IanWilson

Just a thought. Set your service duration to 30 minutes. The calendar for the fast barber can be set with open and close times. The slow barber, you set up specific slots of 40 minutes per slot. What should happen is that the slow barber gets a 30 minute appointment booked but there is always a 10 minute gap for them to catch up. Ask acuity on the chat feature for more info- I’m just a beginner, but had to work out how to overlap appointments on one of my calendars, but not on another - similar solution helped.

So apparently this was an issue (presumably API related) between acuity and Twilio, affecting U.K. users. This has now been fixed as of yesterday and normal SMS behaviour is now resumed. This is confirmed based on tests I have conducted and live bookings occurring and getting reminders.

@paul2009 I know the forum are unable to help in solving what is a technical issue. The issue is I have sent at least 6 messages with screenshots of settings, deliverability reports and my concerns to the acuity scheduling team, and they do not seem to accept that this is looking more and more like an internal issue at their end, and keep blaming network carriers who don't seem to have a problem. Granted, there was a UK issue on the 30th June, but that is resolved and unconnected to the behaviour we are seeing. Further, the SMS issues are only occuring with the acuity product, we have a number of other products that use Twilio SMS messaging and they are all fully functional. We are actually feeling somewhat unsupported, especially when I am sent resources telling me how to test SMS messaging, which I already know how to do and have sent screenshots from. We do not believe they are looking further at this and are blaming carriers. This is why we have turned to the forum to see if anyone else is affected and whether anyone else has any useful input. Supports input has so far not been useful at all. It is interesting to see that we are not the only people having issues... We have had no further response to the support ticket, and it all feels very much "we're not interested in looking". I asked for evidence that there were UK SMS operational issues, and none has been provided. I too can find no evidence to back up support's claims it is a carrier issue. What more can I do??

@PeterSutherland - I have checked again this morning, there is no noted operational issues in the UK with text messaging, and Twilio also does not show any issues. We have a CRM which uses Twilio and countless services where our 2FA is by SMS. None of these are failing. I have little doubt the issue here lays between the acuity scheduling service and the API to Twilio. I can't see that Twilio have recently changed their API either. Our IT guy is looking at importing the appointments into our CRM so we can then send out SMS from there on Twilio. We moved to Acuity 4 days ago, after over 8 years with another booking platform. I am unimpressed so far I must say, and I suspect we will end up having to switch back as my business partner will not tolerate this, the one advantage acuity offers us over our previous platform is outweighed by the lack of SMS and poor support. Come on Square, we all expected a bit more here. We have sent multiple screenshots, told you we can not find evidence of carrier or Twilio issues, and still the issue remains with SMSs on our account and you blame third parties. I would have hoped someone could have asked your development team to take a look at our settings, and at your API. Could this issue even be that there has been a billing issue between yourselves and Twilio, causing undeliverability until resolved? (I ask as this happened to us with our CRM a few years back and undeliverability was the first sign of an issue, turned out our card has expired and we hadn't realised to update details!)

UPDATE - I had an online chat with Squarespace report. Apparently there are issues with SMS delivery in the UK, and it is advised this is the cause. I checked with Twilio and the UK carriers and it is true that issues occurred on 30th June, especially O2 networks. However, according to the carriers the issue was resolved by the 2nd July. So why the severe deliverability issues continue I don't know. I am told this is why acuity's status is "fully operational", as is Twilio's and that it is external carriers outside of their control. Having literally just moved from one very good system we had for 8 years to acuity just 24 hours ago - I am incredibly nervous and rather worried whether we have made a huge mistake - the next few days will tell I guess. SMS's are very important to us and our clients.

We just activated our booking system with Acuity, and we are getting exactly the same behaviour. The mass majority of SMS's are listing as undelivered, and only 1 so far is seen as delivered. Maybe it is a widespread issue. Worse still, I have filled in the contact form, placing urgent in the subject line, but still no response. How long does it take for support to reply usually?