Mr_Writer

I continue to be baffled why anyone would choose to use Parentpay. When you read comments like this, it would scare the bejesus out or me Parentpay payment for school dinners gone missing!!

I did quite a bit of research on payment systems a few months ago and decided on ParentMail’s system in the end, which we’ve been very happy with. I looked into Parentpay but was put off by their reliability/downtime issues and poor support, a lot of this you can see on a thread here (along with comments on other payment providers). As an addendum to this at Bett Parentpay were talking about their ‘new system’ which I looked at (just to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake!) My suspicions were it wasn’t a new system so I spoke to a few cashless catering companies who said they had not written new integrations into a new system. My guess is it isn’t ‘new’ it’s just had a makeover, which means it could well have all the same reliability problems - so please beware! As I said, ParentMail’s been good for us, it’s user friendly, support is good and parents have quickly got on board with it; well worth considering I think.

For some reason I'm still following Parentpay on twitter - and they've just tweeted claiming they have 2 new LA contracts confirmed! I can't believe the incompetence of some councils?? With Parentpay's track record of long periods of downtime this year, which has clearly exhasborated many schools and parents (just take a look at PP's facebook and twitter pages), and the fact that the company clearly has major technical isses, combined the poor service it provides customers (which has been clearly vented by people on this forum) WHY do these councils WASTE our taxes on a service which clearly isn't up to the job! It baffles me how councils work?? Makes you wonder if the 'old boys' network is still very much driving things...very sad.

A colleage here (who uses Parentpay and still can't get into their website!) just sent me this link http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/usability-atrocities-parentpay/ This bit made me laugh, but hit's home a bit! Comment by Paul September 7th, 2011 at 4:47 pm BTW….. A quick bit of GCSE Maths…. They claim that they are supported by 2000 Schools. OK….. Here we go….. No of Schools = 2000 Average Number of Pupils per School = 500 Average Amount Held on Account per Pupil per School = £10.00 Therefore: 2000 x 500 x £10.00 = £10,000,000.00 Parent Pay have, in principal, £10 Million in the Bank at any one stage and they can’t have a Website that works! Blimey….. I wish I could run such an inefficient company. I would be a MILLIONAIRE ! Cheers Paul

Despite Parentpay's website saying it's still possible to log in, a colleague here just tried to top up her daughters dinner money and she couldn't log in - hopefully the school won't let her daughter starve! Any idea what Parentpay's SLA's are? There must be grounds for compensation given the amount of downtime they've had this year.

Well there’s a surprise. …

Features may well be similar (I would hope they would be) - but what I'm interested in is finding a service which is properly supported and doesn't keep falling over!

I said I’d report back on my visit from Parentmail earlier. Answers to specific questions below: 1) As mentioned above they integrate with several cashless systems 2) Integration with Easytrace will be there from September I’m not usually easily taken in by sales patter but a couple of things he said made particular sense: 1) If parents have kids at 2 schools that use Parentmail (primary, secondary), parents get a single account where they can pay for things from both. Other systems (apparently) give parents different, separate accounts - which I can see could confuse. 2) The importance of having a payment system with built in email/texting. If parents don’t know about things that need paying for they won’t use the system! (makes sense). It pays into multiple bank accts (with one transaction charge rather than one charge for each separate acct which other systems apparently do), does refunds, produces decent reports and has a good dinner money solution for schools without a cashless system. Told me they’re launching Parentmail 2 in Sept - cloud hosted for scalability and resilience. Saw a demo which looked pretty slick and intuitive. There’s also an ‘app’ so parents can pay for things and receive messages etc on their mobile – again looks pretty impressive. I gave him a good grilling about support! The bottom line was he phoned the support number on their website – low and behold, straight through to a cheery support person. Can’t test any more of course but they seem to be pretty geared up in that area (can anyone vouch for their support?). I’m trying to think of some negatives to balance this a bit but I can’t at the moment! I was pretty impressed – just got to convince the head now:-)

I’m far from convinced too. Parentpayceo’s response all seems a bit too convenient – strange that none of this ‘upgrade work’ seems to have been mentioned before to users on this forum by PP’s support people as the cause of system failure. He also claims that ‘Parentpay’s support service includes telephone support’ but not many people here seem to be aware of this…! More schools were having problem yesterday ParentPay | Torquay Girls' Grammar School When will this all be sorted out for schools? I’ll ask Parentmail about Easytrace on Monday and report back again.

Sure, I'll ask the question and report back!

I've got the Parentmail rep coming to see me on monday so I'll find out more then. According to their website they integrate with NRS and other cashless systems.

I'm trying to square your comment with the one posted by pcstru earlier: "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." "email contact is the best way of ensuring the most appropriate and knowledgeable person responds to school queries in the first instance" you say...just more sales rhetoric I think! Your comments reminded me that someone told me ParentPay doesn't actually have an office - everybody works from home. Is this the real reason for not offering telephone support?

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 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.

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!