It used to work. They used to have customer service. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
***SMALL BUSINESSES BUYER BEWARE***
For context, I’m a first time small business owner. I have 7 employees, I’ve now owned my business for 18 months. I’ve paid myself $0 dollars putting my employees and vendor relationships first.
In April 2024, I bought my first business. At the time, the business used “FiveStars” as a customer loyalty system. I had no immediate plans to change the system as I did not want to disrupt the customer experience in the ownership transition. I was under a month to month contract.h contracts
Somewhere in the summer of 2024, the parent company of SumUp started forcing all month to month contracts into annual contracts. As a new business owner, locking myself into annual contracts for a software that doesn’t require upfront services (ie. Design, hardware costs, etc) doesn’t make much sense to me.
I began looking at other platforms and found that FiveStars was as outdated as any technology solution on the market. They have made little to no UX/UI updates and have no intention to improve the platform. Long story short, I did not have enough time to pull the trigger on a new platform with such short notice FiveStars provided me.
Fast forward one year, my annual contract apparently “auto-renewed.” I called a few weeks after the auto-renewal to cancel (why did I wait? Well, a school shooting occurred across the street from my store and it dramatically impacted my business. 2 kids died, priorities changed.)
When I reached out to cancel and explain my intent to change platforms and explain the devastation of our neighborhood, he was flexible and offered to bill us $20 a month for two months while we transition. Afterward, we could fully cancel. I agreed that the transition would be helpful and I was grateful.
NOW IT GETS UGLY!
My previous billing statement of $300 billed to my account two months after our discussion. I immediately called my rep (John) to remind him of our agreement to cancel. He and his entire team said “I am under contract for 10 more months” at $300 per month. I reminded them of our conversation two months prior about the impact to our business, etc. They reverted on what they said and are FORCING me to pay another $300 a month for 10 more months.
I’ve asked to talk to a manager or director on several occasions and every rep says “I cannot do that.” “I am not allowed to.” The rep, John, even recommended that submitting a chargeback was going to be a more successful and efficient route to get my money back. How sad.
RUN AWAY. RUN FAR, FAR AWAY. FiveStars, whose model is to support small businesses, clearly knows nothing about running a small business themselves. They've provided zero incentive whatsoever for me to reconsider that platform in the future.
I’ve wasted enough time speaking with them and writing this message, but my hope is that I save the next small business owner hours of time and stress to find one of the many alternatives to FiveStars. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
