Hello Sean,

I would love to hear the reasoning for the changes made as I am having a hard time understanding how the changes made could be an improvement for a customers experience.

More than happy to follow up. Having said that, it is absolutely not my intention to discount or invalidate your feedback. I think it's great! I just wanted to offer you a little more context into the "why" behind things. 

1. A huge merchant paint point we heard about loyalty since it's original launch was missed punches. This mostly happened because customers would use different payment cards, payment methods, email addresses or phone numbers. This caused customer to have multiple loyalty accounts. This change eliminates this problem and puts the ownness in the hands of loyalty participants. 

2. As we shifted the focus of loyalty to phone numbers, we also shifted how we communicate to better align the two. Now when someone enrolls or earns a reward, we send them a text! 

3. While I can't speak to the technical barriers with implementing this feature, I agree! It would be awesome if gift cards had the same functionality as credit cards do in regards to auto-receipts. 

Hope this helps a bit! 

Thank you Sean for your detailed reply it gives me hope that improvements will be made to the system in the future.

1. I agree on this point that I think pushing to a single phone number to track loyalty is a smart move and I am in no way saying that is not how it should be. 

2. Communicating when you enroll but not communicating the status of your loyalty per transaction to the customer that they can reach later after they leave the store to me is still a step backward. Also since most my customers were already on the punch card system by phone number none of them received this enroll text message as they were already enrolled.

3. I do hope that in the future this technical issue can be handled as 25% of my customers are repeat customers who utilize a gift card that they load up ever once in awhile as I incentivize them to with a small discount which is another way I promote loyalty to my shop.

Lastly I appreciate the bug about numbers not being copied to the loyalty when entered in the receipt that does help myself and speed up the transaction.

The new program really doesn't offer anything that is worth the upgrade price.  I've read the article.  These are hardly "upgrades" and are certainly not $25 worth of new features.  Where's the option to keep what we have???? Just like the customer features,  there's an option to not have the "pro" subscription.  

@TheWell We know price changes are not ideal. This was definitely taken into consideration by our Product Team. We'll be sure to let them know of your feedback. 

EJ,  This is not a price change.  You didn't change the price of something.  You added a charge to something that was free, and you forced everyone to take it.  There is no limited version that continues to be free.  It's just a punchcard... How complicated can we make a punchcard that counts to 10...  It really doens't make sense.  Square, in my opinion, has really overstepped is boudaries.  This is a very crooked business practice.   You've backed us into a corner.  Here's how this all looks:  Create a very awesome, FREE program and get thousands of users.  Now, since everyone is financially vested in this, they've bought all the peripherals; the stand, the chip reader, the dock, the ipad, the compatible cash drawer and printer, etc, it'd be too expensive to invest in all new hardware for a new POS.  Not to mention the pain of converting all of the items and inventory counts over to somehting else, all the new glitches to work out, the employee training, the customer loyalty points lost and potential cost of offering some sort of customer incentive for you switching over and losing their old points.  No, it'd be easier to just pay the $25/ month. So we do. Next, you'll "overhaul" the inventory tracking that was "free" and decide its now worth money.  Next, support is no longer free. Then paid updates...  where does it end?  To be honest, Square is a great program... The inventory is very limited, but it was free.  Customer engagment is very minimal for the free version...but it's free and I can make it work.  The virtual punchcard lacked the customer "account" style setup that some others have, but it was free.  That was the deciding factor when choosing a POS.   Sure other people charge money for their systems, but they were more capable systems too.  I chose square, including its limitations, for that reason.  If I wanted a more capable program and wanted to pay for it, then I would have chose a different POS.  The $25/ month is not adding ANY value to my loyalty setup... NONE! There needs to be WAY WAY WAY WAY  more to it to charge a monthly subscription.  You guys are using buzzwords to sell this as a "new, upgraded" product, but its not.  Being able to look up stars now is only access to information that square was already storing.  You claim that customers can now get stars for all payment types...THATS NOT NEW!!  My customers already got stars for other payment methods besides credit cards.  You've separated it from the receipts, but thats what made it convenient.  Customers could see how many stars they had on the bottom of the receipts, but now they can't.  You've added an additional screen to the checkout process. This is not helpful, it slows the process down.  We may only be talking about seconds, but when there's a line out the door that's SEVERAL MINUTES added to the persons wait in the back of the line.  The only "additon" to the whole program is earning a star for dollars instead of visits.  That option alone is not a $25 one time upgrade, let alone a montly charge.  

This should have been handled very differently.  Add these features to Customer engagement pro maybe, but leave the rest of us to have our free punchcard...Thats it!  Just a Punchcard!!  You've overcomplicated every aspect of this simple setup.  

I would like to understand the "upgrade" for the loyalty program.  Are you discontinuing the free program if we do not choose to "upgrade"? If yes, then it really isn't an upgrade but more the case you are discontinuing the free and only offer paid program.  If that is the case can we get a download of the current loyalty data?   I have been a user for the last 15 months and have customers with active accounts and loyalty rewards in progress yet I cannot afford an additional $25 to do this. I don't feel like my customers should be punished by losing their reward points because you change the terms of the service.

I agree with this completely. I am pretty upset that we are essentially, no not essentially, LITERALlY, being extorted. Keep your customers happy and pay the $25 a month, or lose customers and reputation when Square locks your loyalty data.

Hey y'all, please check out the Product Update page for Square Loyalty. It should cover all of your questions! Thanks a ton! 

We will be transitioning back to paper cards and stamps or punches. I always liked the idea of a physical card in my customers wallet or purse and the fact that every time they look in said wallet/purse they think of my company and about the urgency to get back and fill up that card. 

Thanks for making this an easy decision for me Square.

This is exactly how I feel.

EJ,

The price increase explanation is about as helpful as the link to the "support articles".  I have worked in IT for over 17 years and creating a customer account and tracking transaction history is pretty basic.  Beyond that the price change is just part of the issue for us.  It's the strongarm tactic to call this an upgrade when you are really discontinuing a free program and adding a similar paid feature.  Feels very shady, our repeat customers are our bread and butter as it is for all businesses in retail. we are a small business with a niche clientele, it wouldn't fiscally be responsible for us to continue with the Square program at $25 a month but if we want to keep our customers happy we have to just bite it and pay up.  What's next?  Reporting and inventory functions going to be "upgraded"? We have to pay to download inventory reports?  It feels like my business is being nickel and dimed for every "new feature" that is typically standard.  

It's also disturbing that if I choose not to upgrade (regardless of the reason) there is no way to get my data for clients what have been on the program since it started.  I saw a customer today who had 8 stars because she consistantly comes in every couple weeks now she will lose them all.  If I had hundreds of clients who qualified for the loyalty rewards program then maybe it would justify my cost but with our numbers at $25/month it just isn't a good fiscal decision for us.  It feels like extortion, if you want your customer loyalty data then payup!  I feel that if Square is going to continue with this so called upgrade the least they can do is provide a one time loyalty data dip for customers.  That way I don't have to send out an email to all my loyal customers (oh wait I have to pay another monthly charge to get that data too) about Square's forced upgrade cost and that we won't continue on with the "Square Loyalty" so they will have to start all over despite being a part of the program for over 12 months.  That looks bad for all involved in this situation.  I guess maybe Square is so big now that they can afford to frustrate customers and customers of their customers.  

ps - It would also be great if Support actually responded to emails on this topic instead of just replying to Community posts.

Starting with Free of charge and then charging $25 a month is not a just a price increase.  This is a very poor business decision on your part and now we will have to explain to our customers why they don't have loyalty points as we we are rejecting this program and it's increase.  We will go to punchcards ourselves and as long as you keep doing these shady types of price increases we will be looking at a new company to work with.  We've been using Square for nearly 5 years and have been very satisfied and recommend this service to many companies.  Not anymore.  The fact that I can't use all the features such as Payroll in the state I live makes it all the more infuriating that you would make these types of decisions.  Maybe roll out Payroll to everyone before making other drastic changes.  Unhappy customer here.

Hello @HeatherSweetD, thank you for taking the time to share your experience, and I'm very sorry to hear about the confusion the Loyalty change has caused for your customers. I'll be sure to surface this with our product liaison team as well.

While we don't have a specific timeline available for additional updates to Loyalty and Payroll, we're always working to make improvements based on seller feedback. In the meantime, please keep in touch for updates and let us know if anything else comes up.

How do you justify charging $25 a month for something that was free?  You keep calling it an "upgrade" or "change".  

It looks like our Engineering Team has already addressed one of the issues you brought up! In the latest version of the app (available today), when a phone number is entered for a receipt preference, it should auto-populate in the rewards screen. 👍

Suddenly requiring 25/month for a service that (up to this point) has been free to established customers for years now is unethical.  We (users) agreed to a value exchange that includes specific services.  If the corporation would like to implement Loyalty as an a la carte item to new accounts signing henceforth, that's their discretion.  All it can do for current users is upset each Merchants' clientele, and the only ones who suffer damage to their reputations is the Merchants themselves.

@GlobalCoffee - Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. As for the phone number part, I haven't hear this particular feedback yet - I'll be sure to pass it along. On a side note, you can let your customer know that they won't receive any sort of marketing or information not related to the loyalty program. Thanks again!