Known Issue with sending Square Messages (11/29/22 - 12/14/22)

[Mtbresnan]

The title of this thread has been edited by a Square Moderator from the original: "Square Messages is currently experiencing issues sending text messages."

Is anyone also having problems with text messages failing to send. And receiving this message:

“Square Messages is currently experiencing issues sending text messages. Messages may not send as expected.”

[_Violet · Accepted solution]

Hi @Mtbresnan, @Zeuspmu, and @allisonlrhoades - Thank you all for posting here in the Seller Community. I'm sorry to hear that you are being impacted by the ongoing issue with Square Messages.

This particular issue has been taking a little longer because we are working alongside a third party in order to resolve it. Our engineers and our Square Messaging Product Team are aware of this issue and are currently investigating a solution with third-party mobile carriers. 

In the meantime, we will continue to update issquareup.com with the latest details. Sorry that we have not been posting updates as often on this one. We don't have new information at this time, but this issue is certainly prioritized by our engineers and they are still working on it. We thoroughly appreciate your patience and understanding until this is fully resolved.

I hope this information is helpful but please do let me know if you have any additional questions by replying to this thread. 

[JessPoynter]

This is a great idea! 
When you say 'text' I'm assuming you mean they send a message in 'Messages' saying UNSTOP? Trying to clarify so I know what I would like to say to my clients 😊

[AllAboutMamalnk]

So they would have had to have on their phone the text thread ...and not have deleted it. It only worked for a few of my customers. New ones are not able to do this.

If they search in their texts and find the text thread that has reminders from your business and just Text UNSTOP then that might correct it for that specific customer. If they deleted the text thread then it doesnt do anyone any good as I have found that each of my customers got texts from me...the phone numbers were all different (my work phone number that sent out the text reminder to them)...that is crazy weird as I thought it would be the same phone number. I hope this makes sense. BTW I do not and have not paid Square for any special messaging services...I just go onto my customer list on my register and send them a text through there. So if there is a "plan" or square feature that you or others have been paying for that gives you the option to text the customers....know that I dont pay for a feature. I am guessing if i do pay a monthly fee it will give me upgrades to fun features but I have not looked into it as so far my little shop only needs what i have already going. So if you pay for a monthly feature the phone number thing might be different. I would do some investigating with you and some other peoples phone numbers....just create you and a few other peoples phone numbers in as a customer and see what it looks like on their end. Try to send them a text right there ...see what happens for you. trial and error ...but the magic word is UNSTOP to have the customer be added back in for texting...you just need to find out what phone number they need to text that too.

I hope this all makes sense

[MudPieBakery]

I just got a message from square support about the ticket I submitted for this issue. I've put it below. 👇

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. My name is Christy and I would be happy to assist. We have some new parameters that have been put into place. These have been put into place to keep the outage we had earlier this month from happening again. Currently the client/ buyer must initiate contact to open the flow of back and forth communication and then you can reply. I’ll take note of your feedback and pass it along to our product team for you.

Feel free to visit our Seller Community to share your suggestion and let us know how it would benefit your business.

If you have any other questions or concerns please don't hesitate to reach out and let us know. 

Thanks,

Christy

Square LMDA Specialist

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[Exhale906]

My messaging still is not working. Has anyone gotten it to start working again? Our clients miss the reminder texts and keep asking about it.

[JessPoynter]

@Violet_ Are there any updates on this? 

[jackyff8]

Any idea when this issue will be resolved? I still cannot send the client messages without them replying first. This is seriously compromising my customer service as I need this feature to send an initial message after I've confirmed their appointment. If this is a feature that will no longer be offered, please let me know so I can plan accordingly. I use square payments and appointments because it's easy and a good ecosystem and there is a price premium vs the competitor, but if this crucial feature is not coming back and not being fixed, then I will just look for alternatives. I've been struggling with this outage for the entire month of December and it is quite astonishing how long it took to fix SMS and now this sending feature there is absolutely no timeline for it to be coming back. On your server status (https://ca.issquareup.com/), everything is green so I'm assuming you guys won't fix this correct? I have a 2nd store coming and I just bought another Terminal machine. Please let me know what is going on, if it's not going to be fixed. I'll have to transition both the payment and appointment to another provider who can offer these services. 

[jackyff8]

So support doesn't even reply to your inquiry. The "support assistant" replied lol. This is a joke.

[MudPieBakery]

They replied to me via email and said they are no longer going to provide this service. Sellers will only be able to reply once a customer sends an SMS message.  Sellers will no longer be able to initiate messages. 

[AllAboutMamalnk]

So, alternative options to this problem….

looking at other companies to send out messages ….anyone look into these yet? 
ExpertTexting

Ez texting

Burst sms

[Trumanbarberco]

Most of the other POS/booking options offer messaging as part of the package.  Seems easier to just move on from Square.

[branchout]

Super cool of Square to push out the marketing campaign to us in the Dashboard trying to sell "Text Campaigns" to us, when we all know we literally AREN'T ALLOWED by Square to text our customers. Super professional.

[AllAboutMamalnk]

After doing some more digging (NO THANKS TO CUSTOMER SUPPORT OR TECH SUPPORT...surprised? nope)

Here is what I found right on a square Q & A about  the system:
Text to Join: During Text Message Marketing onboarding, you will be issued a unique phone number to which your customers can text ‘JOIN’ to be added to your opt-in list wherever and whenever it’s convenient for them. After texting JOIN, they’ll receive a confirmation text that they need to respond YES to in order to complete the opt-in process. This number can be promoted anywhere: on your website, social media, email, or in-store. 

Where is your unique phone number?!?!?

You will be assigned a unique phone number when you sign up for Text Message Marketing. All text marketing messages from you will be sent from this number. This is also the number your customers can “Text to Join” your program. After you sign up, your unique phone number can be found under the Marketing Settings page.

So in other words, if you just make up some signage or some social media posts that state something along the lines of: Text JOIN to (ENTER PHONE NUMBER HERE) to receive text messages from (ENTER YOUR BUSINESS NAME HERE)
Definitely  try this out with either someones phone number that has never had text messages sent to them before AND a customer or a phone number that has already had been in communication before with text messages.
I hope this works for my little shop and I hope it works for you.

Here is the page where I found the above information:

https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/6759-text-message-marketing?utm_medium=web&utm_source=dashbo...

[Virtueandvice]

THANK YOU for finding this. This doesn’t solve our problem but it’s helpful.

[Virtueandvice]

I looked into this just in case it would help us to try. It’s not 2 way communication. Customers can respond but you won’t see it. For folks using the option for marketing it’s probably fine but not really in the customer communication arena. I’m wondering if the company is purposely blocking this option in order to push marketers to the new subscription. 

[gbc8]

I tried to have a customer initiate messaging by giving her my messaging phone number. Her text never came through. I am ordering something for her and she would like to be notified via text when it comes in. I asked her to enter my messaging number and asked her to text me, so I can reply to her. Not only is this annoying to the customer but also unprofessional. Messaging customers does not seem to be possible at all. This has been going on since the end of November! Square has continued to charge me for my subscription, but has not offered any resolution or explanation. Even worse, I am constantly getting hit with emails and alerts to "send my customers messages to increase business". This is beyond frustrating.

[Exhale906]

Still having problems with messages sending. Keeps saying everyone unsubscribed which isn't true. but someone I know who uses the free version doesn't have any problems with the texting.

[GST4]

I am on the free version and it says the same as you. It's very frustrating.

[Virtueandvice]

Right when this system stopped working we were set to go paperless. We were relying on being able to message additional links to customers along with their reminders. That idea had to totally change.

I’m super disappointed with this situation. I want to stay with square products. The company took care of us when our bank didn’t with the ppp loan. It was already a problem that text confirmations were not customizable so we had to send an additional one with specific information related to their booking. Now we can’t even do that. We don’t do marketing just say to day booking information. If you’re not going to restore former functionality the very LEAST you can do is ad custom features to text confirmations. We lose so much business when people show up without needed items that we will have no choice but to switch platforms. I don’t want to do that, I really don’t.

[GST4]

If Square wants everyone to opt-in, why don’t they send a message in the appointment reminder text that says, “if you’d like to communicate via text with this business, please respond with Y”. It seems to be a simple solution that, for some reason has not been happening. The other frustrating thing is customers who were messaging via text with us, prior to the stoppage MONTHS ago, are still people we cannot text to now. They had obviously responded to us. You, Square, must send a message that asks or at least let’s them know that they need to text us first. Otherwise, it’s a secret that you apparently don’t want out. 

[branchout]

Messages aren't even working at all anymore. When I click on a message thread, it just says "Unable to lead messages".

Great job, Square. /s

[Agosetti]

My stylists are suddenly unable to text clients or even respond to clients. Get a message that "the client has unsubscribed from text messaging." if it were one or two that could make sense, but not all of them. How do I enable text messaging?

Thanks!