IRIS Parentmail Terrible Support

[discoveranother]

Hi all,

 

I just wondered if anyone else out there has constant issues trying to get support from Iris for Parentmail ?

 

Have emailed the numerous times, rang their phone number, emailed other Iris services to try and get some response, but nothing.

 

Thanks all

[simonw]

Having similar issues with Iris for BioStore.

[DrBeaker]

Cunninghams, Groupcall etc largely the same - call, ring, email, carrier pigeon - all to no avail unless you really moan at them.

 

 

Unfortunately maybe this will make schools realise, that they get what they pay for with 3rd parties and levels of support. These days it costs extra for phone support, some only do email.

[danielghares]

Same here for biostore. Our office team are pulling their hair out trying to get hold of them. We’ve been told the only way to contact them is via their online ticket portal (no phone, email, etc..), but their response times are diabolical.

Going to request a copy of our contract and see what the SLA terms are, as it’s not listed on their website.

[DrBeaker]

Same here for biostore. Our office team are pulling their hair out trying to get hold of them. We’ve been told the only way to contact them is via their online ticket portal (no phone, email, etc..), but their response times are diabolical.

Going to request a copy of our contract and see what the SLA terms are, as it’s not listed on their website.

 

Who made the final decision on going with Biostore? SBM, SLT etc? Just thinking of accountability etc.

[danielghares]

Who made the final decision on going with Biostore? SBM, SLT etc? Just thinking of accountability etc.

 

No idea - it was in place before I started. The issues are being noticed by SLT now though, so hopefully will get backing to move to an alternative provider

[DrBeaker]

No idea - it was in place before I started. The issues are being noticed by SLT now though, so hopefully will get backing to move to an alternative provider

Just thinking of you know who's gonna get blamed otherwise.... [emoji22]

[hallb15]

Biostore support was always good before they were taken over by Iris. Now it is very hard to get hold of someone who knows anything about the product.

[simonw]

Our 3rd party caterers are the BioStore customers, but don’t have the ability or access to solve issues. It took ages for Iris/BioStore to set the school up on the ‘support portal’ to enable me to log tickets and issues, as the software sits on the school server.

 

The ability of the 1st line support to record and/or answer queries effectively, is another story….

[sramdeen]

Found this thread via a search. I support quite a few schools using parentmail and there's a common theme across the board - they are all extremely frustrated with the support experience. The latest episode in October where parentmail devs pushed out a fix for one thing but then broke something related to parent email addresses (a pretty fundamental thing for the product!!!) has been the last straw. Most schools are now asking me for advice on an alternative product. Searching on here I have found SchoolComms, which seems to be the one that pops up when this question is asked.

 

Interestingly, the strategy on the SchoolComms website seems to indicate that they aware of exactly how much pain schools are going through with ParentMail: "Switch to first class support" and they claim that switching to SchoolComms midway through a contract with another supplier will result in no fees payable to SchoolComms until the existing contract expires. Quite the offer if true!

 

Before I start telling schools to investigate SchoolComms for themselves, I just thought I'd ask if anyone has managed to achieve a resolution with PM support or even get hold of anyone via the phone, preferably in the UK.

 

These schools in question are using SIMS. I'm no MIS expert but I do find it incredible that SIMS doesn't appear to have this functionality built in. My Arbor using schools are very happy with the built-in comms system.

 

Thanks

[simpsonj]

These schools in question are using SIMS. I'm no MIS expert but I do find it incredible that SIMS doesn't appear to have this functionality built in. My Arbor using schools are very happy with the built-in comms system.

 

Thanks

 

SIMS does, but it's an added extra called InTouch. When we were a SIMS school, we quite liked it, but IIRC it isn't cheap.