ParentPay Reviews 4,442

Horrible customer service! They have zero respect for the schools or the parents taking this company serious. Horrible, horrible! Shame on you.

It's difficult to find the statements you want easily and when you do find what you're looking for the way it presents is not clear at all. It's clear as mud at times. When I book my child's school dinners, I scroll through the week. Many a time have I scrolled past a day accidentally leaving him without dinner. It's so easily done and it's impossible to go back and review what you have booked without scrolling back through it all. Clicking back through each week, it's easy to tap a day by accident and deselect the lunch you have booked! Website clunky. Not user friendly.

If I could give 0 I would.

Clunky, unintuitive and illogical.

This over complicates and makes payments to schools considerably more complex than they need to be. I have no idea why schools are being forced to use parent pay when there are so many good solutions on the market that could actually automate their collecting process and support healthy cash flow. It’s an ongoing joke that this will be the next “Horizon” accounts don’t reconcile, duplicated transactions and a load of confused parents. . .

Beware one-click payments. I was forced to use this to clear a balance of 15p at a school my child was leaving. ParentPay forces you to set up one-click payments as the only way to make a payment less than £10. However, when I confirmed setting it up, it automatically took £10 from my account by direct debit. Complete scam and I have reported it to my bank with a request for refund of the direct debit. ParentPay is the most obnoxious platform that scams both parents and schools under the guise of "convenience". Just think about it, as an intermediary, ParentPay charges the school set up, annual and processing fees for all items that you pay using it. The cost is just added to the item you are buying from the school. No wonder school meals are becoming more and more expensive and less and less nutritious when scammers are involved in the process of payment.

Try getting money back from them after you've paid. 3 kids all with funds in their accounts, now left and navigating how to get it back jisy isn't happening. The help link " oops we dont have this anymore " not shocked. No phone number to contact. Vague help options with information that covers a specific issue but never about getting your money back. Parents need to uprise and refuse to be forced into something like this because you'll never get money back off them.
I am going to contact my local mp as this shady firm needs to be stopped. I advise all to do the same. I am also going to contact my local paper.

0 star should be given but unfortunately there is no option to do that. I have been emailing them and trying to call them for months now but no one cares. The people who run there canteen shouldn't be around kids.
My child was refused food today and told he had no money in his account when he did. The lasy gave him the food and 5hen snatched it from him. He fell dizzy and got sick after that due to no food and had to be picked up from school.

I have also paid for the alert system where they are suppose to send you a text alert but that never happens. The school even told them they will pay but never refuse the child food.

I repeat I had 47 pound in the account and yet my child was refused food. TlIf anything would have happened to my child today who would be responsible for it.

And this happened multiple times. Disgusting

I have had an unauthorised transaction taken from my account from parentpay. How has this happened?
I have emailed parent pay,but no reply as yet. Communication is awful 😖

They have a captive market as parents are forced to commit funds, but there is no way to withdraw them once your child leaves school (my two are among millions leaving over the next few weeks).
All of their links lead nowhere, and there is no customer support.
For example, when you click on "How to make a withdrawal from your parent account" you get redirected to a new login page for a different website.
(testppgsl...)
This is not a good look!

No phone number on the website to make contact, have emailed five times in two weeks with an urgent issue and had no reply. My colleague has also emailed numerous times about the same thing and been ignored.
Website hard to use and badly designed. Takes ages to process income as a result.
Be careful as you can get stuck in another three year contract, so give notice ASAP as you can always change your mind nearer the time. The billing cycle date doesn't necessarily match the contract date so they can catch you out. Sneaky.

I have zero clue how this site works, I’m not in anyway slow, I’m pretty tech savvy… but this site makes no sense at all! I don’t know how they’re getting away with it. They’re clearly just collecting my money in some kind of imaginary pot and making it very, very unclear how much I’ve put in there! Despicable!

Awful! I’ve had a £200 refund from my son’s school and I’ve requested to withdraw this on 9th May. I’ve emailed parent pay 3 times and still haven’t received this

Hi,
Parent pay have removed my daughter from the account without my consent. Although she has changed school and the new school still uses the parent pay. After creating a dispute because of the issues they have charged me unreasonably, they have removed my daughter. I can assure you and I am certain you will not be able to help me as i am chasing parent pay vis emails and there is no telephone number. The school are acting as a messenger. They are delivering the message from parent pay to me and there is nothing they can do that's what they have stated. So you see I am left with no option except to accept to loose my money. However, this is really unfair and to be honest, parent pay are the biggest thieves that they keep taking parents money in the name of food foe the children. Disgusting and pathetic.

Parent pay are the biggest thief. They have charged me 7 pounds without my consent and denying and refusing to pay back even though I have given them all the evidences. They are thieves. Don't save ur card details in parent pay and don't trust them. U wil end up chasing for ur money and no one will be entertaining u.

I have been trying to contact customer service for help and I keep getting a message that browsers not supported. I am locked out of my account as I have tried to change password and there is no response. Absolute nightmare!!!!

Parent pay should be monitored by a governing body as receiving a refund when your child reaches school leavers age is ridiculous.
We had £8 on account which I believe should have been automatically refunded. It is not the amount that I am quibbling over but the POINT - if every parent is owed any amount of money why should this company keep it. I emailed the school who told me I had to contact parent pay directly which I did. To date I have received no refund. It has been 2 years. This company should be reviewed as not fit for purpose.

These people are criminals and do nothing but lie. Do not give these people your details. They break the law, lie about it and then just fob you off. Disgusting company especially Ben and Damien who couldn’t tell the truth between them.

In response to your reply.

PARENTPAY why do you reply so quickly to reviews to try and make it look like you care. The truth is that you lie, steal and scam Parents through their children. That really is the lowest. It must be horrible working for such a cruel company.

PARENTPAY IS A SCAM
If you wish to communicate further then it will be through my solicitor.

Going round in circles trying to delete parent pay as I have no children at school anymore and for some reason I don't even get the option to erase my data!

Complete utter rubbish, even changed password and still cannot log in. Schools need to keep to cash payments because all these online jargon are very unreliable and now my daughter can't go on class trip absolutely ridiculous

Cannot access my ParentPay account. I had to pay via my children's school. I was promised an email of acknowledgement for my payment. I have received nothing. I have emailed ParentPay support to make them aware of any possible technical issues. Still awaiting a reply.

A payment of £27 was taken on a weekend. We have complained to the school many many times, no explanation no refund or indication for what the payment related. The only response is that the systems were updated when it happened. Adjustment made to match till balance is stated. Why can SCHOOLS and PARENT PAY just dip into parents funds?

Wow! Your app is probably the worse app going. Every time I have something to pay for, your app either doesn’t let me in or crashes…….its causing us to miss out paying for school trips for my lad. This isn’t on, and I really hope my child’s school find a new way of receiving payment so that I don’t have to ever use your app again. Had to leave a one star rating as I can’t leave 0! Silly app that just is not worth my time.