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Can a coupon be used on the day it expires?

The title of this thread has been edited from the original: Coupon cannot be used on the expiration date

 

We have been having this problem with coupons we sent out. When we put on the coupon with an EXPIRATION DATE (for example: 8/31/2018). On your coupon that sent to customer by the Square system, it says "USED BY 8/31/2018" - literally the coupon expires 8/31 and customer can still use it on 8/31.

 

However, there are incidents that customers come in on 8/31 to use the coupons. But your system said the coupon EXPIRED ON 8/31/18, and CANNOT BE USED!

 

Below are screenshot of one of our customers trying to use a coupon today 8/19, but got rejected saying it's expired!

 

Anyone has the same problem??

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l7q3tg6zpfiy393/Coupon%20expired.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/iamd519uy02js4j/Coupon%20sample.jpg?dl=0

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Square

Best Answer

Hi all,

 

I wanted to provide a quick update here. Coupons now expire at 11:59pm of the day that the coupon is set to expire, based on the time zone where your business is located.

 

We apologize for any confusion that this may have caused!

View Best Answer >

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Admin

Hey @JKW, thanks for flagging this and sorry for the confusion. 😖

 

I'm going to run this by our Customer Engagement Team and point out the experience you encountered. We'll be back with more details as soon as possible.

️ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
Find step-by-step help in our Support Center
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Admin

Circling back here with a bit more information—hope this helps clarify:

  • Square Marketing coupons become invalid immediately at 12:01 AM on the expiration day.
  • Square Loyalty rewards issued prior to the points update expire to-the-minute from when they were issued (one year maximum). Going forward, we no longer issue rewards. Insteadbuyers earn points that do not expire which can be redeemed towards rewards at checkout.

If you're using both programs, I can see how this would be confusing. Rest assured that I've surfaced your post with the appropriate team members and pointed out how parity with timing would be ideal for sellers running multiple initiatives. They'll be taking this into consideration as they continue to iterate based on seller feedback.

 

Hope this helps—please don't hesitate to let us know if anything else comes up in the meantime.

️ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
Find step-by-step help in our Support Center
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Hi Tom,

 

thanks for the follow up.

 

Accordingly to your article, these are super confusing and there is no way we can tell customer that...well, this is a marketing coupon, you can use it until the START of the expiration date...etc.  And there is no other way to change the wording on Sqaure as this is pre-set by the system.

 

We are using both, A LOT, and we do not even know if that particular the customer uses is belonging to which system!  

 

As a normal wording phrase, if you google it, EXPIRED ON the date, meaning that would be the LAST DAY to use it...

 

Will up update this conversation?

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Admin

Appreciate you taking the time to lay this out. I feel you—this transition is confusing, especially if you were heavily invested with the previous version of Square Loyalty. I apologize again for the frustration this may cause for your customers.

 

There isn't a timeline that I can give out for improvements to this, though I've documented your experience with our Customer Engagement Team. They will be working on ways to build more continuity across these features and how to set clear expectations for expiration dates. If any other developments come through, I'll circle back to this thread.

️ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
Find step-by-step help in our Support Center
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Super Seller

Am I correctly understanding that, if a coupon has an expiration date of August 24, it can't be used on August 24? I have never experienced a coupon with an expiration date that meant the coupon can't be used on the date of expiration. That makes no sense.

The to-the-minute expiration of Loyalty is bizarre too. That should be until the end of the day, not the end of the minute.

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Admin

Thanks for chiming in, @VanKalkerFarms, and I apologize for my delay. We know that this is causing a disruption for your business, and we're sorry. I was able to touch base with our Customer Engagement Team again and here's where things landed:

 

  • For now, we suggest a that you create a discount and apply it on checkout if someone shows up with an expired coupon.

 

Again, we're sorry for any awkward moments that this transition may cause—it should be come less of an issue as time goes on and your customers participate in the new program. If anything else comes up, please let us know.

️ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
Find step-by-step help in our Support Center
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Square

Best Answer

Hi all,

 

I wanted to provide a quick update here. Coupons now expire at 11:59pm of the day that the coupon is set to expire, based on the time zone where your business is located.

 

We apologize for any confusion that this may have caused!

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Super Seller Alumni

Sweeeeet! Thank you so much for fixing this and for the update @edwardwb !

Does this count for newly issued coupons on existing campaigns as well, or only new campaigns?

Pesso - he/him
Pesso's Ices & Ice Cream
Square Super Seller - I'm here to help!
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Square

Sorry for the delay! Previously issued coupons should stay valid until 11:59pm on the day of their expiration, but let us know if you run into any issues with redeeming older ones.

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Beta Member

Im having this issue, we sent our our first Text this morning and so far have had 2 customers not be able to use their code.  The code was set to expire today March 10th.   Just want to clarify again what day we should use for TEXT coupons?  If its a one day promotion, do we set it for the same day or next day?

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Beta Member

We are having the same confusion. Ran a one day coupon (ie happy hour) for loyalty customers and set expiration for the following day because expiration date made it sound like they couldn’t redeem on the expiration date. Now, it is the following day and our customers are still able to redeem their coupons and it’s costing us unexpected discount spend. Is there any way to edit a marketing coupon’s expiration date? So far, the only thing I’ve found to do is void the coupon manually for each of our 400 loyalty customers. Super super time consuming!

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Square Community Moderator

Hello, @Cloudninecoffee

 

Firstly, welcome to the Seller Community, and sorry to hear that you're here because you've run into trouble. Coupons are expected to work all the way to the day set on the marketing campaign. If this isn't the case, I recommend reaching out to our Support team so they can look into this with you and determine what is happening on your account that is affecting the behavior of coupons.

 

When you have a moment, please reach out directly by logging into your Square account and heading here.

JJ
Community Moderator, Square
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Super Seller

unfortunately, if you set the coupon expiration to the day after the event the coupon will work until 11:59 pm the day listed as the expiration.  now that the event is over it doesn't matter but I would say there isn't much you can do. You can post that there was a typo in the advertisement and that the coupons were only good on the day of the event.  Or otherwise, you just have to roll with it and make the event 2 days and count it as a marketing expense.  Doing the former will cause some customer turmoil, but doing the latter will get customers good will.

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