PaulHughes Posted June 13, 2011 Posted June 13, 2011 @mb2k01 @Soulfish - I am the Managing Director of 'ParentMail +Pay' and have nothing to do with ParentPay who are a competitor of ours. Clearly it would be very unprofessional of me to comment on them. @Soulfish - I'm sorry to hear you are not keen on us :-( (By all means PM me and tell me why if you would like to). Best, Paul.
mb2k01 Posted June 13, 2011 Posted June 13, 2011 @mb2k01 @Soulfish - I am the Managing Director of 'ParentMail +Pay' and have nothing to do with ParentPay who are a competitor of ours. Clearly it would be very unprofessional of me to comment on them Ah, I see. More careful reading would have spotted that! The above comment is noted/appreciated, but.... you are joining a discussion about them on a thread with their name in it Not that I have a problem with it personally. Competition is a good thing, and I'll still be looking at them (and you, now!) neutrally! Cheers
mikegrant Posted June 13, 2011 Posted June 13, 2011 Hi Mike - I'm really interested in your comment on the charges for using ParentPay (which are very similar to ours in actual fact). I had an interesting meeting two weeks ago with more than 40 schools where charges for electronic payments were discussed at length. I made the point that every payment made by card (debit or credit) carries a charge and 'most' retailers will include that charge in the retail price of their goods. Some levy an additional charge of 2.5% or more for payments made by credit card whereas our rates (and ParentPay's) are considerably cheaper at around 1.5%. (We've both achieved this by persuading the banks that school payments are low risk and of course we bring huge volume to the situation - which helps us negotiate Why do you think the charges are high? I would also be interested in how you propose setting up your own payment facility (your own merchant account?) and how you will avoid the charges that come with every card payment? It might be that I've mistaken your point and that you were making a more general point about subscription costs rather than credit card costs, but I'd be interested to know. Best wishes, Paul. The charges are just higher than what we were being quoted by sorting things out by ourselves. We still pay for every card payment, but extended our merchant account with our bank and reduced rates for our card terminal as well as what we paid for taking transactions online. That combined with being able to create software that more suited our needs and allowed for easier integration into our sims/Active Directory/smartcard system. Combined with a need for an internal POS system. Just meant the development cost (my time) was worth it when combined with the rates that we were quoted.
rh91uk Posted June 13, 2011 Posted June 13, 2011 Hmmm this thread is interesting because we are just starting to use ParentPay. Keep the feedback coming!
mikegrant Posted June 13, 2011 Posted June 13, 2011 Hmmm this thread is interesting because we are just starting to use ParentPay. Keep the feedback coming! How have you found them so far? What process did you go through in terms of setting up with them?
rh91uk Posted June 13, 2011 Posted June 13, 2011 Well it is provided by our LEA, I just signed in and imported the MIS data! Veyr early days ... we are just figuring out how to roll it out now!
rh91uk Posted June 14, 2011 Posted June 14, 2011 And I'm still waiting for a support call to be answered that I logged at 8am this morning. Horrah!
irsprint84 Posted June 14, 2011 Posted June 14, 2011 And I'm still waiting for a support call to be answered that I logged at 8am this morning. Horrah! Yeah they are a pain to contact by phone, we have someone's mobile from there
SiteManager Posted June 25, 2011 Posted June 25, 2011 The epos system is always the blame factor, but in reality it relies on the the account balance holder in your case PP. The trust-e till that we have has an override function in case of such circumstances.. talk about a plan!
Mr_Writer Posted July 12, 2011 Author Posted July 12, 2011 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 I've also heard teachers2parents are launching a payment service in september, but I was concerned to read this! Racist telesales firm Teachers 2 Parents made Rahul Jain call himself Rob Matthews | Mail Online So I don't think I'll be giving them a call! Anybody got any experience using any of the above or other payment services?
glennda Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 I've also heard teachers2parents are launching a payment service in september, but I was concerned to read this! Racist telesales firm Teachers 2 Parents made Rahul Jain call himself Rob Matthews | Mail Online TBH sounds pretty much like what all the big companies with Indian Call centers tend to do - or have you not noticed half of staff in Indian call centers have british names?
mikegrant Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 Whilst looking at what system we were going to use here, we went out to a college that was using wisepay and they couldn't speak highly enough of them. They said that the level of service was excellent and that all the integration was done for them and free of charge. It's definitely worth talking to them about it and trying to find a school that uses it and then go talk to them!
36Degrees Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 We're using SCO Pay from Tucasi. At the moment it is having major problems linking to Cunningham's system to the extent that we have been forced to put a message on our website asking parents not to use it until it is resolved.
Mr_Writer Posted July 12, 2011 Author Posted July 12, 2011 TBH sounds pretty much like what all the big companies with Indian Call centers tend to do - or have you not noticed half of staff in Indian call centers have british names? Whether it's standard practice or not, I would not want our school to be using a company that's been convicted of racist behaviour. I think our governors would have something to say about that too!
ParentPay Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 Hi - just wondering why you discounted ParentPay? I work for ParentPay so would be happy to respond to any queries?
CyberNerd Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 Hi - just wondering why you discounted ParentPay? I work for ParentPay so would be happy to respond to any queries? try reading the rest of the thread....
ParentPay Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 yes I've been following it for a while and there are some negative (and positive) comments. PP have around 80% of the online payment market in almost 3000 schools and a proven system.Other systems can't give you as many local schools with proven successes in using online payments to contact and talk to about the system, nor do other providers offer the breadth functionality or service with regard to cashless integration. Apologies if you've had a bad experience CyberNerd - happy to try and put that right for you?
CyberNerd Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 Apologies if you've had a bad experience CyberNerd - happy to try and put that right for you? As long as you can keep your servers up and running I'm happy, when it's not working it causes major problems for parents and schools.
localzuk Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 yes I've been following it for a while and there are some negative (and positive) comments. PP have around 80% of the online payment market in almost 3000 schools and a proven system.Other systems can't give you as many local schools with proven successes in using online payments to contact and talk to about the system, nor do other providers offer the breadth functionality or service with regard to cashless integration. Apologies if you've had a bad experience CyberNerd - happy to try and put that right for you? 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'.
glennda Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 As long as you can keep your servers up and running I'm happy, when it's not working it causes major problems for parents and schools. I have to say its exactly the same as this - you may have 80% of the market but at the moment the downtime is a major factor to consider it seems to be very unreliable at the moment
john Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 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'. 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
Mr_Writer Posted July 13, 2011 Author Posted July 13, 2011 Hi - just wondering why you discounted ParentPay? I work for Parentpay so would be happy to respond to any queries? 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.
ParentPay Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 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.
ParentPay Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Have any of the non users seen a demo of the ParentPay system? Happy to arrange without any obligation if you would find useful?
CyberNerd Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Have any of the non users seen a demo of the ParentPay system? Happy to arrange without any obligation if you would find useful? 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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