared to accommodate a variety of businesses. They did finally, after several days, discuss the problem with me but it was a problem that needed a solution within hours, not days. Obviously I am now overall pleased with their service. The Register program has received many updates.
My observation of the many complaints here is that most complainants seem ignorant of fundamental business practices involving risk. Would you lend money (essentially what credit card funding is) to a proprietorship business which has been around for only perhaps weeks or months, works out of a home, often sells intangibles, wants to processes 4 figure transactions with card not present, and is ignorant of English grammar when registering a complaint? I think not.
I can offer one piece of advice: Have a backup checking account into which you can move money when you sense a credit card processor may be ready to withdraw money from the linked account. Otherwise, start your business with a more conventional processing company. After a year or so, you will have a transaction history that you can show Square or others which may lower your risk score and make you a more desirable customer.
Ignorant of fundamental business practices? You gave me a good laugh. I have a FICO credit score of almost 800, have over 130k in the business bank account with no debt (Nothing not even credit card debt!) and have over 200k in my personal bank account. I was BANNED from square and they are holding over $5,500 of my money. I had no transactions over $200 and Square charges more for transactions not present to compensate for the additional risk. If card not present transactions are not allowed then Square should tell people beforehand. I’ve already moved to another merchant account and it’s been doing great. I’m baffled as to why Square banned me with my financials. Square is for small mom & pop businesses who have no chance of growing. If you’re a small merchant then use Square. If you’re going to grow then use someone else.
Squareup Has been a nightmare to deal with. I sold a product locally for $500. After I received payment hey they locked my account and asked for verification of my identity which I provided. Weeks have gone by and I have not heard anything back from them . I send them one email every two days and they haven’t responded to ONE of them. Check the BBB reviews and you will see alot of people are being mistreated as you see here. THIS COMPANY NEEDS TO BE SHUT DOWN. STAY AWAY FROM SQUARE!
Square erased our ecommerce site. We had a transaction that a week later the customer claimed fraud. We Submitted the video footage of the transaction as evidence, then no communication for three days from square. Even today, nothing, and no code for us to input when they tell us to input a code to call customer service. They are not emailing and no phone calls are being returned. Taking action in starting a class action lawsuit against square. We have lost hundreds – thousands of dollars in the short time time they took us offline. It’s a shame that it’s been done to many other businesses. Have been searching new POS after this monstrosity.
Square has been holding back funds from my business since April 27, 2015. Square has collected the money from the card holder and will not pay me. This is illegal and stealing. I am a single parent trying to run my own business and live the American dream. Square has violated me and my rights as an American citizen. Square has withheld my hard earned funds and has racially targeted me. I want my money now and I want interest on it. This company should be shut down!
Nothing yet. I received an email sept 29 stating they were holding up my funds for 90 more days!!!! I filed a complaint with bbb still pending.
Same. They sent me an e-mail that they were going to hold my money for an additional 30 days. 35 days have passed and still no money in my bank account and the deposit still shows as pending on their website. They don’t even honor what they tell you in the e-mails.
This company has a really bad way of handling a buyer’s information. I made the mistake of filling out the profile with a merchant when I purchased an item. Much later when I made a purchase with another merchant who used a Square device, it had my basic information and my email address for an electronic receipt. That’s all fine. BUT recently I paid for a service which the merchant used a Square reader and my electronic receipt went to someone else! This happened on the same day, twice, with two different merchants! I don’t want my purchases flying out to anyone. Square has a responsibility and duty to protect a buyer’s privacy when it comes to purchases. What if they had been purchases that were of an very sensitive nature (they weren’t).
All I can tell you is that I will NEVER use my credit card with a Square merchant again. Sorry, but Square blew it for you guys.
I have used Squareup for over a year now, totally replacing Paypal for my businesses. I have never had any problems, I always get my money on time and I was eligible for Square Capital, which the terms are more than fair. Square has helped me to take my business to the next level. I have never had an issue with getting in touch with them during business hours.
Now from reading the language in the other comments, I see that many of these people are not educated enough to be running a business and honestly with such vulgarities and “spoiled-brat” attitudes… need to mature a bit.
We’ve been using Square for 3 years now. NEVER a problem. Our money is deposited on time every week. Perhaps the nature of their business raises red flags with Square. Or the fact that they’re not using a slider, and instead using the manual input with every sale. That itself raises red flags. We take upwards of $40K in credit card payments a year. It’s an amazing tool for our mobile business.
Hi thech,
Please reply to this comment with your business name and location in order to authenticate your testimonial. Thanks!
Ditto… never had a problem with this company. Like you i probably follow the rules. 99.99 percent of the people sign and all online is done through Square Market…. love that too. I would be happy to talk with anyone about Square.
If not using a slider is a red flag, Square should make customers aware of this and those of us who do business via phone and mail would not use it. Square signs up small businesses, acts as if everything is OK. I specifically asked a representative when signing onto Square if it made a difference if I ran the credit card immediately with the attachment, or waited for the three business days right of refusal period was over and then keyed in the card. The representative told me there would be no difference for them. I believe I was had and that Square used over $6,000 of my money for 6 months. The worst part is I was not able to find out what the big “red flag” was because there is no customer service number and they would not answer the question via email, they only referred to article 47 of the contract which gives them the right to deactivate the account and hold funds for no reason. Beware – I have since used another company for the last 18 months with NO problem.
can i ask you how do you get in touch, because i have been trying for 5 weeks now.
Square continues to have horrible customer service. They are holding my funds for using gift cards even though in section 11 of their user agreement, it states gift cards are accepted. They are withholding my funds without any communication with me. I have sent 11 emails through their email support and the only responses are automated garbage. They are even still sending me emails on how to use their service even though it’s deactivated. I have posted on Twitter, Instagram and only a response on Twitter asking for my email so someone can help. Crickets after that. I have filed a BBB complaint against Square.
There is no reason a financial company in 2015 has no way to call someone or get a proper response when they are holding your money. This is just straight up stealing. How can this be allowed. Horrible, horrible company
you cannot even get a hold of a customer service to ask a simple question ?????
Held my money with no warning! No number to call for answers. Was threatened by employees be awe of not making payroll and had to call police. Put me completely out of business and am now almost homeless. Ruined my business and my life!
This company has the absolute worst customer service….terrible…..my credit card was hacked on their website when the “training” asked me to key-in my full cc number to charge $1.00….then key-in again to request a refund of the $1.00…..within a few hours, our bank called asking about some huge purchases (i never left the house). We had to go through all the bank questions and cancel the card. In the meantime, I immediately tried to call Square (ooops, my bad…after hours you will reach nobody no matter how urgent), so sent an email…..then called the next morning and waited all day for a ‘call back’…sent another email…….finally received a call back but the person could do nothing and there was no “supervisor” to speak with me….and have not yet received a call from anybody “important” nor a reply to my, now, three emails…..this company doesn’t give a ##&*$) about you…it’s laughing all the way to the bank. It may be convenient in the short run but I wouldn’t’ trust Square at all to do right by you.
WE LOVED SQUARE UNTIL WE FOUND THE TRANSACTIONS REPORT. THEY ARE NOT NOTIFYING US THAT TRANSACTIONS ARE BEING CANCELLED AFTER THE BUYER’S CARD IS APPROVED. WE HAVE DECLINED CARDS AND CANCELLED TRANSACTIONS AND SQUARE IS APPROVING THEM ALL ON THE REGISTER. WE ARE NOW EVALUATING A MORE TRUSTWORTHY MERCHANT SERVICES PROVIDER.
Dont care what anybody say on here square is a big ass rip off first transaction was on$35.00 account went on hold have been waiting since may 2015 until now its not nothing but still have not right keeping others money i know for sure people on here thats talking that good stuff is working with bull shit square they need class action against them big time now they emailed me back and said wait another 90 days added to all theses month come on now $35.00 smh
I Had good luck at first. But I now cannot access my account. And no way of getting ahold of them except by email. That was 2 weeks ago. I’ve lost many sales since then. Be aware!!! Their customer service SUCKS!!!!
I own a small auto sales and rental shop in Los Angeles area. Square deactivated my account and held $3,500. They said it’s high risk transaction and funds will be deposited after 90 days. Well, 90 days came and went, no deposits. No Customer telephone service, I sent two emails already, got automated messages, but no resolution. That $3,500.00 is my total net profit in months.
There should be a class action law suit, it can’t be legal to hold funds for 90 days without live customer support.
How did you find out about hold?? I did my first 43,500 transaction today and I’m wondering if there will be a hold.
They withdrew funds from your account that had already been deposited?
Horrible company. I wish that I read the reviews before signing up. They suddenly decided to hold my money Friday afternoon on for 90 days for no reason whatsoever.
There is no customer service to talk to, just answering machine who knows where.
Closed my account due to suspicious activity. I’ve never done anything suspect in my life and they won’t even talk to me or email me. FAIL
Oh and they’re keeping the funds for 90 days.
SCAM AND MORE SCAM. I signed up for free card swipe for android. Well after entering my pertinent business account information, someone attempted to wire $2600.00 from my business account to a Western Union account in another country. Luckily my bank flagged it as suspicious activity. My Square equipment never arrived despite them giving a tracking number. Called customer service _ No answer and also emailed customer service_ No reply.
Thanks alot you MFs.
That same exact thing has happened to us. Three times we have changed our debit card believing that was the problem only to realize Square has our bank account number as well as the routing number. Those two things are all that’s needed for over seas fraud. A direct line into our account.
Contract clearly states there are no monthly fees yet I was charged $18.99 for several months. Its partially my fault that I didn’t look for these charges. But from the prior post I read it wouldn’t have matters because like everyone else there is no actual contact number to talk to an actual human being. I spoke with the “dispute center” who told me to dispute through my merchant then get back with them. I sold Pure Romance products and they did not have anything to do with my problem. They asked for the last four of my card, the transaction dates, and the description transaction name. I gave it all to them and they still did nothing. I deactivated my account because they date they previously charged me was coming up. I hadn’t heard from them til after I deactivated my account. After I did so they stated they couldn’t do anything further washing their hands of their responsibilities. I do not understand how this so called company is still running eith all the above problems.
Horrible company. We made a small portion of 1800 and where only getting back 936 dollar’s… pretty pisses off
Square, has $1500.00 of my money and thay won’t deposit my money in my account period. I’m so mad smoke is coming out of my ears.
Square sent me a malfunctioning reader, found out at the end of the monthly billing that over 200$ did not process correctly despite the app stating “transaction complete”, my donut shop rarely sees charge customers but it would be nice if I didn’t get ripped off! It’s square who is responsible for the loss, I did my part. Can’t get a hold of the “customer code”either… any luck, anybody?
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I do not have a lot of customers that pay for their services via credit card, however, recently I had a client who needed to charge a $15K balance. Out of the blue Square held up distributing this money to me saying they needed more documentation from me. I provided everything they requested very timely. I was then told I would get my funds within 2 business days. Getting through to their customer service is a mess, every time I call I wait an hour – literally. Then they have little to NO ability to answer the most basic questions. Despite being told verbally and in email that my funds would be in my account, they still are not and no one seems able to tell me why. They will not put a supervisor on the phone, all they will say is “someone will send you and email”. They are worse than the phone companies (and that is pretty darn bad!!) I will stop using square as soon as I get my money and will switch to a traditional merchant services account…..the fees are lower and they don’t hold your money to earn the float for these insane amounts of time and by inventing bogus reasons to need more documents then anyone can possibly need (and OH, BTW, if you want more docs, why didn’t you ask for them when I opened my account?)
BEWARE DO NOT USE SQUARE>>>>>>GO TALK TO YOUR BACK ABOUT OTHER OPTIONS!!!!
These stories are horrible. Several of them refer to funds that the company holds and then deactivates the account. I’m curious to know, do these “held funds” include any deposits made on that account (I.e. Removing deposits on previously authorized transactions)? Or, are “these funds” specific to the transaction(s) that “flagged” the account? Either situation can cause inconvenience, but removal of all funds ever processed would be a nightmare.
They help ALL of our deposits. They flag an entire account, not just a certain transaction. This is detrimental to small companies that accept credit cards as a form of payment for their services. It’s illegal. They are trying to get around it with saying the terms and conditions that you accepts when you initially signed up for the account would protect them. But it is very broken…. This will come back around and bite them.
I am one of those people. They hold $1,400 of my money and deactivated the account. If anybody knows way to get more information please let me know. I could found only that phony 1-800 number going to answer service.
PLEASE DO NOT USE SQUARE UP. We have been using Square for a few months now with no problem at all. As of 8/19 they put a hold on our deposits (over $5,000 worth) without contacting us to tell us why. I had to find out a week later when my account was in the negative. It is now 9/2/15 and we have yet to see our deposits. Meaning this company has run my customer’s credit cards – taken their fees, yet not given us the money…. IT’S ILLEGAL! The worst part is there is no phone number to reach anyone that can help you. We called product support about 10 times and they told us to stop calling. Yes… they’re holding $5,000 of our money and they asked us to stop calling. We are in the process of legal action. I would advise everyone having this problem to do the same thing. They are clearly stealing money from people and using it for their personal use until they feel like giving it back.
ive been waiting since 7/3/15 for my $2750 back. smh
Thought this product would be a very convenient way to process transactions wirelessly as well as a great back up payment method should there be an issue with our main merchant account.
On August 29th in the greater Vancouver area we had major windstorms knocking out the power in our area. I thought it was great that I could still process transactions for my business although the power was out and our interact machine was not working.
I processed about $3000 in transactions which is not a lot for our store but enough to be an issue if we do not receive those funds.
I received an email from square saying they were not going to send me the funds and I would have to send them a photo ID (which I did), 3 bank statements (which I did), website, linked in profile etc etc
Did everything they asked for and then just received a letter saying they are deactivating my account as they suspect that the transactions or activity is fraudulent.
I also supplied a detailed letter as to why I had to use my square reader in the first place.
They are holding all funds hostage for 90 days without interest and deactivated my account?
I would definitely try another payment reader before using square. Also the cherry on the top was a note saying! All decisions are final. Apparently this is a common issue, square is holding funds maybe using the interest??
I am surprised that the Federal government has not looked into this company. I also had them as well as my wife. I have a legitimate company, licensed in Florida. I had them ONE month and they abruptly shut me down. I called and they asked for all kinds of paperwork which we sent. They shut us off at 4pm Friday., They held $6000 from January 15 to April 15. Two days later after 2 weeks with them my wife received same for her business. She waited 90 days also for her money ($3300). Class action should be in the works. God knows there are many of us. I lost customers, lost profit, and had to scramble for new processor as well as short term loan.
When they deactivate your account and hold funds, are the funds held all funds ever processed or just the most recent transactions that caused the flag?
We started using them for the a few transactions for our online Spanish classes.
After a couple of months they sent me an email saying they were closing my account as it was not in compliance with their regulations.
They never gave me a specific reason, then after a week I still had not been paid funds owed
So I contacted them by email (they don’t even have a phone number for merchants to call).
They told me they were holding the funds for 180 days as I was high risk??? WTF?? Where’s the risk with online Spanish lessons??
Stay away from them
I use Samsung Tab 3 tablets. These cost $100 and are dedicated for use at our farm and farmers markets. It makes no sense to use a $400 tablet in those damage prone conditions. The current Square card reader does not work on these ‘older’ tablets. So I use older readers. At the farm our cell phone service is poor so swiping often fails or takes a long time so we just use the Register offline and upload later when I am at home with WiFi.
So I just swiped my own credit card on my Tab 3 with the older reader in offline mode but at my home with wifi. The card swiped successfully and authorized payment (but of course, offline) However when I turned off airplane mode on the Tab 3 and swiped the same card again (so it was online and in direct wireless connection), I got a message that the card reader is no longer supported and the payment would not be processed. So this is what is happening with my payment declines. During my business day at the farm, offline, I am storing up payments in the offline mode since the offline function authorizes them but when I take the transaction laden tablet home at night, and turn on the Tab 3 and Square Register to upload the transaction data, then decline messages get generated and I see them the next day.
So now I am out several hundred dollars plus my time spent in figuring this out because transaction support for this reader was terminated; probably on August 10 or thereabouts and with it, the capacity for transactions to be processed by Square. This despite the fact that the offline mode continued to show the payment was authorized.
So the short story is that Square continually updates readers and associated software; necessitating unnecessary hardware upgrades to stay in sync, and progressively terminates older versions which result in payments being declined and the merchant stuck with lost revenue and lost merchandise.
Tell me where I have misunderstood the situation.
I switch to Square hooked by the 2.75% no monthly fee. I happened to prepare for the biggest expo in central florida and happened to charge over $5,000 in transactions to coach on increasing scores on credit reports. Square deactivated my account because there transactions we got paid were mainly done with pre-paid cards. We focus on clients who mainly do not possess a credit card. No warning, $5115 held for six months. They are supossed to deposit my funds today. I will keep you posted.
did they end up depositing your funds back? my 90 day is up October 4 I wonder if they will release it on time they are holding about 3500.
did they ever deposit your funds? I am in the same boat as you.
All these negative comments sound like paypal reviews..LOL
I have used square for 3 years and never ever had an issue. i run a website and what i do is send out invoices to customers who want to make a purchase. You would think this would trigger a red flag, but it doesnt. I sell about $6000 a month using square, and i have never had an issue with them at all
Hi nbaj,
Please reply to this comment with your business name and location in order to authenticate your testimonial. Thanks!
how do send an invoice and how is the credit card charged?
You need desktop version on your phone, or you can use your computer. Go to invoices and simply create one and send it out. They pay it in the link square provides them
As of today, stay away from square. I recently had 2 transactions where square automatically deducted funds for the 1st transaction and refunded the buyer. Nothing i can do. The 2nd dispute was today, after a customer complained 5 months later. Luckily square gives you a heads up, that they will deduct your account to refund the buyer. because of this, i called and shut down my bank account today that’s attached to square. I will not allow buyers to rip me off. Square won on the 1st transaction, but will lose on the 2nd, as there is no bank account. This proves that square offers zero protection for it’s sellers. I strongly suggest you stay away.
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Worst customer service I’ve ever experienced. Cannot send via UPS or Fedex & will not deliver to a PO box. DO NOT try to get this shipped to a rural spot like Jackson, WY. A waste of time.
I suggest Apple Pay or Pay Pal reader. They can actually help you out!
Okay i watch the new commercial for Square.. I use Square Register on my ipad, use Square Market for online sales (https://squareup.com/market/eriecanalboatcompany-inc), will most likely use the employee app when available. Several points… most negative comments don’t give much info on the business or the types of transactions. Square has marketed to small Mom and Pops, with face to face transactions, from a stationary location, and with relatively low dollar values per transaction. I’ve never had a problem, business fitting the above criteria I’v recommended Square to haven’t had any problems, So Why Is It So Difficult to Understand. New Businesses without a stationary location, making transactions without the customer present or over the phone without any tracking method… with hundreds or thousands of dollars of transaction , whom probably don’t use Square Market for online sales. Sounds shady to me.. These days you can’t be too careful, cardholders need to get statements , review and accept or question any transaction that are questionable.. at least 60 days so holding 90 or more day …. Read your terms and conditions first , most people with problems, I suspect haven’t until things start going wrong.
OMG! SquareUp is terrible!! I read the reviews about them before I signed up and made the decision to go ahead and sign up anyway. Before I made my first transaction, I emailed them (They will not talk to you and do not post a phone number) to make sure that my account was active and that my transaction amount was within their limits. I received 3 emails back from them stating that everything was “good to go”. Once I made the transaction it showed that my deposit was pending. Then, later that night, I received an email stating that they were cancelling my account and that they were going to hold my money for 90 days. Unbelievable! I quickly emailed them back asking “Why?” I waited until the next day and did not receive any answers from them. I emailed again requesting information and that someone contact me to explain why I was told that I was “good to go”…still, no answers to any of my questions. I am trying to run a business and they have ruined a relationship with one of my customers. DO NOT USE THESE JOKERS. Unprofessional and they hide behind email providing absolutely no customer service.
SQUARE is the WORST company around. IMPOSSIBLE to get anyone on phone and LIKE CRIMINALS, they hold you money for THREE MONTHS. Thats not a typo. You get an email from them saying “sorry for any inconvenience but we are holding these funds for 3 months” They are out to ruin peoples business’s at the expense of them collecting interest on your money for 3 months. They are a class action law suit waiting to happen. STAY AWAY FROM THEM!
Hi I am trying to make a decision on whether to use Square pos for my new business. Do you mind me asking what type of items do you sell and also was the problem with swiped or keyed transactions?
I do sales and marketing for hotel groups I also a a small online jewelry shop called Designs by Carrie all of my transactions were keyed not swiped. They canceled with no notice and kept my money for 90 days. I am small business and unless you can afford to have your funds tied up I would not advise using them.
Carrie,
I sell vaping devices, which is actually sort of controversial. I do not sell online, I ONLY sell face to face, due to age verification. I do not swipe cards very often at all…only if I cannot get a card to read from a swipe. I do over the phone sales but they come in and pick up in store and then pay with a swipe of a card or cash. My transactions are average 60 dollars so not large transactions. I would think if you do large single transactions and/or key all or a lot then square is probably not the company for you. I have had a lot of great experience but I think most that are having all the bad experiences do not swipe and key in most of their transactions. I can tell you no other company was willing to loan me money for my business and square did after 1 year in business. It has truly helped me grow. I hope this helps you. you can email me direct with any questions or help I can try to give you. [REDACTED – personal contact info not allowed]
Do not……. I am a struggling artist, they froze my account and held 515.00 on the 3rd and last sale. Before they closed my acount. 90 days…. They are crooks. 90 days come and gone. They will not take you by phone, it’s all email. Can you afford this to happen to you, likely, when it’s crucial that you need the funds? If yes, then go for it.
O Yes I’m in the same boat as you. They are hold my money to on parts and and services i did on a costumer truck two and a half months ago. Email 12pm next morning are gone out of account. No leg to stand on. No support from them at all. Think goin to call police or FBI real shady company.
I am shocked to read all these comments! I have had square in a B/M business for a year and a half and I do 22000 a month in credit card transactions. I have had 0 (yes that is truly a 0) funds held from me. I have had NO trouble AT ALL calling them and speaking to a person in less than 10 minutes (which to me that is a good turn around time). most of the time its less than 3 minutes. I LOVE their POS system and I have two printers, cash drawer and two stands and tablets going. I Have honestly had NO, NOTTA, ZERO trouble. I know they are adding and building out thier program so there are a few newly added things I AM LOVING but not all bugs are out, so I do not currently use them, but I WILL :)
Just my experience as I have seen a lot of comments that are MOSTLY all bad, but I have to give square a shout out here from my experience.
I also got a capital loan from them and in less than 2 months have paid back almost half and I spoke to a customer care person and they said once paid I can get another one. I cannot even begin to get a loan from a bank!!!!! I have opened two stores now because of the capital loan!
Theresa, you are either a shill for Square One or EXTREMELY fortunate. I had TWO accounts frozen. One after 1 month and another after 2 days and just 1 transaction. They held over $5000 for 90 days. The reviews are mostly negative for a reason.
Accusing Teresa of, perhaps, being ingenuous doesn’t seem fair. Our company has been using Square almost since Square’s start. We have never had a problem.
From the beginning, as our business grew, we emailed Square whenever we needed an increase in our daily charge limit. They responded with an okay so now we can charge up to $10,000 a day.
We are aware of the many people who do have issues with Square so the one time we needed to refund a client we gave them a check instead of doing a charge-back.
I don’t know why some folk have a bad experience with Square and others, like Teresa and me, have only good to say. I do know they need to be made aware of your intended pattern of transactions, just like many financial bodies.
This company is nothing but a sham. Any positive comments are “REPUTATION MANAGEMENT” people paid by Square. I suppose many people will be fooled by these posts because it is so hard to believe that a company of this magnitude could operate this way. They held our funds for 1 full year. Been in business for 30 years and had never had this happen before or since. Jack Dempsey is in over his head. TWITTER IS TANKING. He is trying to take square public to save and it should be interesting when they have to be accountable to shareholders. Wish someone would expose this SCAM COMPANY.
Your assertion that my positive comments are born from being a tool of Square would probably be offensive if I didn’t realize that it’s coming from a position of frustration and anger.
Square seems to work for some people and then not others. I don’t know the guidelines for dealing successfully with Square but we have been dealing with them for a long time without a single negative issue.
I believe Square’s biggest issue is not honesty but a severe lack of communication.
I promise you I am not employed by square and you can easily contact me, to prove it or do your research. I am a veteran of 13 years whom started a business and use square. I honestly would NEVER lie to anyone about something for a gain of any kind. I know there are those who would but I am NOT ONE OF THEM. I think it has to do with amounts of transactions, and types of businesses(as I assume most any merchant account would scrutinize). I do not do large transactions, I am a retail store so my transactions are average 60 dollars each and I have done refunds through them and ALL have worked. I was skeptical doing a refund after reading so many comments but the 3 I have done worked very well. I just wanted to give an honest opinion of my experience. I am working with square now to set up my second location and YES, there are bugs and YES I am a little frustrated but I have worked with financial industries in changing systems and square is handling their changes quite well compared to the fortune 500 company I worked for.
Anyway, please feel free to email me if you would like so you know I AM a REAL CUSTOMER OF SQUARE and not a paid employee or anyone paid to say good things for them.
[REDACTED – personal contact info not allowed]
i have processed over $300,000 in the past 3 years being with square and NEVER had a chargeback and out of no where they terminated my accounts with no explanation whats so ever and now they are holding my money from 150 to 180 days please someone explain whats going on
I am no Shill, I promise you. I totally rely on user comments when shopping for items, so I would never stand up for something that doesnt work. I promise you, I am a very demanding customer when it comes to ANYTHING. I am just glad I am one of the fortunate ones that have not had any issues, as I was really really worried from reading a lot of comments prior to going with square.
I think they are growing so fast is a lot of issue possibly, but not sure. I just know that my experience has been nothing short of awesome.
Sorry to hear you have not and I would totally be upset with them and probably NOT use them ever again and write the worst reviews for them if it were me in your shoes.
Can you please give me the phone number that you use to talk to them. They provided me via email with a bogus number that goes to automated recording. I read many reviews and no one but you seem to be able to talk to a real person. They are holding my money for 90 days but i see many people post that even after the 90 days there is no money back.
Hi Vera, did you get your money back after the 90 days? Appreciate if you update all here as there are a lot in the same boat!!
Worst customer service I have ever run across. a full 12 email back and forth battle over what should have been a simple $15 refund.
Still no refund and they wont return an email or a phone call.
Total scam. They deactivated my account which is a life time ban from what I read on here and are holding $5,800 from me while I’ve not gotten a single chargeback. Apparently it’s because I’m too high risk. It just doesn’t make any sense. Now my business is literally on standstill while I set up a credit card account somewhere else. I would avoid going with square unless going a couple of days without credit card processing is acceptable.
What do they consider risky?
I have no clue what they consider risky. I have good credit, lots of cash, and have just been approved for a merchant account elsewhere for $50,000 a month. The most damaging part of this ordeal for me was losing business for a couple of days. If you get a lot of phone or website orders, having no downtime for CC processing is very important.
My transfers got frozen and a prompt came up asking for more information which was filled out. All of my paperwork (DBA, business license, sales tax license, SOS filings) is up to date for my LLC and I do have business bank accounts. I submitted 3 months of bank account information showing an average balance of about 100k. The only debt I have for both my business and me would be $600 credit card debt. It just doesn’t make any sense. They just banned me a couple hours after I submitted the info requested.
if all that is true, and i presume it is, why would you be considering Square, you are clearly not the type of business it’s intended. It is not intended for volume transaction online. its a face to face, small transaction amount program.. Please explain why you considered this program to begin with. I would be very interested in you reply.
If you look at their current mktng, they ARE trying to be attractive to larger customers, especially with their standalone POS option. Personally, I’ve been using them awhile, but then again I only get 1-2 cc transactions in a day. Nonetheless, the challenges with their C/S and all I’ve read here has motivated me to change to PayPal when I re-boot my e-store. Frankly I was initially attracted to Square because of the inventory management & reporting, But now PP has the same capabilities, so I’m going with the solid company, (with REAL customer service)
Jason, they charge a higher transaction rate for phone and 3rd party website orders which should cover any additional risk they might be worried about. If they were so worried about risk, then I think a better option would be to put a reserve or ask for more information instead of just using the banhammer. It’s a shame since Square does have better rates compared to what my old merchant account was getting. I could care less now. I hope they are happy with all the small mom & pop merchants they have. I’ve already gone to one of their competitors.
Same thing happened to me. I received emails from them saying that I was “cleared” to make transactions, and after the first one – which they knew about in advance – they sent me an email saying that they were terminating my account. No reason given.
What a mess I have now! I am trying to get the money they have “on hold” in less than 90 days. What a joke.
I called my customer and told them to dispute the charge. These guys are terrible and a disgrace to business. They should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who works there should also be ashamed.
Exactly, same BS they did to me after my SECOND transaction. I had given them in DETAIL the nature of my business and that I would have frequent charges of $1000 and others ranging from $300- $2200 MAX and after my 2nd charge I get an email saying I am high risk and have been deactivated AND the are holding MY money for 90 days. NO reply to my four emails that followed. Amazing how “Steve” was responding to all my set up q &a’s within 10 mins a week ago and now nothing. Don’t use SQUARE UP, scammers, they like to hold OUR money and collect interest on it for 90 days. Just imagine how much they are banking across the world doing this. But of course they were sure to take their CUT from my $1050 charge Before cutting off my acct for no reason. And beware users, their terms say they have “the right to deactivate and hold your funds for no reason at all”. Genius. No one reads that shit first. Scammers.
I like to think of myself as a person who gives others the benefit of the doubt. However, since I started my membership with Square this weekend, here’s what has happened:
They have failed to deposit my money within the 1-2 days as they advertised, and promised (with qualifications, in their documentation) they would do.
A customer paid an invoice I sent through their service with her credit card. After basically hoodwinking me into involving Squareup in my cash-flow, I was asked (via automated e-mail) to provide personal documentation of my identity, and receipts for my business — so I voluntarily provided these documents, same day. They have used my voluntary disclosure to inform their decision that my business is “high-risk.” They say that I may attempt to refund my customer his money and ask for an alternative form of payment (ie, appear disorganized or unprofessional to customers who have already trusted me with their credit card info), or agree to wait 90 days and pay them a fee for hanging onto my money for me.
Their decision is “final” and “irreversible.”
I haven’t gotten through to anyone in customer service yet, so keeping my fingers crossed for that, but I’m thinking I’ll let them keep their fees, damn their impudence. Whether I ever do business with them again would be in their court.
Close your bank account which they can access .They took money from my account without calling me or emailing me. They did not return the money for 2 years. There are several lawsuits against them .My attorney advised me to stay away from them. Several State Attorneys are investigating them for illegal practices..
I opened my company in 2001.Had no customer complains ever. Even in this case my customer signed legal affidavits that he does not want the money back but they did not care. Close your account before they clean you out and push you to bankruptcy as they did with others. I was lucky acting fast on my attorneys advise. I went to a different bank where they had no access to my money anymore.
square is the worst company to deal with no way of getting a hold of anybody they hold money until a verification is done try to send more verification and no way of doing it very disappointed
I know all too well what you have gone through. I myself started having funds withdrawn from my account in September 2013. At first I really believed they would return the money in the 30 day window they told me I had. After sending then numerous documentation from the State of Ohio, my financial information, business license and invoices I still had nothing after 30. At this point I was out $2485. Money that my small business juggled back and forth to cover. Then all of a sudden I get two emails in one day saying they had withdrawn $1600 and $500 again. I was livid. All in all, this happened six times. By then I was far too deep to recover. In November 2013 I contacted the Ohio Attorney Generals office for their help. Useless!!! They gave me a number that was to a disconnected cell phone. I called the AGs office back and was given the 800 number which redirects you to submit your issue via their website. I have a file folder that is more than 1″ thick of the same email over and over saying they would get back with me. After demanding a telephone number I was told “give us your number and specific time to call, and we will call you” I thought to myself…ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Anyone could call me and ask for financial info and I’m to suppose to do business this way? But I played along and sent an email that said “please call me in five minutes at 123-446-7890” about a half an hour later I receive an email from them saying “we tried to call your number but it was invalid”. I knew at this point I was in really really really bad shape. I took all of my emails and bank statements to my attorney and he was just as shocked as I was. Unfortunately, nothing could be done because of the contract I agreed to when I accepted the device. I could go on and on about my experience, it’s been horrible. I’ve lost everything I’ve ever worked for. 22 years in the travel industry – gone. I no longer have the financial stability that I had. My business was everything to me. I was one of the best. Even featured as one of the top agents for Apple Vacations. Everything gone in less than 5 months. I was charged with a Felony 3 Theft, received 5 years prison (suspended) probation for 5 years and with all of the fees, bank transactions, money lost from my clients trips. Jack Dorsey sits on the board of Disney and all of these huge corporations while running this useless business of Square. He needs to accept responsibility, just as I did and be charged with theft. Bottom line.
Kimberly
[REDACTED – contact information]
I would NEVER recommend Square to any merchant. We had a customer dispute payment on completed services and Square charged over $4000.00 back to our account. I placed multiple calls (over 50) and multiple emails. I NEVER ONCE, EVER, got a return call or resolution. I was told via email a decision would be made within 90 days as to the disposal of this issue. This was in April of 2014 and 15 months later there has never been a word from Square.
There are far better credit card processing company’s with customer support.
I had to wait two full years to get my money back even my client sent certified affidavit to ask for release of their money to me, to their bank or to them. I am not surprised that several Attorney Generals are investigating them. There will be a big lawsuit against them. People who never had problems are going to have as soon as there will be a glitch in the Square system. There was no customer support to solve the problem. My company is over 14 years old and my attorney advised me not to do any business with them anymore. I was on a high level business conference where business owners and attorneys addressed the “square problem”. The advise was: Close your bank account which they can access and walk away. There are many companies (not merchant credit card terminals) which give the same service as Square I am using them and they pick up the phone when I call them.
We’ve used Square now for about 3 years. NEVER had a problem. Our funds are deposited in our account the very next business day. We’ve never had funds held. Many, many, many of the complaints I’ve read here arise because people are NOT using a card reader and the ampunts are somewhat high. I’m sure Square gets a bit suspicious about all these charges when no card has been presented for the sale. Non swipe transactions on our end amount to a fraction of 1 percent. If you’re going to do this type of business then you MUST consider another merchant account provider. For you to constantly bash them because you haven’t done your due diligence by reading the fine print and researching your options is ludicrous. In the right environment, Square has been, and continues to be above reproach.
I totally agree! I know for a retail merchant store Square is awesome! I think that using square for non swipe is a HUGE part of the issue and the amounts are very high from what I am reading. I am same as you, Trudie, less than 1% is keyed card transactions and I HAVE NEVER HAD AN Issue. I have had to key some cards and still NO ISSUE.
I think square has to do better at letting consumers know that their service is NOT intended for those types of businesses and publish things that they would consider “HIGH RISK” companies. I do not think it is fair of square to let the public assume it is fine for most any businesses, but I also think most people looking for a processor needs to do their homework and find out if their type of transactions will be considered high risk.
Horrible experience! DO NOT USE!
I was a first time user. I got the square for the sole purpose of selling my paintings I had painted and collected over a two year period for an arts festival. First issue was that the square reader did not work, so all the transactions had to be done manually. Despite the setback the art show was a big success! My sales for the one day show were great! totaled almost $ 3,000.00. Only to learn the next day my money was not deposited into my account. In addition, my account had been deactivated without explanation. I tried numerous times to reach Square by phone and email. Only to realize unless you have an active a count you cannot speak to a live person at Square. I finally received one email telling me my funds would be deposited into my account 90 DAYS LATER without explanation! I filed a complaint with the BBB and have yet to receive my funds.
Worst service I think I’ve ever tried on the internet. I used a gift card to try deposit the cash into my account. Square took the charge (minus their fee, of course), and the deposit has been sitting there for 2 months without being processed. Basically Square stole $100 from me. I’ve sent 4 emails to support, never got a single reply. Of course you can’t speak to anyone via phone. I think I’ll report them to the BBB.
I have reported them before They are stating that my money will be in my account on the 18th waiting to see.
I use Square very seldom so it is easy to track deposits from Square to my account. We own a one room vacation rental and rent to fishermen etc. Anyway…I recently had two charges using Square for the rental. I received an email saying the first charge was accepted and a “Daily Summary Report” saying how much I charged. I never received a “Square has sent you” report for this particular stay. AND…the money is not deposited into my account. The customer was charged. CAN’T get a hold of Square via phone to ask for help. Sent and email, but still no reply. Hope I hear from them soon. Otherwise I will call the customer and ask them to cancel the charge amount on their card.
I started using square about 2 years ago, up till now i have not had any issues with charge backs or disputes. I had a customer call in about shipping some wheels to Canada, i told him we could use square to run the transaction. His card was denied twice and so i told him i’d send him a direct invoice through squares web services. I had to post the item for sale first with square. I posted it and mailed out the item to the address he directed me to once the payment was approved through square and deposited to my account.
Once the package arrived in Canada about 2 weeks later the customer then filed a claim with his credit company disputing the charges.
Even though i had shipped the item to the costumers claimed address (square has no way of verifying this information / unlike paypal). and had a signed signature from the customer once they arrived from fedex. This deal was disputed as soon as the goods arrived.
In my mind because square helped facilitate the transaction, approved the transaction and sent funds into my account telling me this is a good credit card go ahead and ship this item, they should be partially held responsible for facilitating the transaction.
Now I’m out my initial investment plus the shipping costs at the minimum.
Do yourself a favor, don’t download square application on your phone.
It might not be the first transaction that causes you to lose money, it might be the 10th or 100th. But anybody that has a credit card can decide to dispute any transaction and Square does not have your back.
They will pull that money out of your account faster than they deposited it into your account and wipe their hands clean of any wrong doing and responsibility.
I just deleted their application from my phone and moving forward learned a hard lesson.
Also there customer support sucks! Don’t take my word for it read other reviews.
I have lost several transactions because the square reader didn’t work, the swipe repeatedly didn’t go through. Fortunately I was able to negotiate a cash sale for them, the average amount was approximately over $100.00; the customers went to an ATM machine. I am now looking at keying in the amount, although more expensive per transaction, I am told this works. In the future I hope a better method will evolve.
I would be careful keying the information into the system. If you really read the reviews everyone who is having issues or that the account was closed down such as mine is because you are keying the amount instead of swiping the card. I would find another company if I was you.
Ask for a different card. Sometimes there is an issue with the card itself
Square is by far the worst company I’ve ever had to deal with. I attempted a refund which was a big mistake. I called in to have it done and was given the wrong information by a representative which caused my account to be destroyed. When I finally could reach someone on the line. They stated that the representative gave me wrong information and it was nothing she could do. Then she proceeded to tell me if I yelled she would hang up. She did. If you deal with square you know its hard to get a representative on the line. They made the mistake that costs me additional funds.
Square is not ready for restaurants. The problem is their sales representative repeatedly told me updates were coming. When it became obvious that the system would not work they refused to accept a return.
Bad business practices.
I highly resent the fact that I was effectively punished for daring not to have the most recent update of the Square app on my iPhone. I had just completed a consultation when my client asked if he could pay with a credit card. As I had my square reader, I told him that would be fine. Unfortunately every time I would try to load the app, the register keyboard failed to come up. So there I stood like a huge effing jack ass unable to process the payment. I fumbled with this for 15 minutes and even shut down and restarted my phone to no avail. I was in a weak signal area so running the 55MB update was not an option in that short time window. SO I LEFT WITHOUT BEING PAID. It wouldn’t kill them to put some kind of notification in the app if an update is necessary. When I returned to my office, I invoiced the client and am now sitting there hoping he will pay. Then, through trial and error, realized that I had to update the app to get it to work. I am extremely mad at Square right now and am considering stopping using them. I relied on them and they kind of screwed me. I will most definitely stop if I have problems getting paid for this transaction.
Square’s customer service is sub-standard. IF you get them to respond by phone, they use VOIP and the quality makes it very difficult to understand what they are saying. Everything had to be repeated. The customer service actually admitted to me that it was something that they are told all the time. She admitted it! The representative I spoke to was unable to grasp the nature of my concern, which should have been fundamental knowledge for her position. The call was dropped, twice, on their end and I was the one who had to call back and go through the whole “your call is important to us” spiel. How can companies fail to understand the basics of customer service and still believe they will stay in business? It’s baffling to me.
I just called to ask why you charging me 3.5%. the guy who called me back (I hope you have his name) was very rude.
and was repeated himself again and again. when I told him that he’s still not answering my question. he hung up on me.
it’s the first time I’m calling. and last time. because I refuse to be treated like 5 years old.
you NOT going to see more charges from my business.
DO NOT USE SQUARE! THEY SCREW OVER SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS WITH LITTLE OR NO NOTICE. My account was deactivated after they requested additional information from me (which I offered immediately). They are holding around $1000 for up to 90 days with zero communication or warning for me beforehand. Unfortunately, that $ represents critical funds for me. They offered no explanation for their decision, though I suspect and have heard that coaching and other “spiritual or alternative” looking services they shut down. That would be the case in my situation.
If you are a small scale start up and your cash is really critical: DO NOT USE SQUARE, they can really screw you over. I am a service based business and I charge remotely so maybe it’s fine for people who are running product and merchandising but my god, totally unreasonable. I’m done with square.
I am beyond frustrated with Squares customer service. No way to get a person on a call. Had a disputed charge that was totally bogus. Customer said they never disputed the charge. Then Square tried to sell me some protection plan for $250. Horrible
After over 3 months my wife and each had our funds refunded. We had our accounts deactivated after 5 weeks for mine and 1 week for wife. No reason other than “suspected fraud”. I am licensed in Florida to do business as is my wife. I have established business in Florida. My credit rating is 810. I jumped through the hoops Square made me. I filed 27 pages of documentation as did my wife. Their response? No way Jose. Consequently I was left with no means to secure payments. Fortunately my customers understood and made it happen. They paid cash! Some actually made a trip to my office to pay. I received ZERO support from Square and the representatives were rude and condescending. I wouldn’t recommend this company to my worst enemy. They should be investigated. At the very least made to pay interest on funds held 90 days. The SEC standard is 30 days. The BBB is kind to give them a C rating. I have since found another company that is quicker, friendly, and less expensive. And their website and mobile app is easier and more detailed. So in the end I am okay. They held almost 7K from myself and over 4K from my wife for 90 days! To me that’s thievery.
Awful. We had a similar awful experience thankfully my client got her money back in 48 hours and repaid me another way. I was going along and all of a sudden they cancelled my card. No reason was given. I find them ruthless in their dealings and they also were not communicating, do not take calls and I hope they get investigated and get put out of business.
Your story sounds just like mine. My account was closed for the same reason and have been waiting on 6000 since October I guess the next step is BBB and beyond.
Nearly 3 months later, Square still has not accurately determined where my February 2, 2015 transfer of nearly $500 ended up. Neither the recipient (my partner) nor myself have received, or can otherwise access, the funds. Square, when you can reach someone in their “office”, has been completely ineffective in attempting to resolve this issue. Proceed with great caution. In all fairness, this happened only once out of many uses. However, the apparent inability to quickly rectify the situation is unacceptable. I had considered using Square for my business but I am now unwilling to take the risk.
I have used square for two years without any issues. This week I can’t log in and no funds have been transferred to my bank. I can’t get a customer code so unable to speak to customer service. It appears to me there is “no” customer service. I signed up for Amazon Register today as I’m sure I’ll never hear from Square again or get my money. Very disappointing.
leaving square. had no problem and referred clients, family and friends, and then, bam — deactivated already sent invoices. Clients called and said they were getting error pages. Thank you Square. I’m a web developer—way to make me look like I know what I’m doing.
My Square stores are down. My clients’ stores ? Down. Thank you Square. For making me look like a complete idiot.
And, for holding money and NOT ANSWERING ANY SUPPORT TICKET ABOUT THE ISSUES I’M HAVING.
GOOD-BYE SQUARE.
I am absolutely disgusted with Square! I attempted to call into their customer service and it disconnected me when I didn’t have a customer number. I sent square a request for my customer number 3 times in 3 days and they have tried to no answer me giving me all types of answers except the one I asked for. For a company that is one of the hightest rates in the industry their customer service is WORTHLESS!
If anyone is thinking of using SQAURE, please read these comments! Buyer beware. I had a similar horror story with Square and fortunately I was able to have my client put a stop to the transaction. My bank actually helped me to resolve the situation because they have had so many complaints and problems with other customers in the same situation as all these people here. I contacted the founder of Square through his Twitter account when all attempts to reach any customer service person failed. I highly recommend going to social media to get their attention. I noticed that anyone who complains on Facebook or Twitter gets contacted tight away. They don’t want anyone to see the negative posts so they are quick to get back to you.
You might also want to know that Square is NOT a credit card processor but a money aggregator! They are only a middleman between you and the bank. They are not governed by the same laws as a bank. You can get a merchant account with your bank that offers virtual processing. It’s cheaper and you will have access to a banker or customer service 24 hours a day. They will not suspiciously hold your money or drop your account for no reason leaving you holding the bag.
It’s also worth it to know that if a customer disputes your charge with Square they will just chargeback your account with no investigation so your customer gets the luxury of your goods or services while you pay for it! This is getting to be so well known with the public, there are actually people seeking out merchants who use Square just because they won’t have to pay if they dispute a charge!
I now make it a point to never buy anything from someone who uses Square because I don’t want them to get 1 cent of my hard earned money.
Be relentless on social media until you get their attention. Good luck
Good luck to anyone dealing with Square, my testimony was posted in September. I did not have any luck with the social media. Someone had posted about posting on @Jack relentlessly to get a code for phone access. I posted on Square, @Jack, and other small business posts every 5 min. for 2 hours, then every 15 min for another 6 hours. Beyond that I posted several times daily over many weeks, I got nowhere.
I have posted many comments on this site regarding this horrible ponzi company. They have driven my business into bankruptcy, ruined my 22 year career and not to mention the financial burden it has taken on my family. I have been fighting them for almost 2 years now and have been charged with a Felony 3 because I was unable to recover the funds that Square withdrew from my account and held without returning to my client or myself. I urge anyone using this device to stop immediately and contact the FTC and FBI with open complaints. I have contacted several attorneys and none are able to take the company on due to their contract. In a nutshell, they can take money out of your account without notice and not return it EVER.
For those of you posting about how great this company is, you are obviously a paid advertisement for this horrible company. Get a real Job!
Kimberly
Hi Kimberly,
Today they deducted 10,000.00 from my bank account as it stated there was a dispute with my customer. Well there is not and I contacted my bank fraud department. My bank reversed the charge and I am going to get my money back…hopefully…
So you think the FBI will deal with this? This will ruin my company since I look like a fool…I have been in business 18 years…and this is unbelievably illegal…class action suit?
Branson is going to hear from my Royal Commando SBS partner who owns our business!
We are connected to the heavy hitters of media worldwide and my partner won’t stop if anyone wants to ride the wave…
Thanks Chris
Thank you for this info! I’m unable to reach square, and based on what you stated, I called my bank. They do have virtual processing and will be setting that account up shortly. Square has been great until I needed their help. There are too many other available options to stick around for this kind of service!
I wanted to share my HORRIBLE, upsetting and borderline illegal experience with SQUARE.. They claim to be a mobile credit card processing for small businesses. When I alongside my sister, Cherisse Danielle and our mother. Decided to take the leap and open our own small business, REST FOR LESS LUXURY BEDS
I thought it was imperative to offer credit cards as a method of payment. Square was recommended to me by a friend and I took a look at the company… they claimed to be simple and fast Credit card/ online payment processing company.
They sent me the white square reader right away and told me I could start taking payments immediately ( even before I linked our business bank account) That night we take a few credit card purchases and when the sales day was over I got on my laptop and entered all my banking information. They stated it would take 5 business days to verify my bank account.. I though okay that’s fine.. It also said I can keep taking credit card/ online payments and they would hold in my account until they bank account was linked.
5 Business days later I got a notice that my bank account was verified, and again I could continue taking credit card payments..
A day later I received yet another email saying they now needed more information before they would deposit any funds into my account, but the familiar notice that again I can continue taking credit card payments. The next day I gathered 13 PAGES OF BUSINESS DOCUMENTS and faxed off to them as per their request.. I sent business registration, customer invoices, supplier invoices, Business Adds, and my Bank Statement.
Later that day I received this email from them:
Hello Natalia,
We’re sorry to inform you that we are deactivating your account. Our Account Services team reviewed your account and found a pattern of transactions associated with high-risk activity.
For further information about our policies, you can review section 42 of the Square Seller Agreement.
We regret that, starting today, you will no longer be able to process transactions using Square. Any funds currently in your account will be held for 90 days before being released to your linked bank account.
If you’d prefer to receive funds more quickly, you should consider refunding the payments back to the original cards and seeking alternate forms of payment. (Please note that we will refund all the fees, too.)
Refunds are available within 60 days of the original payment. To process a refund, log in to the Square dashboard.
1. Use the date selector tool to locate the specific payment.
2. Click the payment you’d like to refund, then click “Issue Refund”.
3. Select the reason you’re refunding the payment, and click “Issue Refund.”
4.
Unfortunately, our decision to deactivate your account is final. Due to security reasons and the obligations of our agreements with card networks and other financial institutions, we cannot reverse this decision and are unable to provide additional details.
Again, we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Sincerely,
Square Account Services
Notice there is no contact information and no phone number at all… I went online and tried to find a contact number to call them as my BUSINESS IS 100% LEGITAMATE and I am depending of MY funds to continue operations!!
Finally after looking online, and coming across many people in similar situations I figured out that they will not give ANY phone support to anyone without an active account, they will not talk to you call you back or respond to any questions. I also came across HUNDREDS of people with the same story as me.. All upset and left without their hard earned money!
I think it’s important to mention that we have been open for about a week and a half so pattern of transactions?! Camon!!..
Opening a small business is difficult enough without someone holding your funds for 90 days without reason, or explanation. I have written them 6 emails, tried to contact on Facebook and all I get back is a form letter saying our decision is final. They refuse to contact me via phone.
Square has the potential to single handedly destroy my small business, and they are also doing this to a lot of other people… I wanted to get the word out!
BEWARE OF SQUARE!!
Please share… We cannot let these people get away with taking advantage of the little guy!! Do an internet search yourselves too …. It is a major problem…
Talia
#bewareofsquare
Did you ever get you money because I’m going threw the same thing right now they are holding $8202.00 from me and I can’t get in contact with them.
Hi Talia
I’ve posted my experience with SQUARE before, I am just waiting Civil Suit Action for this company to occur.
I am a small business owner too. I sell products at the home shows. We had few CC processors and one of the show we decided to use SQUARE. This was the biggest mistake in my business history. We had over 10 K CC transaction happened at the show..All swiped and sign by customers. After this, our experiment was similar to yours. Unfortunately it took us 14 months + 20 weeks (installments) to get our money back. I hope this will not happen to you. The financial damage was far beyond 13K.. not even counting emotional distress. We have attempted to write to BBB, Attorney of General, some media group and in all Social Media.. I even personally went to SQUARE head quarter in San Fransisco to talk to someone. They have 2 layers of security.. I couldn’t even pass the first one. I just told them, I need to talk to someone face to face to get my answers and eventually my money. Security personal told me there 5-10 customers comes there (similar situation) but they can not let me go upstairs to talk to someone. I had to send them an e-mail. Anyways after I refuse to leave without talking to someone from someone customers service, they called to POLICE on me for trespassing.
There are lot more of course, but I just want to keep it short.
I believe this company is getting protected by some politicians and government agencies. As you know Twitter guy is the one found SQUARE.
It is hard to get somewhere with these guys..
GOOD LUCK..
Hi Talia,
I was reading your complaint cause I got the same answer from square. The day before they told me everything was fine after talking to a customer service person. Then I received the same letter that you got. I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve send them everything they were asking for. Is the funds really gonna be release after 90 days? I’m worry it’s 5500$. Did you find any solution to talk to someone?
Thanks
Same thing happened to me a few years ago. They withheld the funds for 90 days. I eventually did receive them though after the 90 days. Square sucks!
I don’t understand all these negative reviews, we’ve been using Square at our pizzeria for over two years with no problems. I highly recommend Square.
To authenticate your testimonial, please reply to this comment with your business name and location.
Same thing here, I have been selling my Programming and Linux Admin services since 1999 and 2 years ago changed from paypal to square, never had one problem and I do $75K a year volume. I’ve even gotten 2 loans of $4000 through them, no problems at all.
My company purchased a square reader about a month ago to be able to accept credit cards to be in the now day world . I run a Landscaping company which does high end landscape project $20,000 plus. The first day I got it set up I ran a $10k charge on a customer card, everything went through no questions asked money was in my account within 2-3 days. I thought great this is going to be easy to use. Then a month later I tried to run a $12k charge for the same customer of mine. Everything went through, they took the money off his credit card and sent us both receipts for the transaction. Then a day later I get an email from them stating ‘that we need to verify your business”. So I complied and sent over the documentation they wanted (federal tax ID #, bank statements, etc…). But good luck trying to do that on their website it does not work. When you call and ask why they simply reply “well download google chrome”. Sorry No I am not doing that. I am not very tech savvy. I was using internet explore the most common used web browser in the world. So I ended up having to send them in an email. They “reviewed” my information and then sent me an email a day later stating that they reviewed my information but the only thing is they limited me to a $3,000.00 limit per transaction. The bad part is they had my customers money for 3 days floating it around and ended up not transferring the $12k to my account. And then they tell me that it could take up to 8-10 business days for them to refund the money to my customers credit card. Isn’t that fraud??
So why on day one of me having this square account did they let me charge $10k and now a month later with no issues with my account would they not let me charge $12k???
When I went to ask why I was limited to $3,000 I was told it was for my protection and my card holders protection. (I understand they want to prevent fraud). But I have been in business for over 8 years. I have never had an issue or compliant about credit card processing. When I kept asking the question why, it was the same answer. So I asked for a supervisor! Good luck as they don’t take phone calls. So when it comes to needing help good luck you are stuck with whoever they can find on the street to answer the phones. Customer Service is horrible at this company!!!
I WILL NEVER USE THIS COMPANY EVER AGAIN AND WILL NEVER RECOMMEND THEM OR ALLOW ONE OF MY CREDIT CARDS TO EVER BE RAN THROUGH THEM. So companies out there that have a square good luck!!
I believe that the FCC or feds should walk in and shut this company down for poor credit processing handling and poor customer service!!
I have been doing business for myself my whole life and my family owns many companies and we have never been treated this way by a credit card processing company!!
Future users of the Square good luck! Because you will need it.
Square fraudulently deducted $2,504.19 from my business account stating a customer’s bank issued a charge-back that was NEVER issued. I use or used Square for my on-line invoicing. Please keep in mind that I have never had an issue with my account; no disputes, no charge-backs, nothing. I rent short-term properties and I had a customer who decided not to stay at my property and wanted a refund. We do not issue refunds unless we can re-book the property and we were unable to do so on such short notice. There for, no refund was issued. Pretty standard in the STR business. The customer decided to call their bank and state that the transaction was unauthorized, $2,504.19. Their bank, Wells Fargo, reached out to myself and Square requesting information about the transaction. Keep in mind that they did not issue a charge-back or dispute; simply reviewing the case. I gave Wells Fargo the transaction receipt and all pertinent dialogue (e-mails) between the client and myself. At this time, Square decided to deduct my account in the amount of the “reviewed” transaction. Again, no formal dispute or charge-back had been filed. The charge Square deducted did not clear my account as we keep little funds in that account. Square attempted 3 times to take the money from my account. Each time racking up hundreds of dollars in banks fees as it was messing with my pending transactions. They were successful in obtaining the money on the 3rd attempt. Again, a dispute or charge-back had not been issued by my customers bank. I reached out to the customers bank and Square. Wells Fargo was extremely helpful and also questioned why Square had deducted the funds from my account without a formal dispute or charge-back being issued. Also, Square had all pertinent information in regards to the case and claims to offer seller protection which in fact they do not. You cannot contact Square directly. You have to call, leave your number, and wait for someone to call you back. At which time they transfer you to the disputes department. My call was dropped 3 times during the “transfer” and I had to start the process over each time; call, leave number, wait for call back, transfer to right department, call drop, etc. When I finally received a call back from a person in the disputes department the way I was treated was absolutely absurd. Wasn’t I the customer? The Square employee was extremely sarcastic with me and mocked my questions like I was an idiot for inquiring about why Square had deducted $2,500 from my account and that I had questions, concerns and needed time frames. I’m running a small business, $2,500 is A LOT of money to my business or any small business. There e-mail response to my questions and repeated email attempts was, “I’ve taken another look at your account and can see that the case below is still being reviewed by your customer’s bank. We don’t have any updates to provide to you at this time. However, as mentioned, we’re expecting to hear back from your customer’s bank by 6/12/2015. Please feel free to write back in at that time for an official update”. They want me to contact them in 90 days to figure out the “official update”? How is this an unacceptable business practice? Again, aren’t I the customer? Again, I’ve never had 1 issue with my account prior; no disputes or charge-backs. Not one. Do not use Square. I’ve filed fraud against them at this time.
So you should be pursuing a legal case against the customer who created the problem. Square is follow its stated policies regarding disputes. You are clearly, as many people and small business do, trying to go after the wrong entity. Go after the customer for all damages and fees. All I can tell you Square didn’t create the problem, that customer did. I have always gone back to customers , confronted the situation and looked for compensation directly. Both institution are legally working for the customer not you.
Peter,
I disagree. The customers bank never issued a charge-back so Square had no right to pursue any action. Debiting the funds from my account without a formal dispute or charge-back filed from the customer is fraudulent; plain and simple. I do agree that blame should be on the customers shoulders as well but again, they never issued a formal charge-back, just a transaction review. And to tell me that Square is “following it’s policies procedures” is a cop out. Their customer service and disputes department is non-existent. Getting someone on the phone is nearly impossible and when you do, finally, you get treated like shit (pardon me). To tell a client to “wait 90 days until we settle this” is a completely erroneous business practice. They have created this “policy” to eliminate communication, due diligence and follow-up.
I can say there are many payment options out there. Having worked for a year there are many fees tacked on later after a few months. Common practice. Because of that I eventually started own company. There are options where you pay as you go or hook up a machine, wireless, website etc. There are processors out there “rare” that will not charge junk fees, make sure you have your money next day and get billed only at the end of the month. It is better to have the Interchange Rates as issued by the banks with a plus rate. Ranges from ballpark 0.75 to 2 percent , depending on card and Mc Visa evaluation at the end of the transaction of which card you took. Check Cards around 0.75 percent (non pin entered debit) qualified cards around 1.54 percent (low rewards attached, than mid and non qualified. Cards not swiped, Hugh rewards to customer and corporate cards. Hope this helps. Happy Easter and Happy Passover.
We are a small, family owned business, and just started using Square a few months ago. We have been very happy with the service and the opportunity to offer our customers an option to pay by credit card.
We just received a “not satisfied” response, due to the lack of information provided on the Square receipt. While I understand Square provides limited information (date paid, amount paid, credit card type and last 4 digits), it is unnerving we now have a negative review/response due to something beyond our company’s control.
Is there a way to remedy this? The customer marked their review as “no response allowed”. However, that is not a fair assessment of our company.
Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you. Pamela
I would be very careful. If you are showing and unsatisfied even if it is there fault they will start holding your money or cancel your account and tell you that you can have your money in 60 to 90 days and then will play h**l to get your money if you ever do.. Buyer beware when using Square
I spoke with my actual bank today.. (REGIONS BANK) I do not know if you have them but. They told me that they have a lot of complaints regarding square. They also advised me that they offer the same thing with a pay as you go merchant service. They qualify you at the start so there is no waiting for your money and no limit on the amount that you can do every month and that your service is good from your first swipe. No contract and your fees are less then square and available the next business day.. Your bank may also offer the same service.
Horrible, Horrible company and rude, uneducated no class customer service reps.
My situation: Graphics and Printing Company, To make my story short customer was dissatisfied with flyers we printed for him, keep in mind that it was his art work. so he paid a total of $369.00 or so… Customer called his bank and Square and told them we somehow got a hold of his cc information and charged his card without authorization! Like really?? WDF?? So they charged my account and withdrew the amount of 369.00, then i called and then sent the proof they needed and they replaced the $ , poof problem fixed? NOT! so that weekend I got hit with a NSF, because we always transfer $ from that account to other account. I called them yet again, yes with stupid pin # they request you get before calling… , They hit my account again, and again I get a NSF, called them and they claimed that they will continue to charge my account until they get that money back, and I won’t receive it until they settled the dispute that is going on, keep in mind I already sent them a copy of the invoice customer signed and dated, where it clearly says we are not responsible for your own artwork . So basically they hold on to your money until wenever they want, claiming that his bank denied my claim because the invoice signed by him is not enough proof. So in the meantime they will continue to charge my account and they will not any shape or form be responsible for any bank fees my bank throws at me!!! Fellow business owners, beware please don’t accept SQUARE!! ITS A TOTAL SCAM COMPANY TRYING TO DO MONEY LAUNDRY WITH YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY!!!
They closed 2 accounts of mine without warning and after lengthy and detailed report on my business with documentation. They are currently holding almost $1600 of mine for 90 days. NO communication. Non-existent customer support, thuglike behavior, and godlike attitude. This company should be shut down by FCC/SEC
Four and a half weeks ago a $500.00 purchase was “approved” by Square. I did not received an update to my account record and my bank account was not credited. I checked my transaction record and found that the transaction was “cancelled” without notification. I finally talked to a service representative who gave me some gobblygook instructions on how to allow Square to check into it. I tried 3 times with no success.
Beware of a company who can cancel a previously approved transaction without recourse.
This is my fifth year using square in my brick and mortar store, and I’ve not had one problem. However, I did a lot of research first. The iPad POS system is equal to systems you could pay thousands to set-up and a monthly fee after that, and you can get it for free. I have recommended Square to other local businesses and no complaints.
Emma – I think most people on here had an excellent report with Square and like yourself with no problems. But the biggest problem is, one day square just up and deactivates the account, no notice, funds held, etc, etc –
Nice.
Square service is so deplorable that the company has to plant fake comments. This user’s comment that:
“The iPad POS system is equal to systems you could pay thousands to set-up and a monthly fee after that, and you can get it for free.”
is echoed word for word by a user titled “Pete Abele February 27, 2015 at 12:14 pm” earlier in this thread.
I feel for you business owners who have been scammed out of your hard earned money from Square.
I had a retail store and used Square. I went out of business on March 31, 2014. I informed Square. The new owner of the store started April 1, 2014. Evidently the new owner used Square for only one half of April and then switched over to another merchandising card. GET THIS. I receive a 1099 Form that shows for January, February, March and one half of April. BUT GET THIS. My business was completely terminated with my bank, the state, and federal, and I DID NOT RECEIVE THE MONEY FOR FIRST HALF OF APRIL in my bank account. The new owner received the money in a completely new business, with a new bank account, with a new FEIN number and with notification to Square of the change. Evidently if the business is in the same location with the same name, they just consider it the same business … DUH … Trying to reach them is hell. Many emails … finally reach an employee who says the problem will be ESCALATED to someone higher because I requested it, but then only get the same employee again who says SQUARE CANNOT CORRECT FORM 1099’s. WHAT? … They tell me my tax accountant has to fix the problem. WHAT? I tell them there is a box on the Form 1099 for a corrected copy … they just need to send out two forms to the appropriate owners. I would not recommend using Square and going through the ropes like I have been going through. I THINK IT IS A SCHLUCKY TYPE OF BUSINESS WHO IS JUST TOO LAZY TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT OR PERHAPS EVEN TOO DUMB TO KNOW WHAT IS RIGHT … You decide …
I have taken 2 credit card payments.. I rarely get credit cards in my line of business but once in a blue moon I get asked to. First payment went through without a hitch and it was for a large sum of money. Second amount was 575.00 and they are holding for 90days. The notice said due to high risk of fraudulent activity we are canceling your account and holding your funds for 90 days.. Really What fraudulent activity I have a business license and a tax ID and have never had to give a refund… What a joke…
I used square for the first time to sell an iPhone 6 128 gb , I communicated with the buyer via text and phone conversation and we agreed to meet in a public place (mall) and to use square for 3rd party sequiturs that’s in case someone tired to scam me. Turns out square isn’t like PayPal which is what I usually use, the “buyer” opened a dispute and has my phone. It’s been 4 months and still haven’t gotten my phone or money. I would recommend everyone to please stay away from this company. Bunch of theifs
Your problem is with the customer not square, if you accept a card you always risk a charge back, if it’s fraud open a police report.
Square’s responsibility is to the card user not the merchant (as are all card companies).
This is my fifth year using square, not one problem. However, I follow the rules, and I read the disclosures. In fact they have called me. I can’t believe all the people who use the system incorrectly and have a problem with the company when it goes wrong. Truly they should be on a cash transaction system only. Please people remember, it’s protecting your customers against fraud, not you! The iPad POS system is Equal to systems you could pay thousands to set-up and a monthly fee after that, and you can get it for free. For the businesses that have not fully investigated Square, and read all disclosures first, it’s a lesson learned. I have recommended Square to customers an local businesses and no complaints.
Either you are a ringer or you have been unusually lucky. Either way I simply don’t believe your story. If this is such a reputable company, why don’t they have customer service number like Paypal or Intuit? Don’t you find it a bit strange that a financial company (which by the way, is not governed by banking laws) has no way for its customers to contact them? Do you really think that all of these stories are from people that don’t know how to do business. That’s ridiculous. This company is a fraud! And by the way, can you explain why they pay back money they withhold in monthly installments? If they held the money they should pay it back in one lump sum back to the account it was held from. Seems like a case of borrowing from Peter to Pay Paul. They are just moving money around and it’s catching up with them.
Richard Branson is a big investor in this company so I think that people should start boycotting Virgin products to make themselves heard.
Another problem is that people are finding out that they can buy anything from a merchant that uses Square and they can dispute it with no investigation. The money is just automatically deducted from the merchants account with no notice, no resolution (remember there is no phone # to call) Merchant is just out of luck. I refuse to do business with a merchant that uses Square because I won’t give them on red penny of mine. A lot of people are also doing the same!
If anyone is considering this company, save yourself the money and the inevitable heartache by using truly reputable companies. there are so many options out there that are less expensive and really user friendly. t will be the best thing you can do for yourself and your business.
As a customer I hate Square. I have never given them my email address but without my knowledge they somehow have it… Merchants are allowed to give it to them and select to email a receipt without my permission and I hate that I am not in control of my own information. I also hate that I cannot contact Square to have my information removed. The website will not give me their phone number even though they’ll accept all kinds of information about me without my permission. I hate the liberties this company and merchants who use it force on innocent customers who don’t know it until too late that their information was handed over.
Our privacy DOES matter
I don’t know why any merchant would send your info to Square. As part of the transaction the customer is asked if they want a receipt via text or email… or no receipt. My customers choose their receipt receiving method. I test Square from time to time and have never received an email or text from them on any of the accounts I have chosen for my receipts and have never had a complaint from a customer either.
I have been using Square for over 5 years now and it has been nearly flawless! As a traveling vendor I love that my customer can use their cards confidently and I don’t have to stop my day and run end of day reports or transfer funds. Square takes all the hassle out of accepting credit and debit cards.
Personally I am not thrilled with their politics that have slithered into their Square Seller’s Agreement but I do not violate their “policy” and therefore live with it.
Truly, I have never had any real issues with their whole set up and have found them very easy to work with.
I have used square for 4 years and love it, haven’t had one issue. My transactions are usually less than 50.00 so I have on issues. The company I used charged me so much. This company works for me, May not be a good fit for small business who handle large ttransactions.
I’ve been with the Square about 2 years now. Here’s the good and the bad; It was a little frustrating when we first started due to the Square holding on to our funds with the larger purchases. We rent cabins in Alaska and occasionally we would get a larger deposit of $2,000 plus and, per their policy, would withhold our funds up to 30 days. Secondly, it was also frustrating not to have a live person we could call for questions or issues. The good part, and it’s very good, is the Square did eventually remedy the withholding by raising our limit so it’s no longer an issue. Secondly, we have had only has one dispute in the 2 years which was eventually handled by a live phone call to a representative at the square. This call was easily arranged by email to start with a request to speak to a live person. Our account was assigned a code and given a toll free number to call. I gave the person the code when I called and was immediately transferred to a person who found a solution to the problem (double billing by the customers bank) and fixed it in one day. In 2 years, the Square has been extremely accurate with our account and deposits our funds in our account within a business day or two. The fee schedule is strait forward with none of the aggravating tier levels that other card processing companies use to constantly abuse you resulting in elevated, unexpected fees. This is a great company if you play by their rules; ask for an increase in your limits when they get to know you and go through their channels when you need to talk to someone. If you can wrap your mind around those 2 issues, you’ll be really please with the Square.
James,
I have been battling them for almost two years. I have complaints filed with all the BBBs known to me including San Francisco, Kim is the vp there. She knows my story first hand. My complaint with the FTC had gone investigated and the Attorney General of Ohio (my home) and California are useless. They claim they can not help because wet are not consumers, we are small businesses. My class action suit is not allowed because square had a clause in their contact staying they can not be sued by a group and Amy complaints had to be tough arbitration via emails and you know how that goes. In October 2014 I was charged and found guilty of a felony 3 because square never released thousands of dollars die to my business and my customers filed charges through the Attorney General. I had to file bankruptcy, lost my career of 22 years and currently on give years strict probation. Not so much of a ticket and now I have to be in my home by 9, report every day to my probation officer and nit even a glass of wine with dinner. I’m 48, been hospitalized twice, unable to find employment with the felony record. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’ve tried everything to have them held responsible and nothing had worked.
My corporation was opened in 2001. Never had any complaint as we only charge after our service was finished and accepted by clients. I used Square for 2 years when I receive an email that they got a complaint. I found out from the amount who the client was and I called them. They never complained. They felt so bad that they sent a certified letter to Square and went to their bank to make sure the founds are released to Square. The founds were at Square. They could not reach anybody on the phone.I could not reach anybody on the phone. Nobody picks up the phones at Square. My clients sent a certified and notarized letter to Square to release the founds to me. Nothing happened. On 4/2012 Square wrote:”We are committed to responding by the next business day, so you will hear back from us soon. We take all matters regarding your funds very seriously, and with your cooperation we anticipate a quick resolution of your case. ” This was in the spring of 2012.After all these I received an email from Square that they cancel my account ” Your business is a prohibited business, as defined by Section 6 of the Square Seller Agreement. Therefore, Square cannot accept payments related to your business. ” I am a business analyst working with algorithms. What is prohibited on that? Our business has a 14 year A+ reputation. We pick up the phone when clients call, not like Square. Now 1/2015 I received back from Square the $300. Over two years of investigation needed for them to determine that the notarized letter of my client was original. This company SHOULD BE INVESTIGATE. They make you comfortable and they hit you when you do not expect. A business attorney advice us to close our bank account and open in a new bank as he was representing other clients where substantial amounts disappeared from their accounts. Be aware. A good business is not afraid to talk-to customers. Call them. You will see with your own eyes. There are other reputable companies providing the same services who pick up the phone. Do you really need the 100+ hours headache as I had, for no reason?
I am so very nervous to get the Square after reading all these reviews , I don’t know what to do. My husband is a master plumber we own our plumbing business,I handle the calls and he does the work, It is only my husband and I , Small bus. I also checked EMS + that had lots of bad reviews. So any input would be greatly appreciated. Some reviews I have read on this site say there fine , but there are more negative then positive.
Both Intuit and PayPal have similar systems that work very well and they have excellent customer service. Stay away from Square if you do not want problems.
I had a problem with paypal when i was a power seller on ebay. Got scammed by someone who said they didnt recieve a laptop i sent said box was empty paypal took all the money off my account and shut me down. I have had square now for about a year and a half. I do alot of small billings under $1,500 every once in a while ill have a bill for $3,000. Im an electrican, not a “business” per say just a self employed guy working every day to make a living. I have not had any problems with square . Last year i only processed about 12k this year im at about 17k and will be around 30k in credit card sales. so far so good. makes me a little nervous ill just be keeping a close eye on my account
Mary, I am a small home remodeling contractor. I use the square for a year then DEC of 2013 I had a client say she was out of money and did I take credit cards? I said sure not having any problems in the past. However this transaction was $6000.00 dollars I was not aware that they had a $2400.00 limit! They froze it 2 weeks before Christmas! It was 2 months of Hell after that. They have no customer service it was emails and they wanted bank statements, tax id,licenses ext… I gave it all to them and they still would not release funds! I finally had my customer call her credit card company that had been charged and dispute it. I ended up going bankrupt 3/3/14 over these con artist! DON’T USE THEM EVER! PLEASE!
Thank you for your response, We are not going with the square . I had my husband read all of these reviews also. We are going to look into pay pal, intuit, Iam not sure about these either. We will look into it.
WOW!!! I thought Square sounded like a great service to access CC for customer convenience. I was trying to set up account, but wanted to talk with someone – COULD NOT locate a telephone number and I had to sign in to access contact …. STILL NO TELEPHONE NUMBER! Then did a search and found this site.
So sorry to read these horrible business nightmares! Instead of making it easier for Small and Independent Businesses – they are exploiting them!
Changing T&C AFTER they have your accounts, personal information and data is fraud. Report them to your BBB and State / Province Consumer & Corporate Departments.
Thank you for your sharing your heartwrenching stories I truly hope each of you gets your money ASAP.
Absolutely the worst customer service and company I have dealt with. You should be aware that once you are set up, they can (at random) hold your money for up to 90 days (they do not disclose that during “the easy” sign up process).
I guess they figured a way to squeeze more than the 3% by holding my money.
To my surprise they wanted me to send them so much documentation including my CHECKING ACCOUNT statements!!! unbelievable! I am not applying for a mortgage here, and I already did the $1 process that should have proven to them that the checking account is legit and exists. I sent SQUARE my IRS filing / EIN for the Business and the renters lease to prove to them that the transaction is payment from one of my renters and I get back a rejection and they are going to hold my $1900 for 90 days! really! they must be desperate to make extra interest income by holding my renter’s money for 90 days! NICE!!! This is crooked dealing.
I charged $35,000 over 60 days with my advertising agency. I have a large monthly bill and figured this would be a way to extend my payments during the tight times. Well into the charging, my advertising agency started getting NSFs. Upon checking the deposit account, it was determined that the Square had stopped making payments that had been no problem before.
The agency had no notice from the Square that there were any problems. There were no pop-ups stating that verification information was necessary to process. Nothing at all. It wasn’t until both of us called Customer Service through MY SQUARE ACCOUNT that we could even talk to a human being. They promised that it would be the addressed urgently. They did not give us a direct phone number to speak with a representative. They did not allow us to be transferred. They would not give us a direct email.
It is now almost five days later. Over $35,000 is “deferred” meaning that my ad agency cannot pay its bills. I can’t do a charge back because that will only hurt the agency’s rating AND it will not free up my cards to pay while the matter is in dispute.
I am planning on filing a class action lawsuit in the next few days. I have no doubt in my mind — since my cards have all been charged, that Square is depositing these funds and making interest in the interim while causing damage to my advertising company, giving me a black eye and causing NSF’s to accumulate. Enough is enough!
My mother has a bail bond service. She used square until square found out she was a bonding agent.Square told her that was not the type of business they wanted to be connected to. I thought money was money.
I use Square daily in my main business. I have as mall salon space that I remt, and the majority of my clients pay with a card. I’ve had it since June and all has been wonderful.
I also sell Scentsy and had done a vendor show in November. I created a new square account with a different email address so that I could differentiate. Plus, my Scentsy money goes into my personal account vs my business account. I only had 1 person pay with a card. Went through, fine, no big deal. It was roughly $11. I never got the deposit. Then earlier this month I had a customer make a purchase and I tried to use my Scentsy square account to charge her card. No go. I log into my account and it said my account needs to be activated before I can accept payments. Weird. Finally yesterday I get around to contacting them, and this is the response I got today:
Hello Amanda,
Thanks for writing in. We understand that it can be frustrating to have your account deactivated. Unfortunately, our review concluded that we cannot support any Square accounts for you or your business.
You will need to find a different processor if you want to continue accepting credit cards.
Thank you for understanding.
Square
Square Account Services
I would like to speak to a person regarding my settings.
They do not have a contact other than 415-375-3176 which I had to search for . . ..
DO NOT use SQUARE. The customer support is non-existent.
I am an owner of a tattoo shop and we use square services..
Square decided to deactivating our account for no reason…I got an email saying. “Our Account Services team reviewed your account and found a pattern of transactions associated with high-risk activity.” ?????
they do not have any number to reach, just by a stupid email form that they never reply to it.. my money got frozen and I can’t access…
any solution?
I’ve been using, and happy with square for quite some time now. However, they’ve been withholding a payment of mine for 7 days. They claim they need me to provide information and documentation about my business before they transfer future payments. They want a detailed description of the services I provide and how I advertise. (I’m a building contractor). Really? How I advertise? How does not knowing how I advertise (among other things they’re requesting) give them grounds to withhold funds? They may as well be asking for the color of my underwear. None of their business and my advertising has nothing to do with services they provide. In their text boxes I copied and pasted the same thing in each one “I’m going to talk to a lawyer about your company withholding payments for services I’ve rendered.”. Hope they get with the program.
Ben, I am building contractor that had used them for a year. They blind sided me and
held $8600.00 2 weeks before Christmas 12/6/13. It left me broke! I could never reach a rep and
when i finally got a email response I had to send all my business info tax id,bank statements
on and on!!!!!!! I finally had to call my customer and have them reverse charges. That worked on one but not the other. I never got paid and it finally led me to bankruptcy 3/3/14
WORST COMPANY EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WILL GO TO MY GRAVE MAKING SURE ALL KNOW THE TRUTH!
Thanks!
WTL Home Improvement.
HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE! my first 4 transactions were with the same customer so they froze my account and held a $2000 sale because they needed “additional information”. This hurt my business. We are small and that’s a lot to have “held” for no good reason. Once this deposit is finally released I will NOT be doing business with them anymore
The Square seems to be a reliable service provider from processing cards however was ZERO help resolving a payment dispute although I had a signed receipt and email from the customer acknowledging the transaction. This “dispute took 6 months! Don’t believe their “we’re on your side” propaganda. Would rate their customer service a strong “F”.
I would like to inform everyone that…..90 days to the day……I DID RECEIVE MY 6113.00 from Square that they were holding. Maybe it was my letter of demand or what…..I don’t know. I wish everyone luck in getting their $ back. It was a terrible nightmare for me and my business. They put me in a severe financial bind for 3 months, I know that. Their questionable, (to say the least), business practices SHOULD be investigated by the U.S. attorney general. I was lucky! I had several thousand dollars in reserve to fall back on, to cover my expenses, but MANY other small businesses DON’T! I highly….HIGHLY, recommend NOT using this company for credit card transactions!
When I first started using Square I thought it was great having the ability to accept credit cards for goods and services rendered. I own an AV installation company. For the first while, it worked well. I swiped cards and a couple of days later, the money was in my account. The transactions were typically $1,000 to $5,000. Then all of a sudden a day after accepting a couple of payments, I received an email asking for more information about my business as there had been suspicious activity on my account. They asked for my tax number, a scan of some government forms relating to my business, a link to my linked in profile and a copy of the past two invoices and my relationship to my client. They had the completed forms within a few hours of receiving their email. The following day, I receive a notice that my account had been terminated. To quote the email “We’re sorry to inform you that we are deactivating your account. Our Account Services team reviewed your account and found a pattern of transactions associated with high-risk activity”
And yes, my money would be held for 3 months.
The hold is not what bothers me. Other than being treated like a criminal, the lack of professionalism I experienced from this company is astounding. As others have mentioned, you cannot call in to speak to a human being. I’ve invested significant time and energy in setting this up, linking my banking information, creating invoices and advertising to my clients that I accept credit cards.
Whether this is acceptable under their terms and conditions is besides the point. The fact that they can treat business owners in this manner is appalling.
I urge anyone setting up a small business to seriously think twice about using Square Register. As someone who does everything by the book to all of a sudden be denied a service I have paid good money to without explanation, is beyond me. Luckily my business can go on without the use of Square. However, many other businesses would be in shambles if this happened to them.
I also urge Square Register to come out with a guide on how to avoid this happening to other businesses. Had I known that a particular transaction type or amount would be deemed high risk, I definitely would have avoided it.
And finally, don’t waste any more of my time asking me to fill out forms and send government documents proving I am who I say I am when you have no intention of reinstating my account. I complied in a timely manner and there could be no doubt I proved myself in these documents.
CAVEAT EMPTOR!
Square reported my 2012 taxes as personal taxes and not business taxes. I emailed them 8/13/14 several times and called them. Except for once there is no response to emails. They don’t answer calls, they hang up. Just now I was speaking to RYAN Ryan who said he was getting in touch with the tax team and he basically COULD NOT HELP ME . He said he didn’t know when they would get back to me. DOES SQUARE even HAVE A TAX TEAM?
They are simply not doing anything for me. What can I do to solve this MAJOR dilemma?
The problem that nobody knows about is that the almighty Uncle Sam has implemented new policies, and all credit card processors have to oblige. Uncle Sam has told the CC processors that THEY (square) are responsible for policing and monitoring ALL the transactions to make sure that everything is on the up and up. too many prostitutes, drug deals, terrorist etc. That’s fine, but Square has ABSOLUTLY NO RIGHT to hold my funds (which they did) and tell me that I cannot have my money until I provide them with a copy of my LLC along WITH my LLC tax ID# and copies of the invoices. WTF! That’s blackmail, and there was NO email or contact telling me that there was a change of policy. Square is beyond unprofessional, and a complete waste of anybody’s time.
funny, I am set up as an L.L.C. I use that monogram in my company name. Therefore if asked by square to produce these documents I would gladly comply along with a federal tax ID # and an associated invoice. I think that type of security prevents fraud and will also protect me as a vendor. I have never been asked nor have I had funds held. My business is large ticket items and I think the 2.75% is a bit pricy and wish it could be lowered some. I can, with other company’s, pay a monthly fee and swipe charge then get a lower rate But In a service business such as mine I would only use it maybe 10 times a year at best so the monthly fee would not benefit me. I am using this type of service only to oblige a small client group that would prefer to get a mileage perk as most people requesting my service typically budget for it.
Square is the worst. Give you no indication up front you can have funds frozen…
No service! Cannot call them! Answer by email in about 72 hrs. Cannot speak to anyone! Beware, they have all your personal information.
I like the ease of Square-up, but am thinking of dropping it because I cannot get any help or information. I’ve tried everything! I want to buy an inventory system from them, but can’t.
I beg of you not to deal with his company. I have been in busy for 22 years and all of a sudden they withhdrew thousands from by business accounts and deactivated it. Never returned the clients money to the card holder they “held it in a fund” that no one has access to. My clients eventually filled theft charges against me and I was convicted of a Felon 3 on October 1, 2014. Not even one thing on my record.
Our company has been using Square since its inception. We initially had a problem with the $2K limit on sales but Square’s Customer Support department responded immediately to my request for assistance and negated that limitation since the majority of our customers are not present at the time of the Square transaction.
The fees charged are much less than what we were formerly paying and the money is deposited into our checking account the day after a sale is made – a vast improvement over our former method of accepting credit cards.
I have recommended Square to dozens of people and have yet to hear a single complaint.
Square is easy-to-use, reliable, fair, fast and has favorable rates.
I will continue to recommend Square!
Kim – I was so like you at one time. During the 5 years I was with Square, I processed tens of thousands of dollars with them. The first day I used them I processed over $10,000 in credit card transactions and did receive a communication from them asking a few questions, I answered the questions, and received the OK from them to continue using their service. Then one day, I went to log in to prepare for our next show, and found out that not only had my account been disabled, but (after FINALLY being able to contact customer service by email) my account had been permanently suspended. I received NO notice, NO warning, NO email, NO communication from them what so ever. In fact, to this day, I am still receiving mailings from them, proposing that I upgrade my account and purchase their register. Their reasoning for suspending me – and I’ll quote “I was in violation of their terms by running an illegal business.” Funny thing is, the IRS doesn’t consider my business illegal, the State of Oklahoma doesn’t consider my business illegal and the State of Texas doesn’t consider my business illegal. In asking how square has come to the conclusion that I’m running an illegal business, all get from them is NOTHING, no response, no explanation, no nothing. I do consider myself one of the lucky ones, because at the time they suspended my account, was during our off season, and I had no transactions or funds pending, therefore there were no funds the Square could seize or hold. Kim, I do hope things continue to go well for you, and had I not gotten the screw from Square, I would probably be on your bandwagon – but don’t be surprised if one day…….then we can say…we told you so!!
I have been using square for my business for years and love it I am in process of switching to their scheduling site. If I don’t use it I don’t pay its awesome.
Sqare is Biggest joke of a company!….we did over ton of deal in paypal without any problem,, but we just accept few thousand from our customer though sqare ,,sqare will hold the money and ask we refund the payment to our customer in 1 months later,,how can we take back our item then????…sqare wasnt professional for any company…totally not recommend.
We are looking to use Square to collect payments at the door for our HS reunion. This is a one time thing, with transactions processed as some walk through the door on a saturday evening of the event if they did not pre-purchase. This is not a business venture. Does anyone know how long they take to release the money to our bank account? We have to pay the venue and am wondering if Square holds your money for 5-7 days which could affect our final payment to the venue once the walk-in traffic is assessed.
do not count on your money for 90 days, small purchases can be considered drug deals and they hold your money. use anybody else, square sucks.
In the approximately 3 years I’ve had Square, my funds were deposited the next business day.
square usually pays out the next business day — you should be fine!
I have been using them for several years without a problem. The first time was for my Band, We had a large New Years Party and had to collect at the door. All of our money was in my account the next day, so I had the money to pay for our venue.
This worked out so well that I now use them at my business for day to day payments.
i have just started using square on the recommendation of a friend. i have taken three payments and they have held one of them. it’s not big money but it’s a lot to me. i don’t know why they have held on to it, or how to get it resolved. i have left messages, emails everything and nothing…. i won’t be using them again and would not recommend them… Dreadful customer service’
I have been using square for years and have not had a problem. I wanted to talk to customer service today about a client with a double charge and cant seem to get a real person without a code and the system isn’t allowing me to get a code. I am an active client. Totally hacked off right now.
I tried to use the square at a craft show. $130 for new phone. $10 a month extra on my Verizon bill. I was really hoping, really hoping to make some of my money back at the show. but… the square didn’t work. All my work, planning, money etc. and the square didn’t work. And guess what? NO customer service. None. If you get a square plan on taking cash. Because you will be alone with no help.
Did you check before purchasing whether your phone works with Square or not? Not all of them do.
Square blows use anybody else, customers support if you found them was rude and of no help with any problems. USE SOMEONE ELSE.
I am a jewelry designer and I receive most of my orders over the phone after people have seen my work. My business is based onnthe word of mouth. I am small and I can easily go two months without a sale but when I do have a sale the sale amount can run between $300 to over $2000. My work is handmade. I had usually processed orders of $300 without problems but all of a sudden when I had 2 transactions after a month selling nothing Square put a 45 day hold on the totality of my sale. They then asked me for information such as invoices and purchase order. I am a very small business. I processed the sales and all that matters to me is that the customer has the funds as most of them are referrals. Despite all the information provided to square they deactivated my account and put a 45 day hold on the funds. Impossible to reach them by phone. The only option I was given was to reimburse the customer but what do I do when the customer is already in possession of the merchandise? For a simple and small business like mine Square has been a disaster!
I am in EXACTLY the same situation ie tranactions and the amounts Except they are holding my funds for 90 days!! Can’t get a hold of anyone. No help on how to issue a refund even, as when I go to dashboard there is no refund button to click! What a racket. Square has officially put a wrench in my new little business. Caution to anyone else… if you are an independent artist the SQUARE is NOT for you.
Rude, rude, rude, not to mention extremely unprofessional! I waited on hold for 21 minutes only to be hung up on by the customer service rep. Called back to complain about being hung up on to be put on hold for another 30 minutes. The rep refused to put a supervisor on the phone and hung up again. I will never do business with them again. I’m canceling my account with them and will be telling everyone I can about this horrid experience!
My wife and I own a craft business and most of our business is done on weekends. I was doing one of my biggest festivals of the season and my square stopped working. I tried finding a number to call square for help. One of my fellow vendors had a phone number for them and gave it to me. Well they are closed on weekends. Thankfully Sunday square started working again, but I lost a lot of sales on Saturday thanks to square. I called the number on Monday but unless you email them and get some kind of authorization number you have to key in you cannot talk to anyone. I dropped them that day. I switched to pay pal and am waiting for the free reader to arrive in the mail. Fingers crossed that they will be better. At least they have 24 hour support for those of us that sell on the weekends. Also I found out that square does not allow gun or gun accessory sales. Another fellow vendor I know makes hand crafted leather holsters and because they are considered gun accesories therefore she cannot sell them using square. She said she found that out after she created her products list in her account. She received and email from square quoting their policy. They did not shut off her account but they warned her that they would for violating their policies. She canceled her account after that.
I have been using square for my small contracting business for about 4 years. Their deposit schedule was no problem and all was good. In late September 2014 I ran a customers credit card for $100. After a week with no deposit into my account, I contacted square and they wanted further information to verify I had a legitimate business. (There was never a warning of change of policy, they accepted the funds from my customer and would not give them to me until I provided the required information. They held my money “hostage”) I filled out the form with my business name and company tax ID # and attempted to submit it, but it would not submit because they also “required” an image of my LLC with my tax documentation AND an image the invoice! That’s none of their business! They accused me of being high risk and deactivated my account.
60 MINUTES or 20/20 needs to do a story and expose these criminals. They closed my account with $6,113 in it. My business does transactions between $3-$5,000. I sell pellet stoves. (heating appliances). They were pretty “SLICK” about it though. First they took their fees at 3.5%. Swiping the card NEVER worked at 2.75%, so I always had to key punch in at the higher rate. THEN…..when I saw 2 transactions had not cleared….they sent me an E-Mail , LITTERALLY 2 minutes before they closed, and AFTER the transactions had been put in, saying they needed to “UPDATE” my account with more information. I needed to fax them a copy of my DBA….a customer invoice…..and 3 recent bank statements tied to my checking account. After ALL this was sent I confirmed that they received the information. Through a phone conversation to verify this….(along with a passcode #)….They said it was going to be reviewed and my funds should be available that evening. less than a half hour later my account was closed with $6,113 in it! I explained to “VICTOR”, that I was at one of my distributers to give them a check for $8,000, and needed the funds cleared. NOW I have to cover that amount of money by the end of the week. SO…..money from MY transactions has been sitting in THIER ACCOUNT….MY MONEY FROM SALES OF PRODUCT…..until THEY decide to release it to me in 90 days! Now I cannot even get ahold of them for the passcode they gave me no longer works. What are they doing with all this money they are SCAMMING out of people and holding ?? These people are KILLING small business owners with these tactics. The US Attorney General should put a stop to this NOW!!!!!!!!!! NO investigation is needed…….Just read some of these reviews. These “PONZI” scammers should be IN JAIL!
Worst customer service .They are holding a large sum of money they say for 90 days after complying with all their request.They have shut down my account with no comunication. I will do every thing in my power, that other people do not come subjected to letting this company steal there money. I am reporting them to every agency and contacting my attorney.Worst service ever.
did you ever recover your money from them?
Please…. this article ends by saying Square is best for babysitters or flea market vendors? I’ve owned a café for 2 years now and started with Square. It has been great and I haven’t had any issues really. And I have owned a place prior using a traditional merchant services provider….which I hated. This article read great but ended like its sponsored by the other guys….biased in some way.
Of course you have not had any issues. If there were to be an issue, Square simply deactivates your account with no warning or explanation and freezes all pending deposits for 90 days. If you had a customer question a charge from your business, a traditional merchant would contact you, notify you of possible chargeback and hold of funds, inform you which transaction is in question. Square gives absolutely no information “for security purposes”. There is also no phone communication. Once you are deactivated and request to speak to a representative the following message is emailed: “As previously stated, phone support is only available for customers with an active Square account.” This way, Square does not have to deal with any investigation or attempt to clean up any issue. You will likely never learn which customer had an inquiry and never be able to recover your funds.
Another reason many have apparently been deactivated is a surge in charges. If you were to hold a special event and had an unusual number of transactions for your business, you are susceptible to being deactivated and having the funds held for 90 days. This may not even be the first time for such an event in your 2 years, there is simply no continuity of business.
Do you really believe you can operate your business forever without ever needing customer phone support? The passcode they gave you when they requested information will be expired. This is simply bad business. Please beware.
Square now has phone support. Just spent 40 mins on the phone going thru a whole laundry list of questions. She stated they recognized the need for phone support and are staffing call centers in NY & Calif. Got GREAT service!!!
Apparently Square does not have phone support for those of us attempting to recover our funds. I emailed another request to speak to a representative today when I saw this post and received with the same reply:
“As previously stated, phone support is only available for customers with an active Square account.
We apologize for any inconvenience, but our decision is final.”
I don’t Square has a customer service phone line. They are still using the same pass code formula only available for those who have not yet been deactivated.
Jason, I am beginning to think you may be correct in this site being fueled by others competing with Square. I have been in business for 25 years and have used the “other guys” and paid huge fees for credit cards. I have a window treatment business and move larger sums of money and have been using Square for over 2 years. I have run as much as $10,000 at 1 transaction before and as long as you know the rules with square and have set up the requirements I think all is good. I had money held only once but that was the very begining because I exceeded the manual entry limit (which is in the agreement), I contacted Square by email and had the limit raised and no questions asked within 2 days. I have never had an amount questioned by a customer so I don’t know how that would be handled but I do use a sweep account for all transactions. Once a payment is in this account I transfer it to another account so that there is only $100.00 in that account at any time, this is just safe. I have had to refund a customers payment and it was handled great by Square- no problems. I think it is a matter of establishing your company with a history with Square. I have begun using the invoice by email with them and my clients that are out of town can enter their credit card info in Squares’ site and pay a bill and I am charged the swiped rate-GREAT feature. I am very happy with the lower processing fees with Square! I hope I never have to change.
Donna, I can assure you that I am not in competition with square, nor would I care to be. Like you, I had used other merchant accounts in the past, paid high fees, monthly fees, yearly fees, and was excited at the ease and affordability of square. With three years under my belt with them, and at times over $20,000 a day in charge transactions, with never a charge back or question, you would have thought I was in good standing with them, but I guess they had other ideas and not only did they deactivate my account without ANY notice what so ever, they actually accused me and I can quote “of running an illegal business.” To top it all off, square is still sending me emails and advertisements in the mail, urging me to purchase their Square Register. And get this, the postcards they send, have NO return address on them, or phone number what so ever. I too had blinders on while I was using them and like the saying goes, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees…………
I assure you these are NOT posted by competitors. Thousands of small business owners have been devastated by this company. Myself included. They froze over $70,000 in charges and held funds over a year for NO reason.
Beware ! Just when you get comfortable with them they change the rules! I am a good business
man. I have have been in business for 26 years after they put a hold on $8600.00 I went
through every hoop they demanded. Contractor licencing proof,3 bank statement,state tax id #,
contracts with clients on & on. I never was able to speak with anyone! Actually I believe you
could possibly be one of the many people they hire for for damage management.
THEY ARE A BAD COMPANY! STOLE MONEY FROM MY FAMILY 5 DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS!!!
CANT EVEN GO INTO THERE OFFICE TO COMPLAIN ,THEY HAVE SECURITY THROUGH YOU OUT!
LOST MY BUSINESS DUE TO THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good Day :-)
Jason, are you still using Square? I own a busy barbershop and started with Square in January. It was pretty reliable at first, but the last 3 weeks have been spotty. And then, I was affected by this past Monday’s outage (2/29) . I’m just wondering what your long-term experience has been.
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This is ABSOLUTELY not a good place to go…they stole our money and dragged us through the mud!! Stay clear of them!!!!
Tried to sign on the phone app for square. It will not let me setup the account with out giving them full access to the microphone, camera, pictures, everything on the phone. WTF is wrong with these people?? I would NEVER give ANYONE full access to my phone, computer, or anything else.
The money spent on that thing is just money down the drain.
My personal rating of them is a big fat F!!
Instead of filing withe BBB, people need to start filing complaints to the FTC. They can open an investigation and start getting to the bottom of this crooked company. No business should have to wait 90 days for a credit card transaction to go through. If that is the case there would be a lot of businesses hurting and closing. A company with no phone number is a huge red flag, but you don’t know until you need to call someone.
i read one post indicating the person getting the tires in CANADA put in the dispute after two weeks after the transaction, is there a time limit to file a dispute, or can someone get the services, and after, lets say, one year get the money back in a a dispute? got me wondering now. oh heck is taking a credit card at all safe for any merchant? world is full of krazy greedy people is the problem.