Shopify POS Pro: $2016 per year. What do you get?

[Roostcollection]

Would you pay $2016 per year to have the features of POS Pro. You will. What are the biggest things your paying for?

• Local Pickup
• Exchanges, Yes everyday exchanges!
• Custom Reciept
• One Return per Transaction
• No Manual Returns: without reciept your customer is out of luck!

Here's what the Pricing plan should  look like.

[Miles]

Hi, @Roostcollection!

I'm Miles from the Social Care team at Shopify.

When we launched all-new Shopify POS earlier this year, we made the Pro subscription available for free to all merchants for six months and also provided enough time for our existing merchants to transition from the POS Classic app experience. Although we recommend the POS Pro for retail stores and POS Lite for selling on-the-go, we encourage you to evaluate the features and make the right choice for your business. Remember you’ll have the freedom to decide which POS subscription works best for each of your locations so you only pay for what you need. Our retail support team is also available to help you and answer any questions.

Shopify POS Pro has been designed to serve the needs of merchants running larger, more complex bricks & mortar retail operations. Existing features that have been included, as well as new ones, have been packaged together to provide a robust solution that meets those needs. Shopify POS Lite will remain free and is a great alternative for merchants selling casually, at pop-ups, or with basic retail setups.

We've got some really handy guides to help you decide which option is best for you. First up, we have our in-depth guide on Shopify POS which helps you understand what features are available in each plan. We also have a more compact version which can be used for easy reference.

We understand this is a big change from our Classic POS offering. We are listening to all feedback provided, so thank you for providing your thoughts on the new POS.

[Roostcollection]

Hi Miles, Maybe you can answer these questions. For an additional $89 per month. When can I expect these logical, simple and necessary functions all pertaining to Brick and Mortar POS?   I'll be waiting for a concise answer.

MANUAL RETURNS. Example: A customer wants to return an item that was a gift who has no receipt and the purchaser paid cash. How do you return this item? Currently the only way is to stop everything at the register POS, have the employee log in to the admin and create a gift card. Now that employee can create the multiple gift cards unknown to me, as well as having access to all your sales info. NOT a good idea. Secondly if the item or amount to return in only a few dollars, it doesn't make sense to issue a gift card the cost us $1.50.

MULTIPLE RETURNS OR EXCHANGES. Currently Shopify only allows one per transaction. That's Shopify's policy not mine. It is my business and I pay to use your system not your policy.

E-GIFT CARDS. Currently if a customer purchases an E-Gift Card, Shopify sends the info to the purchaser. This is not a Gift Card. This is pre-purchasing for yourself. A GIFT is for someone else. Nowhere does the system ask for the recipients info or a note to say what the hell the gift is for, like Happy Birthday etc.

[Steve123]

Don't hold your breath on waiting for the answers. I have asked and all i get is PR nonsense.

But this is what they will say - but take about 500 words to say it.

Pro is wonderful.

[Roostcollection]

Just as I expected, A canned response. Try answering my specific questions.

MANUAL RETURNS: When will this be implemented? Example: A customer wants to return an item that was a gift who has no receipt and the purchaser paid cash. How do you return this item? Currently the only way is to stop everything at the register POS, have the employee log in to the admin and create a gift card. Now that employee can create the multiple gift cards unknown to me, as well as having access to all your sales info. NOT a good idea. Secondly if the item or amount to return in only a few dollars, it doesn't make sense to issue a gift card the cost us $1.50.

MULTIPLE RETURNS OR EXCHANGES. When will multiple returns be allows? Currently Shopify only allows one per transaction. That's Shopify's policy not mine. It is my business and I pay to use your system not your policy.

E-GIFT CARDS. When will recipients be included in the process? Currently if a customer purchases an E-Gift Card, Shopify sends the info to the purchaser. This is not a Gift Card. This is pre-purchasing for yourself. A GIFT is for someone else. Nowhere does the system ask for the recipients info or a note to say what the hell the gift is for, like Happy Birthday etc.

[Rivertowninkery]

Nobody wanted the ALL NEW POS even when it was free why do you think its worth $90 more a month, on top of the $40 extra we already pay for the plus plan to get the POS access.  Just give us back the classic version. Its not our fault the development team spent too much money on research and still failed at their product.  I will never pay you $90 for a POS and the lite version is useless.  So either fix things quick or customers will be dropping like flies.

[Miles]

Hi, @Roostcollection!

Some great questions here. Most of my response will result in me raising a feature request for you. Essentially, we have a program where we can add in feedback from our merchants and our products team use this in their decision making for future releases and changes. I understand the need for some of these to implemented to fall in line with your own store policies. I'll do my best to help you out today, and for everything else, I'll make sure our retail team is aware of your feedback.

Manual Returns
I'd love to understand a bit more about this request. From how I understand, you're referring to an order that paid in cash, so when the customer comes to return it, you have no way of pulling up the order to return it, so you'd like a process to return an item without needing to access the order. Is that correct? If so, this is something I'll need to raise with our team for consideration. I'll explain more about this process at the bottom of this post. In the interim, you can always adjust your inventory count do add any returned items back so it's balanced again.

Multiple Returns and Exchanges
This is something I'll need to add in as a feature request for you as well for future consideration. I can totally understand the need for multiple exchanges or returns in the one transaction, so I'll be sure to let the team know.

Gift Cards
When a customer orders a gift card, we send it off to the buyer. They then have the option of forwarding it onto the recipient or printing it out for them themselves. If you're looking for customisable options, you would need the help of an app so you can provide different gift card options. I've recommended a couple below.

• Rise Gift Cards and Loyalty

  • From $19.99/month. 7-day free trial.
  • Build an enhanced Gift Card and Store Credit program on every Shopify plan.
  • Enable customers to schedule & send Gift Cards

• Shopkeeper Gift Cards

  • Free plan available.
  • Hundreds of designs for everyday occasions, birthdays, holidays and more
  • Increase sales by offering customizable gift cards that are also printer-friendly and can be redeemed via the Shopify POS

I understand these answers aren't what you were looking for. Please leave this with me and I'll do my part by passing this onto our POS team for consideration in future.

[Roostcollection]

Hi Miles, Have you ever used your own system? Had your own retail business? Not a play website. A brick & mortar business that has 100K in inventory, A lease, Multiple employees (8), and have 70 to 120 retail transactions per day!

If so, you would not be asking me details on the issues with Shopify.

But I will explain again in detail. First understand our business philosophy. Customer comes first. In person or spoken to. No chat, No email. Deal with it ASAP. Admit when your wrong and make good on it, Even if it means not charging them. Fair prices.

We are a gift & Home decor business. Key word here is GIFT.

Manual Returns: Lets say a customer purchases items one being a gift. Does tell us, just a purchase of items. The then give an item to someone as a GIFT. That person then comes to our store to return the GIFT. No gift receipt. Now we are supposed to interrogate this person.

Do you have a receipt? No. If was a GIFT.

Who or when was it purchased? I don't know when, But it was by Sandy P.

This can now go two ways.

1. Let me look up Sandy P. in our system. Hmm, We don't show a Sandy P. in our system. (feeling odd she says) She told me she purchased it here.

-----OK, Maybe she paid cash, we can give you a store credit in the form of a gift card. Let me run into the back office and login to my admin and issue you a gift card. (This takes time, for which the customer has to wait. This also tells the other customer in line that they have to wait. And this leaves thing unattended.

2. Let me look up Sandy P. in our system. OK, Here it is. We returned the item and issued you a gift card.

----Later we get a call from the original buyer Sandy P. saying. I just got an email that an item I purchased was returned and it wasn't me. It was the gift I gave.

----Now we have to explain that your friend returned the item you gave them. This is a very odd and bad conversation to have. Our guess is that Sandy P. will not be buying gifts from us for fear of the embarrassing situation.

All this could be avoided in a simple timely fix. On the POS a simple Manual Return. Select the item in our inventory, Then select the way we would like to issue the return, Cash or Gift card. Simple, fast and most important no embarrassing situations.

*Now what if the person that returned the item wanted something else (a candle). The balance would still be handled the same way as scenario #1. Embarrassing!

Then if the gift receiver later wanted to return the candle (say it was the wrong size) the shopify system would not allow it to be returned because only ONE return per transaction.

Does that explain the problem?

Gift Cards. Someone purchases a Gift Card online. It is a GIFT. There is no where for the buyer to enter the recipient of the GIFT. So the purchase only goes to the person purchasing the Gift. Thus it's not really a GIFT.
Why would you offer a product that you either have to forward or tell us business owners to use someone else's product. (app) And you may have to pay $19.99 on top of the PRO plan Shopify is charging $89 per month.

It's amazing to me that you would even suggest to have us pay someone else for a service that you should include. That's like me telling my customer to go to the business across the street to buy from them. Dhhh

********

While we are on this, Lets talk about Cardreaders.

In 8 months we have had 5 Tap & Chip readers fail. Two red lights flashing. Locked Up.

We have never dropped. Or miss used the reader. It take far to much time to goes through the process of fixing the issue. Don't forget it cost us the merchant time and extra cost to run manual transaction.

We have one swipe reader that never locked up but both constantly go to sleep. The only way to wake them is to forget reader and re-connect.

Saturday we had 142 transactions. The readers went out 4-5 time during the day. Do the math. An 8 hr day @ 142 transactions amounts to and average of one transaction ever 3.38 minutes. So why would the readers go to sleep? Hugh inconvenience! Also remember there is most likely a line of customers wanting to purchase and move on with their day.

****

Why have a bluetooth reader that constantly fails. How about a reader that has a data line attached, rather than a power cord that charges a battery that when the power goes out you still can't take offline orders to be later captured when the power returns. This technology exists. (Square and Clover does this)

Even if the reader cost us the merchant more money the reliability far out weighs the cost. We would make that up in sales and the time it take to say write Shopify about these problems.

Verifone P400

https://www.verifone.com/en/devices/countertops-pin-pads/p400

[Wildernest1]

@Roostcollection is 100% on all of this.  It's been about 6 months since my transition to shopify and it's basically like dealing with a cooler version of intuit.  I hope Shopify takes these suggestions to heart.  These are the issues that BRICK AND MORTER RETAILERS CARE ABOUT!

[Wildernest1]

Hey Miles - Please put in these feature requests for my business as well.  RISE is a total scam so don't even suggest that to someone.

[Red_Stick_Spice]

I'll pile on unfortunately, because its December and all these issues are magnified 1000%. There isnt a single hour that goes by when we dont have issues using the new POS.

The hardware is hot garbage...forget the fact that its not designed to look attractive on the counter with cords everywhere, it disconnects constantly. Shopify, you seriously need to use your software and hardware in a real environment. Nothing more enjoyable than reconnecting printers and card readers when 20 customers are lined up. 

Physical Gift Cards- You cant have your cake and eat it too. You charge $1 tper Gift Card AND not allow us to re-use it. This is insulting...fix this now.

Its not like we collect every single card and re-use them...this is simply not possible. We need to be able to reuse cards because mistakes are made, and throwing away a brand new card sucks. At most we re-use 10-20% of the cards because its necessary to run a small business. PLEASE CORRECT THIS

I posted my top 7 complaints here. There are many other issues if you truly care to learn, but you will need to make it easy for customers to contact you if you want to hear them. I dont have 4 hours to waste trying to get in touch with a human.

If you want to be taken seriously, these must be fixed stat.

[Miles]

Hi @Roostcollection.

Thanks again for the feedback. As I alluded to in one of my earlier responses, a lot of this will become feedback that I pass onto our retail team for consideration. I have flagged this post with our retail team in the interim and there are a couple of solutions we can provide now for you.

We'll start with the issues around our card readers that you brought up. @Red_Stick_Spice this will also talk to one of the points you raised in another post (which I will respond to shortly as well). If there is an issue with the connections or the hardware, you'll be best placed to contact the retail support team directly to troubleshoot. This support team is separate to our main support team and focus directly on POS and storefronts. Our Retail Specialist team is a support first team - meaning they do not provide/schedule outbound calls. But, you can get in direct contact with our Retail Team. You can find your regional number within the POS app by navigating to Menu ☰ > Support.

You can also use the Contact Shopify Support > Search retail > Scroll down to suggestions and click “Contact retail support” and you’ll be provided with the phone number for your region.

Frequently disconnecting hardware usually means you aren’t resetting the Bluetooth connection or they have outside interference. We only support a 1:1 connection as well. Sometimes a merchant tries to connect one printer to 4 iPads which can issues. So in those cases, I recommend contacting us right away to look further into it and resolve this for you on the call.

In regards to manual returns, you've raised some interesting points that I've passed onto the team as feedback. I have been advised that it’s not about the number of products, you can return as many as needed whenever required. It’s more about returning a returned product that leads to issue.

For everything else you've mentioned, I've added it to the feedback submitted to the retail team. Please know we are collecting all feedback our merchants are telling us about the new POS plans and features. Our retail team is working hard on going through all the feedback and will work out what the pain points are as well as what is working and what may not be. I appreciate your comments and if you have anything else you'd like to raise, please let me know.