ParentPay Reviews 4,442

Awful. Was really happy with squid account but the school decided it needed to change to parent pay and what a mistake that was. Made a payment for two school trips, they took the payment twice a day apart, tried to get in touch no one to get in touch with. A useless robot says someone will email, they don’t. It’s almost the end of January and I’m still missing my money which I actually need. Yes if it affected direct debits etc they will pay the charges etc but what about people that rely on every penny in their bank accounts even £12 can be the difference between eating and not eating especially in this cost of living crisis. It’s absolutely appalling. The charges should have been returned instantly in this day and age not taking up to 10 days in the worse financial month of the year and during a cost of living crisis. Have emailed the school to reconsider squid account! Never ever had one problem with them!!!!!!!! Avoid ParentPay

No way to contact them when things go wrong!

What an appalling company to deal with. They are very good at taking money, but have no customer service that you can contact, so when they take an unauthorised payment from your account there is no one to speak to. If you can avoid dealing with them, for your own sanity I would suggest you do!

Wish I could give zero stars! It's unbelievable that in this day and age we are FORCED to use such a useless service! Absolutely disgusting! You should be ashamed of yourself!
DON'T USE THEM IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO!

Diabolical. Very easy to add money to an account but when you want YOUR money refunded upon your child leaving school, good luck, cos you'll need it.
Submitted bank details, had several online chats with a useless robot, and assured I would be contacted by customer service via email (several times). However, no one contacted me yet. No refund in my bank account. They must be making a mint with all the leftover monies, adding up, once they ignore you and hold out till you give in.

Hello, I am adding to the long list of people who are complaining about their "one-click payment".

I have a ticket that has been "resolved" 3 times or more, I'm not counting anymore, at least it goes towards their fabulous stats on their website of 96% resolved support tickets! Fear not, they are not resolved for you, but that's not an issue.

I very rarely use this site as my children take packed lunches to school, however I have had to use them against my will for a one off payment on seldom occasions. The last time I used their one-click payment (back in November). Payment happened, all is good and well.
Imagine my surprise when I check yesterday my upcoming payments on my banking app and notice one for the same amount coming up at the end of December for the same amount as November. The issue is I have not ordered anything else, and there is no recurring need here. Yes a Direct Debit Mandate was set up, however it should not show as an upcoming payment that does not exist.
I checked on their website and cannot see anything that would justify the request for a payment, there is no open order.

I contacted support who told me everything is working as it should. Then explain why I had to cancel a payment for this month from my bank account?

Of course I also removed my data from their site as well.

The audacity to repeatedly telle me that the system works as intended but also suggesting that I am at fault for not reading the instructions is baffling. Nowhere does it say "just to let you know, you will see a phantom payment but it won't be debited" ... no other companies with whom I've used DD mandates has ever done this.

But don't worry everyone, it is working as intended and it is you the problem, you didn't read! And you know what? If you don't like it use the card payment ok?

I wonder, if I had not seen this, what would actually have happened? Would the upcoming payment have indeed disappeared (and then what be reported to January, and then February, etc) or would it have been debited?

I wish my children's school was not using this system, it feels like a scam. When I see the abysmal reviews I fail to understand how they cannot feel a need for improvement on their end.

And no need to respond Support, my ticket, after all, is resolved!

If my child has a school lunch (eg on a Monday one week), then they "New" parentPay system AUTOMATICALLY bills me for lunches for the same day(s) for subsequent weeks!! I have spoken with the school on multiple occasions, and they have tried (in vain) to advise ParentPay that this £"new" system is Not Fit for Purpose as it is causing parents more problems than it is worth!! I have now refused to make any further "Auto billed" payments tp ParentPay - Absolute rubbish system!!!!!

The app is quite easy to use, although it doesn't always have all the information you need. For example, if you pay for a club it just tells you how much you've paid, not when the club finishes. No statements or reminders that the next payment is due or anything like that. My main problem with this app is that if your child leaves the school and there is money on the account the school claims you have to go through parent pay to get your money back. However they seem to ignore direct emails. The amount I was told had been left on the account was not correct either. There should have been a whole £10. They are claiming there is only £7 on there but there were no purchases made. And now with them ignoring me it seems that they have decided to just steal the £10. I didn't even want the money back. I just wanted it refunded onto the account so I could credit it to a different child who was still in school.

Awful thing. Thankfully the school is great at navigating this thing for refunds. I despise it the whole layout is confusing and payments never go where I want them to.

I HAD TO PUT 1 STAR TO BE ABLE TO WRITE THAT THIS COMPANY IS RIDICULOUS. NO REPONSE TO MY PROBLEM ON ANY OF THE 4 OCCASIONS I CONTACTED THEM. DO NOT RECOMMEND AND WILL BE REPORTING TO THE SCHOOL. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY

The parentpay never ever contacted me to solve the said issue via the disclosed email on Trustpilot (which is not appropriate and respect) and up to date, the problem is sill not yet be responded.

Trying to add funds to my child’s account this weekend , keep getting an error message stating “something went wrong”. The answer I got was to contact the school on Monday or to contact Parentpay support and wait for a reply. Not helpful when my child has no funds to buy lunch for the coming week.

Not worth any stars. Deposited 50 pounds into my daughter's dinner account and a system update occured days later and wiped the money from her account. Parentpay is saying the money must not have come out of my bank account which isn't true (submitted documentation to prove) and is also not being helpful to the school who is trying to help recover the money. Useless.

ParentPay is absolutely disgusting to deal with. I have money stuck in my account and there is no way to get it back. Their so-called customer service is non-existent – you’re left completely stranded with no help.
The whole process feels like a total scam. There’s zero transparency, no accountability, and no support. Avoid this platform at all costs.

My kid's account was debited twice for lunch meals in the summer term break which was ridiculous. Tried to contact the parentpay via the system message without any response over 10 weeks.

SCAM ...SCAM ......SCAM ❗ ⛔🆘
Yesterday morning before my daughter goes to school ,I was looking my phone as usual and noticed text from bank that showed £20 paid to parent pay at 2.42 AM whereas I was slept that time and never authorised them for direct debit payment and guss what , when I checked parent pay , £20 wasn't added and my account had £7 credit from my last time payment , so I got shut screen photo of this credit but today as I suspect to this website , I checked account just right now and wondering that my account is £16 in debt 😳 where as I expected £3.57 money left at account because my daughter spent yesterday at school's buffet £3.43 , so I contacted school and school sayes we can't help and you have contact parent pay directly so I check every where they don't have any contact number for customer service , so practically system is pirate and and I think they are making up for the school budget deficit UK by stealing bit by bit of poor parents pockets without our notice❗

Keep getting overcharged for breakfast club. Grrrr

An absolute scam. They set up a direct debit without my permission and took money from my bank account — and guess what? The funds never appeared in the ParentPay account. It’s outrageous that a company handling children’s school meals and essential expenses could act like this. I’ve told my daughter she’ll be taking food from home instead, because I simply can’t trust them anymore. This is completely unacceptable — parents deserve better!

Constantly seem to have issues accessing this system and it's integration to our children's schools is minimal. The detail about what lunch was taken is minimal, so you get sandwich, main meal, drink, and sometime miscellaneous. Navigation could be improved also.

I went to log on to my account and it wouldn't let me in. The password is saved on my phone so it's obviously a parent pay issue. Support is useless just telling me to change my password. Schools need to stop using parent pay because they don't give a damn about the users and the customer service is abominable. I have paid 3 months of music lessons school bus I now have to ensure that those payments are recorded with the school as I can't enter the account to prove it as well as find another way to pay for these that doesn't ever involve parent pay. I have £16 only in the parent pay account thankfully as I can see that they try to keep people's money by reading these reviews. Packed lunches for the children every school day from now on after the couldn't care less attitude of this nasty company

Ridiculously bad experience.

My wife normally manages our school pay accounts, and she asked me to get involved because it was just impossible.

We have constant login issues, and password reset doesn't work - the reset email never arrives, while the account has someone else's phone number that we didn't put in.

We tried to contact customer support, got a response that was completely irrelevant to our question. We tried explaining again, and got "escalated to another department", which did exactly the same thing - gave us an irrelevant response clearly not caring to even read the question.

We tried to create a new ticket and start afresh - with largely same result - an irrelevant unhelpful and clearly copy-pasted response that solved nothing.

We'll try to create a new account for the other parent (for me), and see if that will work, but without much hope.

Clearly this company is unsalvageable, and only exists because paying customers (school officials) are not the ones who actually have to use the system.