50p Local Delivery Fee?

[Ash176]

Hi All,

Do we know if square are going to be implementing the 50p fee on all local deliveries? 

I have just been reading that from the 1st April 2021 the fee will be reintroduced. Is this true?

Thanks,

Ash 

[MJD]

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@Ash176 wrote:

Hi All,

Do we know if square are going to be implementing the 50p fee on all local deliveries? 

I have just been reading that from the 1st April 2021 the fee will be reintroduced. Is this true?

Thanks,

Ash 

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@tranguyen could you follow up on this?

[tranguyen]

Hey @Ash176 and @MJD, thanks for bearing with me! From chatting to our team, the delivery fee roll out will be push back to later, but I don't have an exact date to share right now since they are still working to confirm this. 

I can understand having an added fee seems daunting, especially when selling online has already come with its own set of challenges and other fees. We recognise that delivery needs robust and useful features to ensure its success, and, more importantly, that the customer experience is great for everyone. This fee model enables us to continue investing in building out a competitive delivery and online ordering platform with all of the functionality that you need to be successful.

It is typical to charge buyers a service fee for the convenience of delivery, and we would recommend implementing a service fee that helps you cover the increased cost of doing business online. Additionally, this also helps make sure that you have a sustainable margin. Even with a moderate service fee, buyers will still typically be paying less than they would by ordering through a third-party competitor.

Please note that the fee will only applied to delivery orders. This will not affect pickup or shipping orders. 

[Henry1804]

I’ve just had a reminder that this is coming into play from 1st June 2021. I also note it doesn’t affect pickup. I’m not making much money at all from my customers and trying to offer additional services by adding free delivery locally. Now you are charging me personally for walking to local customers in order to deliver their goods. I’m going to have to work around this now and ask them to choose pickup and I call them for their address going forward. Totally wrong way of supporting your customers. You would have done better to increase our general fees by a few % rather than tap in on delivery! 

[MJD]

You’ve got a point, this isn’t really fair as square does nothing different than usual to allow delivery, might just be worth offering free shipping to locals. 

[alansh]

This is the first I have heard of this. We cannot afford to lose 0.50p on delivery charges as we charge at cost (or sometimes less than cost). When was this discussed?

Alan

[Henry1804]

You should have received a reminder today in your emails. Check your junk maybe? Or maybe tou didn’t receive a notification as you are on a specific plan? I don’t think so though. I’m sure it will apply to all. 

[alansh]

No, nothing. Maybe (I hope) it doesn't apply to me.

Alan

[MJD]

@alansh @Henry1804 I haven’t heard about this other than in the seller community, I don’t know if this is just because I don’t currently have anything listed for local delivery or if it is only being rolled out to certain users, but it really isn’t fair because it essentially means square will be paid for a part of the job that I am completing all aspects of.

[SGM1]

@MJD @Henry1804 @tranguyen 

This is the email message from today

Hello,

This is a reminder that starting 1 June 2021, a 50p per order fee will be applied to all delivery orders. This fee will be subtracted along with the current processing fee and will be visible in your sales summary report. 

You can learn about delivery features and more in our Support Centre.

Thank you for your trust and loyalty.

The Square Online Team

This seems to be following the resent model that a lot of Food ordering apps are taking of charging a delivery fee which can be zero and a 50p processing fee!

This is annoying to customers and I know I phone many local takeaways to avoid the charge! Which undoes the aim of making ordering less time consuming for them!

It is also not applicable or justifiable to any other industry! You do not see general websites charging an admin fee on local deliveries as opposed to shipped ones! Squares business model is based on the increased card transaction fees they charge especially when compared to a uk debit card!

I can work on very tight margins and against online pricing where a 50p charge will make me more expensive than the same item shipped from another supplier or myself if I offer free shipping which alot of the time you have to to be seen to do to compete with Amazon, ebay etc!

Square do nothing different for delivery verses shipping and in light of the very slow development and response to things such as royal mail click and drop integration their additional surcharge of 50p is completely unjustified.

[Henry1804]

SMG1 you are right, it is unjustifiable to be charged for something that has nothing to do with Square other than the collection of an address and possible additional delivery notes! I’m going to end up now at a huge loss with the additional charge as well as the time it takes me to walk to products to locals for free! 

[MJD]

Can I ask which version of square you use? Square online? Square for restaurants? It could just be food delivery but even then I can’t see how this can be justified, the reason others add a few is because that is their commission for the use of their service, but this just makes the delivery function useless as it costs us more than just offering free shipping??? Seems really strange to me and a bit of a flaw to the Square system, we need new tools that expand the usage of square, no one wants flaws added or things that are just going to turn both sellers and their customers away.

[Henry1804]

I use square online MD

[MJD]

So it doesn’t seem to be based on versions as I’ve heard nothing and also use square online, seems like a bit of a mess to me 

[Henry1804]

I was reading the America’s community comments and they are getting same and not happy at all

[MJD]

On today’s episode of how to make your customers unhappy 101 😬

[SGM1]

@MJDI'm on Square online and Square retail app both currently the trial free service.

I agree it is not justified and makes no sense for those of us offering both local delivery and shipping.

It appears to be nothing more than an additional revenue stream for Square as per previous messages from @tranguyen regarding the subject over the last year or more. This is yet another insentive to move away from Square rather than upgrade and expand. I set up this shop to see how it worked for me as my industry is generally very local and the margins on distance selling are very low. At present the lack of development and charges such as this are good reasons not to move onto the paid options which ultimately costs Square more money than these charges will make.

[tranguyen]

Thank you for voicing your concerns everyone. I can appreciate your frustration and I've shared your feedback to the appropriate team as well as I want to make sure your concerns are taken into consideration.

For context, this fee was originally waived in light of the COVID-19 shutdowns. It was originally waived through June 30, 2020 but we extended this until April and then June, 2021. 

Many sellers charge buyers a service fee for the convenience of delivery, and we would recommend implementing a service fee that helps you cover the increased cost of doing business online. Even with a moderate service fee, buyers will still typically be paying less than they would by ordering through a third-party competitor. The service fee will also helps make sure that you have a sustainable margin.

To set a service fee:

1. Go to your site dashboard > Fulfilment> Pickup & Delivery.
2. Select your location, and Edit the “Delivery settings”.
3. Under “Service fee”, enter the amount desired to offset the cost of the local delivery fee.
4. Select Save to finish.

[Sam_400º]

Hey @tranguyen - has Sq shared the reason for the fee? 

I wasn't sure if it was the API cost etc. with the additional use of google/location/radius services or something like that? 

I'd not been aware it was being rolled out at the same time in the US - we normally get stuff loads cheaper than them 😂

[Valentina]

We stopped waiving the delivery fee in the US back in June of 2020, rather than 2021, @Sam_400º. The fee would have been introduced when we first introduced courier-powered deliveries, but we waived it initially, as a courtesy in light of the circumstances. US Sellers have been paying this fee since we announced in June 2020 that we would stop waiving the fee - @gknight provided some clarifying information in their response here.

[SGM1]

@Valentina 

So as per the US response you reference users are not happy with this additional fee on top of the large percentage you already charge on card transactions especially debit card transactions that cost less than 18p regardless of spend in the UK. I think my current average sale is £200 so this is a massive difference. Even at this my margins are tight and the 50p is a small percentage increase. For sellers of lower value items 50p could wipe out a significant part of their profit.

I fully understand your model and am happy to pay the percentage in return for the facilities. However this is not as attractive when paying for the premium services and is a barrier to upgrading.

The claim that the fee helps fast development does not fit with the very slow development we are seeing in reality so this feels like nothing more than Square profiteering from a local delivery that many of us are making for free and are not in a position to charge for especially if we offer free shipping on the same item.

This is also true for the shift on line where we are competing with Amazon and ebay and many others that promote the Free delivery model combined with its got to be cheaper than everyone else mentality. Both hide the actual cost of shipping while pushing same or next day delivery.

The only place we see this surcharge model in the UK is on takeaway apps and I know a number of takeaways that have dropped the apps as it has cost them business from regular customers who were used to free delivery in return for a minimum spend.