A Completely True Thing That Happened
I held off writing this yesterday, hoping that it would be a temporary situation, but by new it’s pretty clear that Square is stumbling in the Convention Center. Wednesday night was a dream, transactions flying through, credit cards approved, signatures captured in the blink of an eye. The beginning of the day Thursday was likewise smooth and unremarkable, but after a few hours transactions took longer to approve, then gave way to connection failures.
While the various Wis and Fis and Gs are chugging along at sometimes widely different speeds, connectivity is not the actual problem. I am writing this post on the same WiFi signal that is showing connectivity issues with Square, but which is browsing at a practical (if slightly pokey) rate.
Reports from vendors across the floor are similar: random pockets of decent responses from Square interspersed with an approval time measured in whole minutes. Performance did get better towards the end of the day on Thursday, but it wasn’t obvious if it was due to sales tapering off or Sqaure adding transactional capacity. Given that the slowdowns kicked in earlier today than yesterday morning, it seems the former is more likely.
Here’s hoping that Square’s capacity problems (it is a very common sight on the floor: phones and tablets with the ubiquitous white dongle) doesn’t impact the sales of creators. SDCC is just one weekend in one city, but there is a disproportionately large ratio of total merchants:Square users right here and they deserve not to be let down by technology on their most important sales weekend of the year.
TIHYD autograph count: 17 total (picked up Rhiannon Kelly, Rebecca Black, Carly Monardo, Lissa Tremain, John Chernega, Bill Chernega, Tony Cliff, Claire Hummel, and Ryan North and David Malki ! each signed a second time).
Did you hear from any Swipe users? I know in previous years Swipe with AT&T was getting through flawlessly while Square, and especially Verison, were progressively more challenged as the day wore on.
By Alice Bentley on 07.20.13 2:12 pm
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