ParentPay Reviews 

4,455
TrustScore 1 out of 5

1.2

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Review summary

Created with AI, based on recent reviews

Considering 77 reviews, most reviewers were let down by their experience overall. Customers frequently reported significant problems with the payment system, including funds not appearing and issues with transactions. Many expressed deep frustration with the non-existent and unhelpful customer service, often relying on ineffective automated responses. The website itself was criticized for being unreliable, frequently down, and difficult to use, hindering access and payments. However, some people also noted security concerns, including issues with transaction integrity and account access. Reviewers often highlighted being forced to use the system due to school requirements, despite its numerous flaws and lack of alternative payment options.

What people talk about most

Payment

Customers had negative experiences with payment, with many reporting that the system frequently fails its... See more

Customer communications

Users describe negative interactions with contact, reporting significant difficulties reaching support. Many... See more

Customer service

Clients share negative opinions on customer service, with many reviewers describing it as appalling,... See more

Website

Reviewers express significant dissatisfaction with the website, frequently encountering issues such as broken... See more

Service

Reviewers highlight significant dissatisfaction with the service, describing it as appalling and useless,... See more

Reviews shaping this summary

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

After complaining, they have contacted me and the issue is resolved. It should not have needed a complaint to fix it, so I am changing the level to 3 stars. If I could only give zero stars. My chi... See more

Company replied

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

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... See more

Company replied

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Zero stars if possible. This company won’t return funds deposited in your child’s account when they leave school. No response from their so called customer help team. There are no restrictions in t... See more

Company replied

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

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 comp... See more

Company replied


Company details


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1.2

Bad

TrustScore 1 out of 5

4K reviews

5-star
4-star
3-star
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1-star

No recent history of asking for reviews

This company hasn't invited customers recently, so reviews may not be representative

Replied to 56% of negative reviews

Typically replies within 48 hours

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1.2

All reviews

(4,455)

76 reviews in the last 12 months

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Rated 3 out of 5 stars

Resolved after complaint.

After complaining, they have contacted me and the issue is resolved. It should not have needed a complaint to fix it, so I am changing the level to 3 stars.

If I could only give zero stars. My child moved schools and they refuse to take down the old school site even though all bills are paid and actually the old school does not use it anymore! Ignored emails to remove the old school saying the old school hadn't requested it, which they had.
I am very concerned about their information security which I have zero confidence in.

1 July 2026
Unprompted review
ParentPay logo

Reply from ParentPay

Thank you for your response.

Your case has been submitted for the service desk to review as a priority, and you will receive a response shortly.

Kind Regards
ParentPay Group

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Simply awful

Simply awful. Links are broken, feedback form is not working. Customer support is hopeless.
Unfortunately this is chosen pay system by my school. Cannot wait to stop using it.

7 July 2026
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

No stars

No stars

My child trip got cancelled & they told me that I’d have the 175 back in my account in 5 days still waiting absolutely ridiculous school use this site and can’t believe from the reviews I’m not the only one !!!

No contact number stupid robots replying to emails and no humans bollocks!!!

10 June 2026
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

It doesn't even deserve one star

It doesn't even deserve one star. Absolutely horrendous. Every monday i am stressed out trying to access this pathetic site. Yes there may well be a lot of traffic but they have pretty much every school on this site. If they are not able to sort their servers out the schools shouldn't even be using it. Yes I could try other days, but monday is the start of the week, it should be expected that the volume of traffic will be high and servers capable of dealing with that should be put in place. If I wasn't forced to use this site, I never would.

22 June 2026
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

My account has been hacked

My account has been hacked. I have tried to contact parentpay but its been several days and they have not replied. No phone number available. They system has all my bank details - yet parentpay have no means by which to help.

11 June 2026
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Beyond Awful

This website completely fails in its primary purpose, to allow parents to pay for school meals and trips. For the second week running, the payments system is not working. Also, they have introduced more and more complexity to the system, you now need umpteen clicks to get to where you need to be, even when it is working. I guess the money still keeps rolling in for the owners though, so why would they care?

8 June 2026
Unprompted review
ParentPay logo

Reply from ParentPay

Thank you for your reply and for providing your contact details. We appreciate you getting in touch. Our Service Desk has received your information and will be contacting you shortly to assist further.

Kind Regards,
ParentPay Group

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Child frequently going without lunch as…

Child frequently going without lunch as low balance notifications don't come through or parent pay not working when I need to top up. Also there should be an overdraft system so children are not refused food at the check out when they have insufficient funds temporarily

8 June 2026
Unprompted review
ParentPay logo

Reply from ParentPay

Thank you for your reply and for providing your contact details. We appreciate you getting in touch. Our Service Desk has received your information and will be contacting you shortly to assist further.

Kind Regards,
ParentPay Group

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

Awful customer service

Awful customer service. Schools, please find a better system to use, unless you want parents to constantly email you because they are having problems logging in. The system for parents is often down. When trying to log into the parents system, I get an error message that reads: "Sorry, it looks like something went wrong
Try going back and retrying your last action. You can contact us if the problem persists and we will do our best to help."
I keep trying to load the page for about an hour. I try on my phone and on my desktop on two different browsers. Same problem simply trying to log in.
When I go to the customer support page, there is a directory of common problems, but none of them address this clearly.
There is no clearly visible email address or method of contacting support directly.
I have used this app for 7 years and it seems to be getting worse. Not able to deal with Browser or app complexities. Blaming of users rather than the reliability of the app.

8 June 2026
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

One of the most dispicable…

One of the most dispicable organisations I have ever had the displeasure of working with. They stop short physically stealing money from the children, but that is essentially what they do for a living. The government needs to do more to regulate these kinds of 3rd party leeches, sucking the tax-payer-funded lifeblood out of schools, all for profit. Sickening.

1 June 2026
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

AVOID! DO NOT USE! NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE! STOP SCHOOLS USING THEM!

WHY ARE SCHOOLS USING THIS USELESS COMPANY????!

If your school uses or starts using this company COMPLAIN immediately. How they are still operating is beyond me! And why schools use them is crazy!

They have such a useless online system that it crashes all the time leaving you unable to supply any money for your child's lunch. This is the third time this school year I've not been able to load cash for my child so he can buy food and drink. This means he will be coming home today starving having NOTHING to eat all day. He has his breakfast at break time, so he won't have been able to buy anything then, and nothing for lunch either as he has NO MONEY ON YOUR SYSTEM!

Customer service is APPALLING, Basically there is NO customer service. No telephone number. Just an email address which you are lucky if they even bother replying to, but if they do they are rude and unhelpful and reply 2-3 days later. ZERO help what so EVER. AND never an apology and never fixing the problem.

They simply do not care that their system is NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE and happy to let kids go hungry all day. Then you try ringing the school to explain and they say as it's an external company, that all the parents are ringing the school, but there is nothing they can do, that they can't help! Disgusting!

DO NOT USE PARENT PAY AND TELL YOUR SCHOOL HOW USELESS THEY ARE IF YOU SEE PLANS TO USE THEM. THEY SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO OPERATE.

1 June 2026
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

absolutely worthless,so often not…

absolutely worthless,so often not working at all, can't login, can't pay for my daughter things in the school, can't pay for lunch, she's hungry at school,but website say only "try another time " again,again and again,support not working,this website been force in to school plan and should be withdrawn imediately its just irritating

1 June 2026
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

New company has ruined it

If I could give a zero star rating then I would, since a new company has taken over it's stopped working. The ai chat bot is hopeless in trying to get answers. It's a shame it's been taken over as it worked well

1 June 2026
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Poor customer service

Poor customer service, cannot talk to anyone, it's all ai, and not been able to use the service for the last 5 days, cannot pay for my sons school trip as it won't let me pay for anything, information only is on the screen. Tried to tell ai the problem but it doesn't understand, so frustrating

26 May 2026
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Non existing customer service.

Auto-top up stopped working with no warning and has not worked for over 2 months now. Every attempt I made to contact support about this was ignored. I raised a ticket twice (one 3 weeks ago and one this week), and I still havent heard back. They really don't care. The Help & Support bot is totally useless, and - yes - everyone has a bot these days, but most bots let you talk to a human if you ask for it. This one completely ignores that request.

14 May 2026
Unprompted review
ParentPay logo

Reply from ParentPay

Hi Ioannis

I have forwarded your feedback to our service desk who will send you an email shortly.

Kind Regards,
ParentPay Customer Services

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

AVOID!!!

AVOID!!!! Terrible company - complete scammers from our experience. They have forced our small primary school onto a 3 year package for our ESS SIMS contract without our consent. Email responses are generic sales information avoiding direct questions. They are one of the worst companies I have ever dealt with. I am working hard to try and get us out of this package that we can't afford and did not agree to and am now looking at taking legal action against them.
Avoid this company like the plague. I am so glad that we don't use them for our parent payment system.

20 April 2026
Unprompted review
ParentPay logo

Reply from ParentPay

Thank you for sharing your feedback. We’re really sorry to read how upsetting and frustrating this has been for your school.

We understand that school budgets are under significant pressure, and we would never want you to feel trapped in an agreement or that your questions are not being answered properly. That is not the experience we want any school to have.

We would like to look into this urgently and make sure your concerns are reviewed by the right person.

We have already reached out to request your contact details. Once we receive them, we will arrange for a senior member of our team to contact you to review this with you directly.

Thank you again for raising this with us.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

It gets even worse.

You might expect that Parentpay couldn't get any worse, but it has. It is now double and triple counting lunch items - i.e. the student buys one item and it registers two or three items. Parentpay are apparently aware but can't fix it. Don't hold your breath. How on earth do they stay in business?

6 May 2026
Unprompted review
ParentPay logo

Reply from ParentPay

Hi Tony,

We are aware of an issue currently affecting the school, and our teams are working closely with the third-party provider as a matter of priority.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Kind Regards,
ParentPay Customer Service team

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