ParentPay Reviews 4,442

I work in a school and have to try and work with parent pay. There support is completely unresponsive / almost not existent, I'm constantly left in the middle between angry parents and support. No phone support offered so you just watch your tickets sit there for days getting more angry. Their answer to most direct parent queries is "contact the school" which isn't helpful. Doesn't matter how serious the issue or if early intervention would help all tickets just sit there for days.

There are no words to describe how bad this website is a event wort the schools that are using it... a 10 years old child would for sure make a better website!

Avoid at all costs! Without any consent, they have set up a direct debit from my account. They have also stolen the money from my account. I had to find out from my bank that a direct debit has been set up! As I cancelled the direct debit, ParentPay has attempted to take a payment which has now affected my credit score. I cannot even get in touch with ParentPay! All I am able to do is speak to the AI!!

The IT dept of this company want sacking. Constant logging in issues. the site breaks, you have to get a password reset, both methods, password reset and mobile reset fail. your kids need dinner money. what the hell are you supposed to do. utterly useless.

Following on from my review below, parent pay replied and said they had sent me an email, well i can tell you i haven't received anything and i still haven't received a refund. What a joke, i refuse to use this company and have filed a fraud claim with my bank. The bank have confirmed that the payment went through, the school havent received it so parent pay have stolen my money. Absolutely rubbish and no way of contacting anyone

Previous review:
I transfered £10 on to my daughters account using my card, it sent on her account and 2 days later I received an email to said the transaction had failed. I did the online chat to parent pay who said speak to my bank, they confirmed it had gone out and sent the transaction info. So i went to the school and parent pay, the school confirmed they had not recieved the money, so i went back to parent pay. 2 weeks later still no response from them, so my money is no where, well it with parent pay that much I know. You can't speak to anyone, ive emailed numerous times but have had no response. Awful service but I have no option but to use it as its the service the school uses. I will be contacting my bank about a fraudulent claim

Now im being told I was sent and email. I did not receive an email from Alex at 9.07 today. Ive tried to email and all I get is an AI response.

Im trying to contact ParentPay about the issue but it no way I can contact someone. Poor support

terrible - finding statements adhoc to say the least, not an easy site when three children involved! bookings and payment statements a farce to find..

Piece of sh*t company has been taking so much money off of my daughters account!!!! Double charging, charging for things that dont exist!! I want an immediate refund and theres no one to contact!!!!!!

What a horrible and dishonest platform it is. UNAUTHORIZED transaction to debit my bank account and the credit balance in the parentpay platform!

I made my first £50 payment instruction on 3 Sep, and my son couldn't buy the lunch on 4 Sep. Thus i made another £50 payment instruction on 4 Sep and my son still unable to buy lunch at school until 16 Sep! The reason was that even i placed the payment instruction, this outdated platform would only debit the money from my bank on 11 & 12 Sep! However, there opening balance was not £100 on 16 Sep, it was £41.4 SF instead. Then suddenly, there was another £50 direct debited from my bank account without any of my authorization! Then I looked into the payment history from the parentpay platform, and shocked that there was another UNAUTHORIZED TRANSACTION of £108.6 debited on 15 Sep with the narrative that "Adjustment made to match Till balance and thus the reason why my opening credit balance was just £41.4 on 16 Sep!

During this period, I and my son really frustrated as my son couldn't buy any lunch at school until 16 Sep even though I have paid £100 on 11 Sep and another UNAUTHORIZED payment of £50 on 16 Sep! Meanwhile, there is no any support or customer service in the platform. The robotic chats and feedback function are closed! Really don't understand why schools still continuously using this backward and dishonest platform in handling students daily affairs!
I STRONGLY REQUEST this platform to refund me the money!!! I paid £150 in total and debit my credit balance from the platform of £108.6 UNAUTHORIZED! Really horrible, just like a theft. I really DO NOT want to use this platform anymore!

Awful company. Try get refund from them and is backwards and forwards. Same email sending every each time. Really hope none of parents can be in same situation like I am… try to avoid

Awful and I'm shocked this is even being used by schools. Terrible support and conflicts with their own online FAQs. They don't even have an app.

Shocking system, taken all the money out with a so called till adjustment. doesn't even provide a receipt and no phone contact to address problems. I'll be writing to the school governors and my MP as it looks like a lot of other people are having problems with this system, about time these dishonest operators lost the contract.

first time use, put on £25. child cant access and recommended fixes by parent pay are just time wasting bullshit. another incompetent, badly run clown show. thanks for nothing.

My daughter has left her primary school, but still could not get our fund back from the parentpay, or from her school. No contact details for this company, it just eats your money. Thanks for your response from parentpay, but if you do not provide me with your contact details, how could I send you my Email?

Please could you remind all school using parentpay to refund the balance to parents automatically when pupils left the school. I hate to chase school repeatedly for refund as they always said they are busy, seems they could not find time to arrange my refund.

Overcharing for school lunch and randomly add extra cost over the what was set by the local council and drag their feet in fixing their system!

I work in IT support for a secondary school, and we support a number of primary schools. Some of these schools use ParentPay and I have never known a company with such poor support as these.

Quite often when bringing an issue to their attention, it takes well over 3 days to receive a reply. The most recent of which was 14 days. When schools rely on services such as this to manage their school dinners, to have an outage of 2 weeks is beyond unacceptable.

I am sure that if the schools bill was 2 weeks overdue, the ramifications would be severe, yet there never seems to be any apology or anything of the sort.

For any schools that are looking to switch to ParentPay ... don't. For any schools that use ParentPay's services ... please think about moving away.

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 their terms and conditions about being able to withdraw funds so they basically steal your money with no redress. Thankfully I paid via credit card so am now pursuing a refund via them.
Disgusting company and should be brought to book.

Funds disappeared, no chance of getting it back. Paper trail erased and credit vanished.

My child finished his secondary school. The catering provider refunded me the outstanding balance that was left on my son’s account. On the parent pay account I was not able to withdraw them as the money disappeared. I contacted the team support but haven’t heard back and it’s been almost a week now. Really disappointed and frustrated with the lack of response and support. They haven’t returned the outstanding balance money as yet.

The worst, most useless payment system I've ever been forced to deal with — absolutely infuriating!

ParentPay is a complete joke. My card has been blocked for months, and I’ve contacted their so-called “support” team over and over, only to be met with copy-paste nonsense and total incompetence. Nothing gets fixed. No actual help. Just the same robotic garbage — “clear your cache,” “use a different card,” — I’ve tried EVERYTHING, and still can’t pay a damn thing for my daughter’s school.

This isn’t just frustrating — it’s infuriating. Schools rely on this platform for essential payments, and it doesn't even function properly. I’m sick of being ignored and dismissed while my daughter misses out on school activities because ParentPay can’t be bothered to fix their broken system.

If you're a parent — avoid this platform like the plague. And if you're a school — you're failing your families by using this disgraceful service. It’s unreliable, unhelpful, and downright insulting. Shame on ParentPay.