Square is an Irresponsible Company | Hacker News Reader

Square is an Irresponsible Company

9 pointsGrovara12310 comments

After completing a transaction this past week, I received the following email:

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Square, Inc. Hello Peter,

Our Account Services team has concluded a review of your account and has determined it to be high risk. For security purposes, we have elected to deactivate your Square account. From the date of this letter forward, you will not be able to process credit card transactions using Square.

To learn more about Square's Seller Agreement and terminations, please visit: Seller Agreement.

Any funds currently in your account will be held for 90 days before being released to your linked bank account.

You may also consider refunding the payments back to the original cards and seeking an alternate form of payment. Please note that we refund all the fees too.

To refund a payment, please log in to the Square Dashboard on a computer at https://squareup.com/login.

Navigate to your Payments page. Click on the payment you would like to refund, then click 'Issue Refund' on the left. Enter the reason you are refunding the payment, then click 'Refund this payment.' For security reasons, we cannot divulge the reason for your account termination. We apologize for the inconvenience, but our decision is final.

Thank you for understanding.

Sincerely,

Square Account Services

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With NO phone number, NO customer Service center, and OUR money - what kind of company does Square think they are?

How dare they not offer customer support - I dare anyone reading this right now to go and find a phone number to reach a 'Square Help Desk' - you won't cause none exists.

Holding OUR money for 90 days is ludicrous also - how dare they.

I hope they see this.

I don't use square nor does a quick search show a phone number for them. In does though show a lot of unhappy customers not able to find a phone number to square. Sure seems like if nothing else an opportunity for them to fix perceptions and help people.

Be somewhat thankful you aren't with Paypal, that 90 days would be 6 months and there is little to nothing you can do about it. From what I understand technically, there is a 6 month window where credit card transactions can be challenged (at least in some cases), so many times Paypal et al will hold money for all or a portion of that period if your business is deemed high risk.

You don't mention what your business is or what it is you do, so it is hard to judge why they consider you high risk. But good luck trying to get ahold of Square other than through support forms or email from the way it looks.

My business is ABSOLUTELY 'High Risk' I would assume dealing in exports - but I provided a lot of documentation showing and proving my legitimacy. This just really sucks - at least give me someone to speak with.

Yep, I honestly don't do business with any company for a critical service that doesn't publish a phone number (I was burned in the past). I find that sadly a lot of startups want to hide behind the keyboard, when in reality they would grow faster and have better customer experiences if they would just answer a phone. I admit that the phone can be a distraction, but a certain (pretty large) part of the population would rather pick up the phone and get ahold of a human. Not to mention if you are dealing with other peoples money, best to answer a phone than not.

I don't deal with Square, but from a marketing and customer relations standpoint it seems they are dropping the ball on supporting their customers. Not that I can comment on your specific transaction issue, but from a customer support and answer perspective I searched some more last night and Square has a pretty significant number of complaints in forums about their lack of responsiveness and lack of a phone number. I dismiss some of them because every business gets unfounded complaints, but with the number Square is receiving on many similar issues it seems they need to address this issue.

> After completing a transaction this past week

So, I'm wiling to bet this is a high-dollar transaction. These generally have a high-risk associated with them, and generally aren't accepted by a service like Square. In fact, I imagine the transaction was someone paying you to "license" your patent.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6308902 http://patents.justia.com/patent/20130013387

In which case, Square is very much in the right, and you are indeed abusing the service provided.

If this is incorrect, please share.

> Holding OUR money for 90 days is ludicrous also

You are clearly not knowledgeable about credit card processing and the banking industry.

Ha - you are pretty off - it was for my company - www.grovara.com - trying to sell products internationally. We have a distributor in Russia who is looking to buy our products. They paid... this happened. It sucks.

"So, I'm wiling to bet this is a high-dollar transaction"

Ha - no I wasn't. I was pretty much spot on. So, high-dollar transactions coming in from Russia. Yeah, you are abusing Square. Get a merchant account.

Except ... you agreed to this treatment via the Terms of Service: https://squareup.com/legal/seller-agreement

I'm a lawyer... those TOS don't hold up in court always... furthermore, no one actually reads those.

With no context, I have nothing to comment on.

[Edit: I should have written, "with NO context"...]

No doubt - I am just venting - looking for common experiences.

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