Is Parentpay any good?

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Originally Posted by localzuk

The problems your users are facing are:

1. It is basically impossible to talk to someone via phone - which is most schools' preferred communication method with companies in my experience. Email is too slow.
2. Your service seems to randomly be going down too much lately. It used to be very stable but of late it has been causing many issues both for parents trying to pay and for admin staff trying to work with it (especially at this time of year when we're all trying to get things like pre-admissions details sorted out).

To many it simply screams of 'too much growth, too fast, with not enough investment back into the business to handle the growth'.

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110% echo this, the fact that phone calls are basically not deemed an acceptable means of support is just not acceptable, e-mail is great, however when its down for the 2nd time in as many weeks as it was earlier on in the term then its not good enough, a decent telephone support system is needed and you can do things like put a message on it as part of the option saying that you know its down etc... so that may well answer a number of questions. Most schools I speak to (and I speak to a lot with various roles I have) I find the secretary's / Bursars / Finance Clerks actually don't like e-mail and web based support, they want a telephone. People such as us on here may prefer an E-mail, Blog, Knowledge-base etc but we are not the main users of the systems.

The site has been down far too much and has had too many technical issues, with those kinds of market figures you need to invest in decent infrastructure or very quickly you will fail as others have, your system is the life blood of many schools and thus a 1hr outage can be a major issue, if these issues continue schools will drop you and go to the competitors, most of whom are cheaper now than yourselves for the same service now thus in the ever tightening budgets of schools, the poor service will encourage schools to migrate to the alternatives

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Originally Posted by ParentPay

Hi - just wondering why you discounted ParentPay? I work for Parentpay so would be happy to respond to any queries?

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I think people here save summed up quite well why I came to the decision not to use Parentpay.

But since you asked, there are also other factors. I have a couple of friends that use Parentpay at a secondary school, they have made payments into the system which have been allocated to other families! They've had a nightmare sorting it out, and this seems to happen quite often at the school. They have also told me the system can 'time out' quickly and if you enter the payment again you get charged twice (again a reported nightmare getting a refund!). They also tell me the user experience isn't great, it's not clear what's been paid for and what needs paying for...

They now hate it and are now back sending cheques into the school.

You might claim to have a lot of schools using Parentpay- but it seems to me like the system and service is severley lacking in some areas.

Hi - I am going to respond more fully to all the comments very soon, but just wanted to respond to yours specifically Mr_Writer. Really sorry that your friends have had problems - we process hundreds of thousands of payments and very rarely have any problems at all. I obviously can't comment on the individual transactions but if you were able to supply your location I can provide a list of other schools for you to contact who can give you their feedback on the system and you can factor into your research findings (not ParentPay 'pet' schools either!) Refunds are really easy to do with ParentPay too - click of a button.

Have any of the non users seen a demo of the ParentPay system? Happy to arrange without any obligation if you would find useful?

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Originally Posted by ParentPay

Have any of the non users seen a demo of the ParentPay system? Happy to arrange without any obligation if you would find useful?

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Rather than touting for more business, I think your time would be better spent addressing some of the issues that have been raised here.

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Originally Posted by ParentPay

Hi - I am going to respond more fully to all the comments very soon, but just wanted to respond to yours specifically Mr_Writer. Really sorry that your friends have had problems - we process hundreds of thousands of payments and very rarely have any problems at all. I obviously can't comment on the individual transactions but if you were able to supply your location I can provide a list of other schools for you to contact who can give you their feedback on the system and you can factor into your research findings (not ParentPay 'pet' schools either!) Refunds are really easy to do with ParentPay too - click of a button.

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Refunds might be simple, but they also end up costing the school to do due to processing charges...

Sorry that wasn't meant to be a sales pitch at all. Just thought that schools who are looking at all the systems might find it useful to see what's on offer and have the full picture regarding things like transaction charges and refunds.
The issues are the priority - we have listened and are actioning currently. The server outages are resolved and we have no reports of any problems.

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Originally Posted by ParentPay

Have any of the non users seen a demo of the ParentPay system? Happy to arrange without any obligation if you would find useful?

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The number of schools you have using your service has nothing whatsoever to do with the problems users have reported on this forum.
The fact that you keep repeating your own sales rhetoric and then have the bare-faced cheek to try to sell to a forum of unhappy users, displays an utter disregard for your customers and a total lack of acceptance of the problems in your service!

If I hadn't made my mind up already … your appalling responses would have now made it for me.

I'd echo the comments on here regarding ParentPay. I'd add that email might be an acceptable means of support if it was responded to quickly AND if someone bothered to read what was written. Our experience has been that through the recent technical problems, it was blindingly obvious by the third email, that they hadn't read or understood the problem we clearly set out in the first.

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Originally Posted by Mr_Writer

Well after discounting ParentPay I'm still researching other online payment systems:-(

companies I have found are:

Wisepay - seems like a good system but a small organisation and I'm concerned about how good their support would be.
Parentmail and their pluspay service, again seems good and have a rep coming in next week for a demo

Anybody got any experience using any of the above or other payment services?

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We have been using WisePay for 8 months now which links up to SagePay. Seems to work fine apart from the odd occasion when SagePay bottlenecks at lunchtime. Thats rare though.

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Originally Posted by ParentPay

Sorry that wasn't meant to be a sales pitch at all. Just thought that schools who are looking at all the systems might find it useful to see what's on offer and have the full picture regarding things like transaction charges and refunds.
The issues are the priority - we have listened and are actioning currently. The server outages are resolved and we have no reports of any problems.

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I'm getting "server timed out" ... is it down again?

We have no reported service issues at present. I've just checked my system and it is fine. PM me and I'll have it checked out for you?

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Originally Posted by drdos256

I'm getting "server timed out" ... is it down again?

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seems to be ok here. quite quick infact (for ASP)

Seems to be working now - thanks

We are on parentpay, will there be phone support soon? otherwise I will prob lookat reconsidering our position