MSE News: School dinners chaos after parents caught out by revamp of ParentPay system

balletshoes

MSE_Andrea wrote: »

Is anyone else having Parentpay problems?

Do you find it easier to use now or was it better before?

nope, no problems, took all of 10 seconds to work out (following a big message telling me to do so) that I must now top up first on the site, then pay for items. No chaos here.

vikingaero

It's a common problem with these school pay websites - created by RichardHeads to make money, but little is invested in user friendliness or debugging software. They have no need to pander to parents - once a school signs up there's no competition. Perhaps it should be mandatory for schools to offer 2 payment providers - that way if one fails or performs badly then parents can migrate to the better system.

Why do I criticise these sites? As a parent I use them and contact methods are often only online contact forms. It's hard to find a contact telephone number if it is shown or buried in privacy policies or terms and conditions. If we were using a commercial website for purchases and a geographic telephone number wasn't shown then a lot of us wouldn't buy from them. But because it's a monopoly we have to.

gayleygoo

150 complaints out of two million users isn't a great deal - it's just 0.0075% that are complaining about problems. It seems that most people figure it out just fine!