How can I resolve recurring POS issues in my retail shop?

Retail & Point of Sale
1

[RANT ON]

Please help us…we have multiple issues that affect us on a daily basis. Sometimes I wonder if Shopify actually uses the POS app in a real retail environment as these are basic everyday issues that must be fixed if you wish to consider yourself a POS vendor.

1- Merge customers- we have hundreds of duplicate customers because of the way your POS automatically assigns customer names. If we forget to ask a customer before the sale we cant undo it

At the very least we must be able to remove a customer from a sale after the sale, so we can assign the correct customer post sale. This is truly basic functionality, and is critical if you run a rewards program. Our Rewards Program is a DAILY struggle.

Since many of our apps are priced based on customer count, we are overpaying for apps. Not to mention the mess we have in our customer database. This really needs to be a #1 Priority for your team…it has been requested for years now.

2- “Add Custom Sale” button

Shopify PLEASE help us, we cant function with this severely limited solution. This option causes multiple issues.

a. The tax rate cannot be changed

b. Its not associated with the correct product type

We overcharge our customers 10% every time we use this button, because in our state food sales are exempt from sales tax. This button does not allow us to edit the tax rate.

How would you feel if your customers paid 10% premium because your POS had limitations? It sucks…and to add insult to injury, we can only have one Custom Sale button.

We really need this fixed immediately .

3- POS Hardware-

a. printers disconnect 20x a day

b. Card reader constantly disconnects

c. why cant I delete or disable the printer from another register that shows up in the list. We spend all day passing receipts back and forth from register 1 to register 2 because when the printer disconnects it uses the other registers printer. This is a blast during Christmas.

4- CURBSIDE Phone Orders

Why cant we select this at the POS level. We get dozens of phone calls a day placing orders to pickup curbside, but there is no way for us to do this in the POS

5- SHIP TO CUSTOMER

Why doesnt the receipt show the actual order #? PLEASE PUT THE DAMN ORDER # ON THE RECEIPT. 5 minutes wasted 20 times a day is really getting old.

6- Contact Support

Why is it so difficult to contact support? why do you hide the phone number or chat option on the website? I really dont have time to spend 10 minutes searching for a way to contact you. We are your customers, make it easy for us to contact you. I have wasted hours trying to contact support…please try it yourself and see how much fun it is.

7- Sales Tax

This is an absolute train wreck…I dont even know where to start, so I won’t. Let me just say our tax reporting is an utter disaster, we over charge our clients daily and we are collecting taxes for sales we are not obligated to collect taxes for. THIS MUST BE FIXED

These are just a few of the daily annoyances we experience using the new POS…our struggles are real, and every single day we curse at Shopify. Please Please help us.

actually one issue that just blows my mind- We have an annual Sales Tax Holiday…and we overcharge our clients every single year during this holiday because its impossible to adjust our tax rate for this event.

We are obviously very frustrated…frankly you have a lot of issues. I really think it would help if your team used the software in a real retail environment, not in a test lab. But more importantly, please listen to your customers. We are in the trenches using the software and when we ask for help, its because we actually need help. I feel like your team just doesnt grasp how important these seemingly unimportant requests are to operating a real retail shop.

[RANT OFF]

5 Likes
2

Couldn’t agree more with most of your suggestions.

I’d add:

Purchase orders:

Why do we now have a 100 item limit to the number of items that I can receive? So now I have to create 5 purchase orders in order to receive 500 items? WHAT???

I have repeatedly asked for the ability to print inventory tags from the purchase order screen. This functionality is crucial to managing inventory why NOT add it?

3

Hi, @Red_Stick_Spice !

I’m Miles from the Social Care team at Shopify. I’ve responded via another thread you posted to, but I wanted to respond here as well to cover some of the other points you have raised.

First up: contacting support. Our Retail team has a dedicated support service including an inbound phone number. The process is different from our regular support teams and you can find the local number for your region 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.

I answered your question around POS hardware in this thread, but have added it here as well for context:

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.

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.

4

Thanks Miles.

Regarding disconnect issues…each iPad has its own printer and card reader…they are the only devices connected. (Yet, as I stated in my original post- they are are visible to each other and when a disconnect happens it switches to a printer on a different register despite the fact that we dont want that to happen and we have no control over turning this off. We should have an option to ignore printers we didn’t connect to.)

This is a software issue, and it must be addressed. We have used other POS systems in the exact same configuration and surroundings and never had this type of issue.

Retail stores have more than one POS system in the same room. This is how we work…if this is causing bluetooth interference, then you need to figure out how to resolve it. The solution isnt for us to only have one register.

2 Likes
5

Hi, @Red_Stick_Spice !

Thanks for getting back to me. My apologies. It looks like I was unclear, but the example I used about multiple devices was just one potential cause. You can absolutely have multiple devices and registers with no issues.

The best way for us to work out what’s going on would be for you to contact our retail team directly (instructions are in my previous post) and they’ll be able to troubleshoot and work out the issues with you.

Thanks!

6

Shopify is a joke as a company. This new POS is the worst product I have ever used in retail. Whoever created the tiles should be fired. It takes 3-5 extra taps or a search, to find every product. I am sick of telling customer “sorry for taking so long, our POS system is terrible.” Luckily about 90% of them ask who we use and I can tell them how greedy Shopify is. They are equally appalled, when they hear that it costs an extra $90 a month on top of the $79 we already have been paying for years in order to get the brick and mortar functions. Classic was such a better system, they just couldnt figure out how to take more money (classic was never “free” as they claim, it was included in the subscription price) from us without something new.

Shame on you shopify. I hope the extra $90 a month from a few people is worth all the bad will and hate you are getting from previously raving fans like me. @Miles

1 Like
7

110% agree. Their POS is so frustrating and very embarrassing when trying to make sales to customers.

8

I am completely over it too. It’s ridiculous that I have to spend what should be my free time on a forum hoping to see someone else’s solutions to these really dumb issues.

Everything should stay connected! POS has been ending the cash tracking session before the end of shift leaving us to manually calculate the cash sales for the checkout that night. It’s so embarrassing!

They keep changing things that aren’t broken and not fixing the clear, glaring issues. Joke of a company.

9

I am at the point where i need to change supplier. I follow all the advice, constantly do my updates and still need to restart my pos every 2-3 customers. And even when i do that the card reader constantly disconnects. It’s embarrsing and my customers are sick of it. I was going to up grade my card reader after updating my tablet but after reading after reading all these threads im confident that wont help. Any other platform suggestions people say sqaure space is good.