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Coupon Expiration Dates Inconsistent

This has happened to me twice now. So on our latest coupon the expiration date that was set by me was June 21st, but on June 22nd a customer brought in a print out of the coupon and on the bottom where the reward details are it says that it expires June 22nd. The staff member tried entering the coupon into Square but of course the coupon actually had expired already so it couldn't be used. We honored it, but this is not the first time this has happened. The last time I believe the date in the coupon details was off by a couple of days. I just wanted to let Square know this is happening so it can be fixed. 🙂

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Admin

Hello again @LSGHFBKS! Thanks for flagging this. We're investigating this now and will reply here again when we have more informatioon for you! 

️ Helen
Seller Community Manager

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Admin

Hello again @LSGHFBKS! I just heard back from our engineering team and they confirmed they are aware of this issue and working hard to fix it.

 

There are a couple of things at play here:

First, a coupon will expire exactly the number days after you created it, to the hour. So if you created the coupon at 10am and set the expiration date as June 21, the coupon expires at 10am on June 21. 

Second, all coupon expiration dates are stored in UTC and this should explain why your customer is seeing a different date on their coupon. Where are you located? 

 

️ Helen
Seller Community Manager

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Super Seller Alumni

I've definitely noticed the same type of thing - so glad that it's being worked on! Looking forward to the fix!

 

Pesso - he/him
Pesso's Ices & Ice Cream
Square Super Seller - I'm here to help!
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We are in Alaska, so UTC is 8 hours ahead of us. Interesting. So let me see if I'm figuring this correctly. If I set a coupon to expire at June 22nd and sent it out at 6am, its actually going to expire June 21st at 10pm because of UTC time?

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Admin

@LSGHFBKS If you send a campaign at 10pm in Alaska it'll expire on your chosen expiration date at 10pm in Alaska. The confusing date change seems to happen if your customer is viewing (or printing) the coupon from a device in a different timezone. So in this example if the coupon was sent at 10pm Alaska, but the customer's timezone is 8 hours ahead, they'll see the next day's date. Not ideal! 

 

As I mentioned the Marketing team is aware that this is confusing everyone and are working to improve this. In the meantime, can you try sending coupons before 4pm (midnight UTC) in your time? 

 

Thanks again for posting about this! 

️ Helen
Seller Community Manager

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Super Seller Alumni

Interesting - for me it's all the same time zone, but some people come in with a coupon that expires lets say July 7th, but they come in July 6th and it doesn't work as if it's expired already - shows the 7th expiration date both on their phone and when I look up the coupon in their customer directory activity

Pesso - he/him
Pesso's Ices & Ice Cream
Square Super Seller - I'm here to help!
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We almost always do send them by 4pm, but what you say then doesn't make sense to me. We are a local only store, we don't do any orders that are not local as we are a bakery cafe. So all of our customers using the coupons are in the same time zone as we are.

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Admin

Hmm, that is strange! I think it would be worth escalating this to our CS team. The next time is happens please make a note of the campaign in question, as well as the exact time, date, amount of the transaction that you complete with the customer. Additionally, if your customer doesn't mind, take a picture of the coupon showing the wrong date.

 

With that information call our CS team who can gather all of this from you and have our engineering team take a closer look on the back end. I can also ask our CS team to send you an email so you can reply with all of the requested information. Just let me know! 

️ Helen
Seller Community Manager

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Super Seller Alumni

@Helen I had another issue with this the other day with an automated Birthday Reward that wasn't working on the expiration day 

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

this whole expiration to the hour a coupon is created is a crazy way to go about an expiration.

 

If a coupon comes in the mail, or email, that expires on 10/31/18 I can use it up until the store closes on 10/31/18 and has nothing to do with when it is printed or created.  Why should a customer, who has no clue when you created a coupon, be left dumbfounded at checkout a 1 pm on the expiration date because you created the coupon and sent the email at 11:57 am a week ago.  No one has coupons that expire in the middle of a business day, and even if they did you would have to post what time they expire if you are measuring to the hour.

 

I know this came up in a different thread and there was a difference in marketing vs loyalty too, and expiration had 2 different meanings one wasn't able to be used on the date it expired "because it was expired".  consistency and ease of use for the customer should be top priority.  I think this is what caused the issue for you @pessosices because that coupon was expired on the day.  let me see if I can find that other thread.  https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Questions-How-To/Coupon-cannot-be-used-on-the-expiration-date/m-p...

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@VanKalkerFarms

It really is ridiculous, coupons should expire at midnight at the end of the day of expiration.

 

Thanks for linking to that other thread - I had read it, but couldn't find it to express the frustration again this time - and of course I had to apply a separate discount and it just made for a really bad customer experience. Really want this to get fixed.

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

@pessosices I'm really sorry for the trouble this caused for you and your customer the other day. And thanks @VanKalkerFarms for your comments and for linking to the other posts on this topic. 

 

I checked in with the Marketing team for an update. I don't have an ETA for when this will be addressed, they confirmed that they are working to improve this. 

 

I agree that the current expiration time for Marketing coupons is counterinuitive and clearly causing confusion and frustration and I'm sorry about that. Hopefully we'll have news to share on this soon, thank you for sharing your feedback and holding us accountable. 

️ Helen
Seller Community Manager

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