Vend by Lightspeed Reviews 442

They Force you to use their own terminal for accepting payments so they can rip you off even more as it’s not enough with $390/monthly subscription. Plenty of better options available in the market at much lower prices.

Worst company ever,been trying for 2 months.Changed passwords a quadrillion times.Whatever u do it's impossible.This affects,job, apartment,doctor etc.etc.
This syndicate reminds me of, China.
And in some cases north Korea.
I wouldn't recommend to anyone.
I wouldn't rate 1 star,but minus 10.
Criminal behaviour.

Horrific company, they make it impossible to cancel, they don't answer emails and then take money out of your account without notice. Once they have you, they also start charging you penalties if you don't use other services they provide, at one point we were getting penalty fines of 800 a month. Outrageous company

Expsensive and surprise added costs. Customer service is virtually non existant. SAVE YOUR MONEY!!

Since my last post on 31st Jan, Nothing, Nothing has been done!!

Got an email on 23rd Feb stating that the job had been done. However, I found that it was just not true!
Got an amazing reply from Lightspeed:

(one would think the engineers who worked there knew the importance of testing and then certifying the job as done)

Lightspeed reply:

Now we discovered that the fix works only on the first print (right after the sale is completed on the sell screen), however, the reprints are showing net figures again:

Below is my post about a problem from November 2023 and as on 25th February, it still is serious enough for us to have got a warning from the Department of Economic Affairs Dubai UAE, on incorrect invoices being issued.

My original post:

Lightspeed is not good for Tax inclusive Stores.
The subtotals displayed are wrong. This was acknowledged by Lightspeed person and raised a complaint in November. Till date nothing!! I was told that the development team will do so if they find it necessary. How much more ridiculous can one get? EG : Total Gross sale is 1390. VAT @5% is 66.19. Discount is 278 (gross). Subtotal shown by Lightspeed Vend is 1337.05. WHY?? Either show 1323.81 and below that the discount 264.76 (net figures) or show 1390 discount 278. Show VAT @ 52.95. Gross payable @ 1112.00

Started with VendHQ POS, which was great. Lightspeed purchased them and now force you to use their payment processing system or else charge you processing fees if you use a third party processor. Don't know how this can be legal. Going to drop them

Since Vend has changed to Lightspeed it has been a total nightmare. Being charged an extra $200 aud a month for not using their eft terminals, plus all of a sudden some sort of transaction fee which we had never had before.
We are now forced to use their eft terminals as we are way too small a company to pay the additional $200 a month.
I wish we could afford to go elsewhere but then there is the cost of new equipment which we cannot afford at this time. We are JUST hanging on financially.
Thanks for nothing Lightspeed.

My company has been with Lightspeed (formerly VendHQ) for six years whereby we have paid a monthly subscription (currently £139 per month). They announced that they were going to start charging companies for used a third party processor. Our company does not have any third parties linked to our account with Lightspeed, we manually process our payments and our Lightspeed does not have any add ons or linked to our merchant bank. We were surprised to receive a 'transcation fee' of £150 for July when our subscription is only £139. Customer Service admitted on the phone that we were a company that this fee did not apply too as we are being billed for a third party processor we are not using via Lightspeed. It is now three months of being billed for something we are not using. Their advice was to set up Lightspeed payments for three months to get a refund of one month's fees and then cancel and go back to our existing provider. This cannot be their business plan? So upset as up until now we had been really happy with Vend. We will resolve this and get our money back as we are being charged for something we are not using. Please be aware!

***update*** everything was put through as cash or on account in October to try and get rid of the third party processing fees but i have been charged again and told its for all transactions even cash. We will reluctantly be leaving at the end of this billing period. What a joke of a company!

Since being bought out by LightSpeed, their customer service is beyond pathetic. The support staff cannot solve any problem. They just dont come back to you on queries raised and their attempt at AI bots to solve queries is useless. As someone who has 5 stores with them, I am seriously considering changing to a new POS.

PS: sad as they use to be good.

Yep all the recent 1 star reviews sum it up pretty well.

Signed up for this for my new little business and during the beginning they tried to get me to go the more expensive plan despite not needing it at all, so that was the first red flag. Was pretty easy to get it all the stock set up so that was nice at least, but from there it’s downhill. Hard to navigate, ie app and website completely different UI, icons don’t make sense, weird UI glitches commonly, menus hard to navigate. Was super slow with the hardware they recommended (specifically printing receipts took like 10 seconds) but the REAL bummer was when a little banner showed up on the app saying they’re merging their payment system with the retail app, and charging a fee if you don’t do it??

I’m pretty happy with my current payment provider so had no interest in this, and couldn’t imagine the fee would be large, or even effect me at all till one of my friends brought it up and said yea, it in fact would charge me. For what? Not letting them handle my payments at a higher rate than I’m at already?

Anyway, one bonus from this is that we found a new app to use that doesn’t cost anything! So bye bye $129 PLUS $150 FEE FOR NOT SWITCHING PER MONTH!! And hello square retail.

Bad company, customer service doesn’t understand working hours, UI is hard to navigate, and they just randomly spring insane fees despite you agreeing on an already too high subscription cost! Glad to have moved.

I used Vend for a few years and I was happy with the product until they decided to change to an all in one payments system. They were bullying clients to change from their own existing merchant facilities to Vends own payment system and if you don’t they penalise you with an added monthly charge on top of your monthly subscription. I complained and they wouldn’t reply to me after this. Then Vend automatically changed me a sign up fee of $150 without my consent. I have now left Vend and trying to get my $150 back which they had no right to take. Don’t use this POS!

Just 2 days ago (3 Oct 2023 Vend rolled out another change to customers without advising what they are doing that completely screws up the register closures and the entries that are posted to Xero. They have added a Revenue in Advance listed under Delivery & Pickup (if you please) that is not able to be reconciled or traced to any actual transactions. This has become a habit of late as Vend continues to roll out changes that make the product much worse than it was before - it actually used to be quite good before it was taken over by Lightspeed.

I was a Vend customer for many years and was reasonably happy with the product. It was a little over-priced in my opinion but was user friendly and had some useful features. However, their latest pricing structure, in my opinion, was nothing more than greed. Essentially, they want a cut of all their customer's retail takings because they think they are entitled to it. In my opinion, I would avoid this product at all costs. We are currently using a different POS which is costing us about a tenth of what we would have been paying if we had stayed with Vend.

I sold my business at the end of August and jumped through all the silly hoops that Lightspeed makes a customer jump through to sell their store.

Here we are 18 days later and Lightspeed still hasn't managed to transition the POS System (theirs) to the new owner. Worst Goat Rodeo I have ever seen. Makes FIS look like paragons of efficiency.

Someone's head needs to roll.

My advice - AVOID LIGHTSPEED

Like other reviewers we have been charged £240 for not taking up their payment service despite being a Vend customer for 9 years. I'll repeat CHARGED FOR NOT USING A SERVICE. The mind boggles.

Run a mile, absolute SCAM ARTISTS, the worst customer care I've ever experienced.

Was good as Vend, utterly appalling since Lightspeed took over

I have been using Vend for many years and integrate it with Shopify for our online store. We pay a subscription and have not had any issues that have not been solvable. We are now contacted by Vend/Lightspeed that if we do not use their payment solution for in-store purchases they will charge us a fee based on how many transactions we put through on EFTPOS by our bank EFTPOS provider. So effectively it is "Use our EFTPOS machine or we will charge you more". This is certainly not ethical and i am unsure how they are allowed to get away with it. We already pay a monthly subscription and should not be penalised for sticking with the bank EFTPOS machine we have used for 22 years. If we weren't so entrenched with Vend we would switch companies. We are very disappointed to say the least.

RUN FAST AND DONT LOOK BACK!
Since Vend and Lightspeed merged they have become so arrogant. If I knew what I know now I would never go with Vend/Lightspeed.
For the same features you can get systems out their at half price or less. I ended up having to pay for advanced plan to use e-commerce and inventory report which us $279aud per month.
They just launched new payment method and are forcing me into using it or I will be charged extra transaction fee for staying with my existing provider. They are straight out rude and arrogant. If I wanted all in one system (which you will be even more trapped) I would have gone with Square from the beginning.

I couldn't fix the bug of it putting a page on my website home page called online store, it looked stupid when it already had a shop page. I couldn't get custmer service and they lied about helping me set up social media stores. I lost sales because it caused a mandatory sale amount of $50. to process orders and it also made the second line on the shipping/billing address field to be manatory. They gave me no way of finding any instructions to send the unit back, now they refuse to cancel the account that was closed 2 months ago after consuming weeks of effort, my only contact with Vend was a chat bot. They rewrote new terms and services as of March this year, I orderd the unit with no contrct last year. The salesman lied when I point blank asked him if it would need a 3rd party merchant account. The following month I was told to set up that account. They also told me it was all I needed for my Wix account, but then they told me to also needed to puchase an ecwid account with no refund of my other account. Lies, lies and more lies and they handle cash processing, scary!

We switched to lightspeed Vend from Shopkeep after being there for 10 years. A dealbreaker for us switching was that we be able to continue with our own payment processing for visa and debit, as members of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, they guarantee the lowest rates, it is their mandate. We were told ok, to stay with our processor, moved ahead switched over to lightspeed while keeping out existing debit / credit set up. Now a year in and fully invested and onboard (it took almost a year to get everything sorted and aligned with ecommerce )
This week we received an email telling us we have no choice but to switch to the vend integrated visa / debit payment processor and failure to do so will incur a 400$ MONTHY Charges.
This is basically extortion and the most unethical thing I have ever experienced as an owner. They offer to buy out existing contracts to facilitate the move so that tells you just exactly how much money they expect to make off their clients once this is in place...gross and unethical and basically mean...less than a months notice to switch over before they start charging us 400$ a month well

Don’t use this company . No response. They keep charging you for nothing