ParentPay - Anyone else adversely affected by the payment changes?

[katbanham]

We had so many phone calls from parents that we ended up sending out an email informing parents of the change and telling them to WATCH THE GUIDANCE VIDEO!! We also attached a guidance document incase they didn't have patience to watch the short video!

[Dos_Box]

I've just noticed the 'Suggested top-up amount' page you now have to navigate through when topping up your account which I'm sure wasn't there last week!

It wants from £10 to £25 then upwards! I only wanted to put £20 in there and I can see this pressuring parents to paying more that they either want or ore capable of.

It's totally unneeded and seems a bit like a technique chuggers (charity muggers) use to extract more cash.

They have gone from an easy to use and understand system to one that just gives the impression of trying to take as much money off you as possible.

[Edu-IT]

I've just noticed the 'Suggested top-up amount' page you now have to navigate through when topping up your account which I'm sure wasn't there last week!

It wants from £10 to £25 then upwards! I only wanted to put £20 in there and I can see this pressuring parents to paying more that they either want or ore capable of.

It's totally unneeded and seems a bit like a technique chuggers (charity muggers) use to extract more cash.

They have gone from an easy to use and understand system to one that just gives the impression of trying to take as much money off you as possible.

Could you share a screenshot of this please?

[Dos_Box]

Could you share a screenshot of this please?

 

Here you go. Admittedly, they do give you the option of 'Other amount', but, IIRC, the old version just informed you of the minimum amount and let you choose just how much you wanted to pay. It feels somewhat pressured this way.

I'm also not sure if this screen is one of the options the school can set either.

 

[gillop]

It caused us some problems, they changed the system on the Wednesday, the website was down most of the weekend and we went live on the Monday. Myself and the Business Manager made over 50 calls to parents talking them through how to allocate cash!

 

Things are now settling down.

[gaz350b]

Don't get me started on the mobile version..... there is no obvious button to press to pay for items........ its actually the description text.

[SouthCoastSaint]

Actually featured on 5Live this morning!

[Skelacia]

I had my first negative experience with the new ParentPay system this morning, with my parent hat on. Minimum top up for "My Account" is only £2 but the school have obviously still got a minimum dinner money amount of £20 set. I stuck £10 on which is more than enough to take him to the end of term on one meal a week (which is all he has) but when I went to top up his dinner money I couldn't without adding another £10 to My Account! The system wasn't broken why on earth have they tried to fix it?!?!

[Dos_Box]

I see they have sent out an email this morning explaining that only 5% of users had difficulties with the new system.

 

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[TD]Dear Parent,

 

We owe you an apology…

 

We are always trying to improve the ParentPay application and the release on the 8th June was intended to do just that, with a particular focus on helping parents on lower incomes.

 

However, we know from the calls and emails we have received that the recent release has confused a small percentage of parents or upset others who don't like the changes, or who have found it harder to complete certain tasks. We estimate around 5% of users were affected.

 

This has been made worse by the fact that, for reasons unrelated to the release, the system has experienced slow running during busy periods on a number of occasions during the last month.

Having planned, based on trials, to provide support to 1%-2% of our 1.7 million parents following the release, we have at times struggled to cope with the much higher than anticipated support load, and have been unable to answer many parent support requests in a timely fashion.

 

We are very sorry if these problems have caused you any difficulties or inconvenience. This was never our intention and we are committed to putting this right.

 

We have assigned additional team members to respond to support requests and have made a number of upgrades to our systems to address the performance issues.

 

We’ve listened to feedback from parents and schools and started work on a series of improvements. We are changing ParentPay to restore the ability to pay for a basket of items and are simplifying the payment process for first time users.

 

We will be working on these changes over the summer and aim to release these upgrades in stages from late August into September.

 

We’ll be in touch again over the summer with the details of what you can expect to see and when. You can find out more about the recent release and what’s coming soon.

 

In the meantime, thank you for your support and patience.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Clint Wilson

 

Chief Executive, ParentPay

 

 

P.S. There were some minor short term changes, released this evening, details are available online.

 

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I suspect that if our members (myself included) here at EduGeek experienced issues using the unannounced new system, then many home users would have been absolutely lost!

[OverWorked]

Here you go. Admittedly, they do give you the option of 'Other amount', but, IIRC, the old version just informed you of the minimum amount and let you choose just how much you wanted to pay. It feels somewhat pressured this way.

I'm also not sure if this screen is one of the options the school can set either.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]37406[/ATTACH]

 

They've just changed the top-up page that appears after buying an item this week. It now defaults to the exact amount needed (in this case £33 for a bus pass).

 

The apology email says that they'll restore the shopping basket by September. At the moment, if the account is empty each item is a separate transaction, costing the school credit card fees each time.