User Reviews Overview
About Revel Systems
Revel is a cloud-based business platform that integrates operations and customer channels with point-of-sale (POS) functionality in a single dashboard. It is suitable for stores and restaurants of all sizes and provides users...
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- Industry: Restaurants
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Just what I needed (and didn't even know that I needed!)
We have now been live with our new Revel POS for a week. Naturally, there were a few issues during the switch over, but most of those were a) problems with my setup and b) easily corrected with help from the on-boarding team, tech support folks and very comprehensive online documentation. As of this writing, I believe we are finally “there.”
I am really liking Revel’s product. To be honest, I had no idea how much I was missing out on these past 4 years. I had just assumed that a mature and viable POS product did not exist in the iPad/Cloud arena. I assumed, incorrectly it would seem, that to get such a product I would have to one day shell out thousands or tens of thouands of dollars for one of the “big guys” with expensive hardware. I’m glad to have been proven incorrect in that assumption.
In my mind, one of the absolute best features of Revel is that it is so highly configurable. I have been able to create a POS that meets my business needs as well as the needs of my employees and guests. So far I have not had to “settle” for a configuration that works for “most” people. Instead I have found that I can tell Revel how I want it to work for me and it just works that way. I've never understood why most cloud-based POS companies think that they know more about running our businesses than those of us who are in the trenches. I have been delighted to realize that Revel is willing to put in the effort to create a POS that works they way we work. There is no one-size-fits-all, especially in restaurants. Revel's designers and engineers seem to understand that fact.
Little things like the following mean the world to me:
1) I can specify negative modifiers — ones that deduct from the price. Now my guests can truly have it their way and only pay for what they want. While I've always run my cafe that way, only Revel has allowed me to do that without a lot of unnecessary steps.
2) I can set up default modifiers, and more importantly when a guest doesn’t want that default it is easy to specify at the POS and it is obvious for the kitchen.
3) The flexibility of defining “one size fits all” modifier groups, and tailoring those to the needs of each product that uses them, has made my life so much easier. The modifier features are amazing, and I've just begun to scratch the surface of what is available.
4) And don’t even get me started on recipes. How I ever lived without those in my POS is a mystery. I guess I lived without them because I never knew I needed them!
In the past two days, my employees and I have been able to identify menu items whose gross margins are dragging us down. Since all of our products come with so many options, this has always been a hard, time-consuming thing to do, involving lots of spreadsheets and number crunching. Now that I have nearly all of my recipes defined, I’m able to run one Product Mix report whenever I want and identify problems before they become catastrophes. That alone makes the “extra” expense of the monthly Revel hosting fee worth it.
Even in a small shop, such as mine, inventory control is a nightmare. It has become very obvious to me that after a month or two this task will get much easier. Once I have finished tweaking my product and recipe definitions, I’m looking forward to “knowing” my inventory status with just the touch of a button. I know it won’t be completely accurate — no theoretical inventory system can possibly account for human error. But, I already can tell that it will be much more accurate than I’ve ever had before, and it will be more accurate without the drudgery of weekly physical inventories.
I would be remiss if I did not give a shout-out to your on-boarding and tech support people. They all proved to be very helpful, and very willing to let me go at my pace in this process. I am a tech geek from the days of Univac and IBM mainframes, punch cards and programming languages that are long dead and buried. Though I am now a chef I have never lost my love of all things tech. It was a pleasure to work with people who let me control the process as I was learning Revel. Their on-boarding team is willing to do as much, or as little, as their new clients need to get them up and running quickly.
If I had to sum up my early experiences with Revel and the switch over, that sentence would be ---- I now feel like I am more in control of my business, that I understand my business better.
As we enter our fifth year, a year that looks to be like it will be on schedule to be our first true profit year, that is huge. I'm looking forward to learning how Revel can help make that first profit year even more profitable.
Sure, there is always room for improvement. Revel, like most mPOS companies, needs to get their integrated EMV/contactless functionality up and running, not just for one or two payment processing companies, but for all of them. Having said that, I realize how expensive and how difficult that task is. But, if they get it done quickly and correctly, they will be a hard company to beat.
A few other reviewers mentioned one suggestion I will echo -- be prepared to spend some time learning what you have with Revel, and what it can do for you. Myself, I spent hours looking at every setting, reading the help bubbles for every setting, and making notes about what I did and did not want to implement. I asked a lot of questions. I watched a lot of videos. When I wasn't sure, I created tests, ran them and looked at the results.
Most importantly, I spent two days keying the same orders into both my current POS and Revel, looking for discrepancies and errors in my setup. Sure, that all took a lot of time. But taking a lot of time up front means spending less time fighting fires after going live.
What I'm trying to say is don't think you are going to get your hardware and go live in a week. I budgeted a month for training, setup and troubleshooting before I ever thought about going live. I think a month is the MINIMUM time needed in order to do it right, and I have set up a lot of POS systems in my career. Remember -- as restaurants, our POS is the hub of our data and data analysis. We wouldn't short-change our recipe development, or training our cooks and other staff. To succeed, we need great data that tells us everything we need to know about our business. Revel can be that vital hub, but only if we take the necessary time and effort in the beginning.
And, with that, I'll step down from my soapbox.
Pros
Flexibility -- ability to configure to work the way MY BUSINESS works
Customer support and training
Cons
Needs to get their integrated EMV/contactless payment integration up and running. Currently that only works for one or two payment processors.
Response from Revel Systems
Hello Chip,
Thank you so much for your detailed input. There's so much useful advice here! We agree that with a robust platform it definitely takes some time to customize, but once you do, you will reap the benefits of having intelligence about your business easily available. We hope to continue to continue to provide stellar service so that you can run your profitable cafe. Your shout-outs to Support and Onboarding will be passed on! Thank you so much for your support and belief in our product and what we are working so hard to accomplish.
Cheers and thank you again.
-Sarah, Community Manager, Revel Systems
- Industry: Restaurants
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used for 2+ years
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Review Source
Not for the technology newbie....
The only reporting feature I would love to see is comparative reports so I don't have to piece them together. I want to know things like "sales last March versus sales this March", and "labor last month versus this month". That's how we track trends and right now we have to export as excel and wrote our own formulas to analyze this data. Overall, a good system for our small business.
Pros
Great reporting on the back end. Responsive to feedback. Constantly evolving and listening to customers. VERY customizable.
The systems are reliable (as long as your network is reliable) and I haven't had any Revel related downtime. We are a 7 day a week operation with two locations and the only problems we have had have been related to our own network reliability and one faulty iPad. Once we upgraded those, we were fine.
Cons
SUPER labor intensive to set up yourself. If you are at all uncomfortable with technology and terminology, hire someone to do this for you. If you are comfortable plucking around in setting up the backend yourself, go for it. I had TERRIBLE frustrations with the support team at launch. It was clearly an overseas call center and there was a language barrier where the agents were likely trained to simply read back scripted responses and not really think critically through my issues. I feel like maybe they added some US based support because sometimes when I call now, language and understanding is not an issue and I can get things solved quickly.
It can sometimes feel like this system is trying to be all things to all people, which can be both admirable and frustrating at the same time. There are SO many set up choices I don't need that I feel like a consultative sales approach (and more personal support at set up) would be more helpful but that would definitely cause costs to rise. It's a conundrum.
So just know that you'll save money if you feel confident setting this up yourself. If you aren't comfortable wit technology, be ready to spend a little on hiring a person to set you up.
- Industry: Retail
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Full of Glitches
We've been with Revel for about 8 months now. I am on the phone with customer support weekly, nearly daily. Our initial integration with Quickbooks was not well supported by their staff and eventually I had to just teach myself how to get the system set up and integrated. We have constantly had issues that when I contact customer service they tell me they don't know why it happened and it must be a glitch in the software. My credit card machine broke after 7 months and Revel could not figure out how to fix it so I called the manufacturer and they told me it was a software issue. Revel's solution was to trade in for a new one, rather than try to figure out what the software issue was. The first customer service agent I spoke to did not even have the manual for the pin pad that I was using.
Multiple times Revel has stopped speaking to Quickbooks without warning and our data has not been pushed through as it should. I've been told that the exchange feature that is built in to the front end of the system does not actually work and so we should stop using it and do a work around so that our entries into Quickbooks will be correct. My completed invoices have gotten stuck between the Ipad and the back office and the payments have therefore not been received into Quickbooks until I discovered the problem. Revel has multiple times overtaken Quickbooks and changed the vendor information in Quickbooks. After multiple phone calls to customer support for a single issue I've eventually been told that my system is out of date and that's what's causing the problem, but it was never brought up in initial phone calls. In the same vein, there is no indication from Revel that I should update the system. In fact for the last update, the app told me that it was the most up to date, but finally on the back end of Revel there was a warning that I needed to update or my system would be obsolete. In fact I was running the most up to date version of the app, but what needed to be done was to download an entirely new app-that was not made clear in Revel's warning, I just happened to figure it out myself. Furthermore, had I not happened to log into Revel's back end on that particular day, I would not have known that I was required to update.
One day the back office stopped sending our daily emailed reports. When I spoke to customer support they told me that it was because the email addresses where the report was sent were separated by commas and not semi-colons. When I mentioned that the commas had been working for 7 months they told me that it was due to an update on their back end that now required semi-colons. When asked how I was supposed to know that and change it I was told that it had been a "known issue" for over a month and that some businesses had a problem and some didn't so they didn't let customers know about the issue.
With all the issues I've had, I've never been able to speak to a supervisor or had any kind of conciliatory gesture like a reduced price made for me and in fact had to pay shipping to and from returning my credit card machine. When I speak to customer service about issues related to Quickbooks integration, they are not trained on Quickbooks so generally cannot help me.
Overall the system is extremely glitchy and inconsistent. It cannot be counted on to work the same way from day to day.
Pros
-When it works it is more robust and better at speaking to Quickbooks than any other POS systems that we've used.
Cons
There are many, many issues that I can't explain because it works fine one day and not at all the next, with no reason.
-Past POS companies have emailed me monthly updates about changes that are coming and information about updating the app or problems that have been discovered. Revel does no such thing.
Response from Revel Systems
Hi Emily,
I'm sorry to hear that you've experienced frustration with the QuickBooks integration. I've looked into your support ticket history and it looks like support has resolved your most recent ticket. Additionally, in reviewing your QuickBooks support history with a QB Support Specialist, it appears that our sync has paused most frequently following deletion or removal of QuickBooks records, which the system references. This would be true with any accounting and point-of-sale integration and we recommend that customers do not delete Revel created accounts or records. In an effort to resolve this, our next release will include an enhancement where Revel and QuickBooks notify each other of deleted records to prevent syncing issues.
We send emails alerting customers about coming updates and features and it may be that you've accidentally unsubscribed.
I've asked our Client Relations team to reach out to you to resolve any outstanding issues and provide you with additional customer service. Thank you for your feedback.
Regards,
Sarah, Community Manager, Revel Systems
Top Revel Systems Alternatives
- Industry: Hospitality
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Revel POS--a powerful tool for hospitality and retail
Revel Systems POS is a very powerful tool that is well-supported, constantly undergoing updates and improvements (and that our salesman and installer have been very easy to work with!) I have generally found tech support to be responsive and they have usually always helped me resolve any issues.
Pros
The retail, restaurant and quick service platforms that we use in our establishments are designed with those unique industries in mind, and the system is powerful enough to handle close to 10K inventory items in retail; dozens of employees in retail and restaurant establishments; and even a quick service environment where hard-wired Internet service is not feasible. We have had a great experience with our salesman, installer and tech support throughout our relationship with Revel.
Cons
The off-the-shelf Revel POS system is not a custom system made to a customer's exact specifications, although Revel does offer that service for additional cost. Customers should know what their needs are before implementing the system. The system is based on a columnar, spreadsheet, model, and for many installations that may result in the user interface having several layers of menu screens that need to be negotiated in order to retrieve a menu item. The system is pretty flexible, however, and offers the means to work with a huge number of inventory items in a wide variety of platforms (hospitality, retail, mobile.)
- Industry: Apparel & Fashion
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Excellent System that Works Great
We have had others system and this just works great for us. It has a pretty good inventory system and a host of reports. The key is its makes the sales process easy. I have no problem giving Revel a strong recommendation.
Pros
Our company is the merchandise concessionaire for Athletic Events at Army West Point and we are big fans of the Revel System. At our latest game, we had 11 stands and were able to push through almost 2000 transactions in a little over four hours. The system has worked flawless for us and our gross sales is up over 20% this season because of the ease of sales. We added a scanner and the fans love it. Combined with a strong credit card provider we have our sales available for us usually in 48 hours. The system works for us in many locations on batteries and its Verizon wi-fi is very good. If we have wi-fi trouble on site with a large crowd...it holds transaction and puts it through when the wi-fi is up. Our staff...not big techies...has had NO problems after expressing a feeling that the system would make it hard for customers to be serviced. We are big fans because it is helping our business. We now do almost four to one credit cards over cash purchases.
Cons
You will find Revel is a little more expensive than other systems. They also make a decent profit on the hardware. But it is clearly you get what you pay for....when you have great service and a strong working system....you have to pay. This is a professional system.
- Industry: Tobacco
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
The worst company to deal with and the worst customer service
Very very bad
Pros
Nothing , it’s really not good and the worst customer service
Cons
It’s garbage , don’t Ever take this software
- Industry: Hospitality
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Powerful tool but sometimes clunky
Usually works very well, not my favourite because of user experience and aesthetics however.
Pros
it enabled us to move to contactless ordering and payment online during pandemic restrictions.
Cons
I find it looks quite ugly, the design architecture does not feel as intuitive to me as other competing products I've used. Setup was quite gruelling. Restrictions on what card terminals can now be used with the software feels like a step back.
Alternatives Considered
SumUpReasons for Choosing Revel Systems
lockdown restrictions requiring online ordering and payments.- Industry: Retail
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Pretty, but Problematic
Lots of restaurants and retail stores I frequent use Revel. I would try Revel again if given the choice, but I would make sure to get my employees trained in troubleshooting themselves to avoid the potential of a customer service snafu.
Pros
I work for a small college bookstore that recently transitioned from an ancient, outdated POS system. We were all so excited about Revel. It's sleek, easy to use, and much simpler than many of its predecessors.
Cons
The biggest trouble we ran into is that Revel is hopelessly buggy, and I would sometimes be on the phone with customer service for an hour before getting my problem resolved. For a small business with only one cash register, this was often a nightmare.
Response from Revel Systems
Thanks very much for your feedback. We're sorry to hear that our system fell short of your expectations, but hope you give us another chance in the future. We're constantly working to improve the quality of our products and services.
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
We use it in a coffee shop, and it has helped a lot.
Pros
You can program it to accept tips on charge card which increased the barista's tips. IT was a lot better than our previous system.
Cons
The backend stuff is hard to figure out and the customer service isn't the best. Also you need quite a bit of training to be comfortable with using it on a day to day basis.
Response from Revel Systems
Hi Kyle,
Thanks so much for taking the time to leave us a review and for the feedback!
Cheers,
Sarah at Revel
- Industry: Restaurants
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Good POS system
Very good functionality and high quality reporting system. I think this one one of the most advanced POS systems I have used.
Pros
Revel is user friendly and I love that we can use it with iPads.
Cons
There are some glitches and system can freeze from time to time. I have also had difficulties with our other software that integrates with Revel. The two systems often stop communicating with each other.
Response from Revel Systems
Thanks very much for the feedback, Javier! We're constantly trying to improve the quality of our products and services and appreciate you bearing with us through the bumps.
- Industry: Retail
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Only good if your needs are very Basic
Overall Revel is a total letdown and will be replaced by year end with a better system, lots of things we were promised could be done require using their "Open API" which costs more per month than the entire POS system does for 5 stations. We were not told about the API pricing upfront (or that there was even a cost at all, it was pitched like it was included in the regular fee) just that we could use the API to do everything we told them we needed to do, my project manager informed me of the API pricing during our implementation, when I called out the sales rep for never mentioning the additional cost despite repeated conversations about how critical this was she told me "its not my job to tell you the pricing for the API since that's not my department"
It is also very difficult to impossible to find and load an order in the dashboard by customer. You have to load the customers orders report, find the customer in the list, click show orders, note the order number, then go to the order history report and then you can click through to the order, why isn't the order number under customers order a hyperlink to take me to the order?
They made a systems change to batch process updates to the POS instead of in realtime, we have a custom app that we use for check ins when a customer comes into the store and it adds customers to the revel system so we can link them to a sale and track close rate etc. They used to sync in real time from the dashboard to the stations, after a recent update it takes anywhere from 30-60 minutes for the customers to pull down from the revel dashboard. I have verified they show up on the dashboard instantly as they should, there is just a major delay in syncing back to the iPads now that was not there before the update.
Reporting is very weak in certain areas, you can't view profit by anything other than employee which is worthless if you don't have pay rates loaded which we don't since we aren't using that aspect of the system.
When we receive inventory in the store, we upload it into the revel dashboard via their excel template this works about 75% of the time, the rest of the time it just silently fails, you will never receive any notice that it failed, where it failed etc. So now before I do any uploads, I do an export of what we have immediately before so when it fails I can compare to the inventory after the partial upload to figure out where the import stopped so I can import the rest.
I could keep going but bottom line is if your needs are more than barebones or you are not a restaurant you should look elsewhere for a much better solution.
Pros
Overall they have a nice POS interface and it is pretty stable. Their pricing is also pretty good for the base system.
Cons
Functions are hard to find
Very much geared towards restaurants, so if you are in another business be prepared to see restaurant specific stuff all over you can't turn off
Material changes to the way things work with zero notice
Can only see profit margin by employee no P&L type report.
Inventory uploads regularly fail with no notice, and no way to tell what was added without doing a manual compare of before and after and trying again with the additional items.
Response from Revel Systems
Hi Michael,
I am truly sorry about your experience and I have shared your feedback with our sales management team, as well as the customer service team.
I am confident that once we get we get a bit more info from you, we will be able to come to a resolution in terms of API and reporting. Our customer service team will be happy to follow up on any outstanding issues you have.
Regards,
Sarah, Customer Advocacy Manager at Revel
- Industry: Restaurants
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Extremely overpriced fees and disappointing system!
Pros
It looks nice and sleek on the counter. The actual POS is pretty straight forward after training and most employees caught on quickly.
Cons
Where to start?? First, the monthly fees are insane considering the poor quality of the product and customer service. For two locations and three terminals, we paid fees to Revel each month.
We've experienced a lot of equipment issues (tickets not printing to kitchen, card swipe goes down, mobile unit won't connect and allow orders to be taken, etc) oftentimes in the middle of a lunch rush.
We have at least 2 customers every single day tell us that the online ordering isn't working. The system will look like it took their order (and they'll see pending charges on their cards), but they'll either get an error message or nothing at all. We often have people show up to pick up the order they placed online only to realize that it never came through on our system, but Revel still posts the charges as pending and it doesn't drop off the card for 3 days....not a fun thing to tell customers!
We have not had a great experience with customer service, and often end up on the phone for over an hour (again, often during a lunch rush). We've had several instances where no one was ever able to answer our issue.
Our accountants (who exclusively do restaurants) have found errors in reports (including tax reports for the day) multiple times.
Overall, this system just doesn't live up to the quality that should come with such high fees.
I called and emailed to put in our notice of cancellation at the end of our 18-month contract (they require 30 days, I put in my written notice 60 days, since their team hasn't been super responsive), I at first would get no response. When I finally did they told me that I couldn't put in my request until 30 days, which just seemed odd to me.
Response from Revel Systems
Hi Meghan,
I know we have already spoken over the phone about this, but I do apologize for your experience. It sounds like you encountered a known issue with the Online Ordering that has since been fixed. I apologize as I know how frustrating that can be when you are in the midst of service.
We do appreciate your feedback and, again, apologize that we weren't able to work on a resolution for you sooner.
Best regards,
Sarah, Community Manager at Revel
- Industry: Supermarkets
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
One they get your money, you'll get neither a functional system nor customer service
The customer service is abysmal. Once the sale is made, you are chopped liver and the company really doesn't even seem to care if your system ever gets up and running after that point.
Pros
I can see exactly what we sold on a certain day. They look impressive so despite the fact that they have low functionality they look really pretty....but, lets be honest....that's mostly the ipad.
Cons
Notice how it's spelled rEVEL. (it's illiterate evil with an R). Things I though rEVEL would do but it doesn't, problems we have, and why you shouldn't purchase revel for your establishment.
1. When you set up a customer, they are not automatically set up to collect reward points. Your staff have to create a rewards card separately, then link it to the customer. We've had lots of input errors because of this. The customer and reward points numbers are a customers phone number, which means that if they change their phone number you have to change their customer number. Then deactivate their rewards card number. Then create a new rewards card. Then go to the back end and download the entire customer matrix, insert the number of reward points they should have under their new number, then upload all of the data back into the system. Something that you can only do when you are closed for the day. So many things with revel are like this. Something that should be simple is the most cumbersome thing ever.
2. Customers cant fill in their own information on the customer facing display which leads to lots of inputting errors.
3. The only way collected customer emails link into your email program is if you pay a hefty monthly fee (per pos station) for a third party app.
4. If a customer chooses to have their receipt emailed to them, the system does not collect that email and sync it to their customer identification.
5. In Canada here, there are no Province options when filling out customer details so we can't even collect their address properly.
6. Want to send a coupon to your top 50 customers? Good luck There is no report that you can run for that. Tons of data. No way to mine it. Have fun paying a third party to mine your data for you.
7. Want to know who purchased an item on a specific day? Once again, all this data, with no reports to mine it.
8. GLITCHY! Open orders hanging open, customer reward points not being accrued correctly, and weird little things like pop up balloons that slow down transaction time by 5 seconds, customer list not being alphabetical, orders re-opening hours later showing few cents owing on it, lag time between info going up to the cloud and back down to the stations. (a customer wants to exchange something they bought 5 minutes ago? They have to go to the same pos station they bought it at as the sale will not show up on the other stations for hours). Items that we sell by the each suddenly show an inventory of 1.86 units, where did that .14 of a unit go?
9. CUMBERSOME, the procedures for creating gift cards, processing returns, creating a customer, linking that customer to a reward card. All of it is just so damned cumbersome, takes so many taps on the ipad and is not intuitive....even for our millennial cashiers.
10. The sales people flat out lie. I asked really specific functionality questions from our sales person, who flat out lied about the systems capabilities. Then dropped us like a hot potato once he had our money. I spent the next month chasing Revel to make sure that the install happened before we opened. This attitude of sale first, customer service last, follows through. The hubs that they sold us are glitchy and faulty. We complained about them for a full year. Then we got an email offering us their new and improved network hubs. So basically they sold me crap. Knew that they sold me something that didn't work. Then offered a discount on selling the replacement to me.
11. The Customer Management system does very little. Once again, we had to pay a third party to figure out who our top customers were, then go through their profiles one by one to gather their emails to send them all an email to offer them a reward for being a top customer.
12. You can't redeem multiple rewards at once, or process a refund without a customer making a purchase(we sell milk in reusable glass bottles that the customer gets money back when they bring back their bottle, you can't process this if they just come back to return the bottle without making a purchase), or or process two refunds and a reward under the same transaction. So many glitchy things.
13. Someone will reply to this saying there are no open tickets on our account. And this is true. Because the reply to all of these things is that the feature doesn't exist and I should put in a request for a new feature. Which I have done. Repeatedly over the last 3 years. And here we are, still calling revel support asking why if you sell systems in Canada can I not enter a Canadian address in the system.
14. Poorly trained staff. We are a seasonal business and each spring when we open up, we have to have revel support enter some identification numbers on the back end to have their system work with our payment processor monaris (the only one they offer). It always takes several weeks of my calling back and sitting on hold to get this simple thing done. Every time. This is what it's like calling revel every time. I'm sure that there are lots of weird glitchy things with every system out there but revel really appears as though it was built poorly from the outset and has software flaws that can not be changed.
One of my managers spends 10-20 hours per week working on fixing revel errors, calling customer service, figuring out how the system works now that there is another update, writing detailed training manuals for our staff to us the system. It's just so time consumptive and terrible. It makes it all the worse that revel folks just repeat the party line and don't actually look for solutions to the system problems. "Fill in a feature request form" It's like they've all drunk the kool-aid and have become automatons controlled by an evil wizard named Revel.
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Customer since 2012: Easy to use, excellent features, poor customer service. Be careful...
Pros
This system is highly customizable and easy to use. Reports are excellent and Revel does a nice job of continuously updating the backend to be more useful. Keeping track of employee hours is easy and efficient.
Cons
We have been a customer since 2012 and Revel has changed the playing field:
1) Revel now charges more per terminal per month if you choose to not use their credit card processing service. This wasn't the case when we signed up.
2) We purchased 2 scales in 2012 and two more for a second location in 2014. Revel's updated system no longer supports these peripherals. Revel offered me a discount for replacement of these scales for ones that work. Not good enough! This same situation occurred earlier with printers which I had to repurchase.
In addition to changing the playing field, the customer service is not good. Expect the system to go down at least 3 to 4 times a year when Apple upgrades their iOS.
Revel has changed their business model. They are now in the business of credit card processing. I see this as a sign of a struggling business and would be concerned about their longevity.
3) Confusing payment structure.
Response from Revel Systems
Hi John,
Thank you so much for your feedback. I am sorry to hear that there have been issues with your scales and our latest release. I am confident that the issue will be resolved and do apologize for the delay. I have escalated your case to our customer relations team and they will be sure to address any outstanding issues for you.
You are always welcome to schedule a time to share your feedback with me at communi[email protected]. Happy to learn more about your experience.
Regards,
Sarah at Revel
- Industry: Retail
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used for 1-5 months
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Review Source
REVEL POS System: A Huge Mistake w/ Painful Ripple Effects
A Huge Mistake w/ Painful Ripple Effects. I want to convey concise specifics regarding where the decision to purchase the REVEL system went wrong without emotion but this process from start to finish coupled with the loss and major internal labor dollars, cuts deep!
Before signing we did our due diligence, as best we knew how. Our team read the pro and con reviews. We took particular note of one review which said get everything in writing prior to signing. Our attempt to do so was to compile an excel doc that listed specifics of everything we needed the system to do for our custom bakery. We received a “yes” we can on the majority of the listed items. Our team sent multiple emails and cataloged them all, from pre-purchase, sales rep dialogue, on-boarding, initial program management, daily questions to various on-boarding team members, help line conference calls, management team conference calls, to and the summary of where the REVEL system failed us miserably. If you would like this information, we would be more than happy to forward you our packet of information. We hired an intern for 6 weeks who worked in tandem with a permanent team member, solely for the purpose of manage the on-boarding and conversion process; with the intent of expediting our transition from our old POS system to new REVEL system.
Our internal plan was so effective that within 2 weeks of receiving the equipment, we were able to ascertain that the REVEL system would not align with our business model. Our internal conversion team learned the platform so well, that they were able to ascertain operational components of the software the help desk and our assigned project manager was not aware (use of modifiers and order category classifications). Our team hit the ground running the day after the contract was signed.
Pros
IOS IPad functionality. Delivered product to store front quickly. If you have limited customization needs, the entry of products may prove easy.
Cons
On-boarding process. Inability to own product customization challenges. No provision in contract for when the product does not work with your business model as they initially advocated.
Response from Revel Systems
Hi Kendra,
I am sorry to see that we were not able to meet your expectations. If you have specific requests during the sales process that were not rendered by the system we are happy to review them. However, in our director-level review of your inquiries of the system and needs during the sales process, we have delivered the product as stated.
I have taken a look into your ticket history and work with our client relations team and, as mentioned, we are more than happy to build out enhancement requests and expedite as needed. We understand that you may not wish to work with us and we do apologize that your experience was not what you had anticipated despite many attempts to understand your specific needs. We have many clients with similar setups, but, of course, we could always use input for further product development.
Regards,
Sarah, Community Manager at Revel
- Industry: Restaurants
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
2 years of ongoing crap
I wish I'd gotten another POS. Am actively looking for another, despite knowing how destructive this would be to implement.
Pros
Somewhat aesthetically pleasing, so customers comment sometimes. Overall everyone who actually uses it hates it.
Cons
Where do I even start. Personally the jump in per month fees with no notice and no explanation *tops* my list. Also we reported to them extremely basic functionality that's broken. There the slowness, no notice backwards updates, customer support, did I mention it's slow slow slow. The release updates that are inadequately tested. Then they're arrogant as hell about it. Don't even get me started on how painful, slow and counter-intuitive the backend is.
Response from Revel Systems
Hi Bob,
We would be happy to help you out, but unfortunately, cannot locate you based on the info in this review. We are sorry to hear you have had a poor experience.
We have been able to maintain prices significantly below industry alternatives for an extended period of time, but, as with any software subscription, we do periodically have to increase our price to continue to provide the service that you deserve as a loyal customer. We will continue to strive to deliver you the best features available at the lowest possible price.
We are happy to set up a time to hear your feedback directly -- please feel free to get in touch via [email protected].
Regards,
Sarah, Customer Advocacy Manager at Revel
- Industry: Restaurants
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Revel Systems is a JOKE with TERRIBLE tech support
Cons
Revel systems has been nothing but a joke since I have gotten it. Owner's can't reassign delivery orders to a new driver? Drivers are able to cash drop to NO WHERE when the wrong till is used? I can't check another drive in, as an owner, on my log in without it going into MY virtual till?
Once again, Revel Systems is a JOKE to use as a delivery POS system. The support team is absolutely clueless, everyone has to talk to their higher up colleague just to tell me they can't do anything about it. At this point, I have more knowledge then some of these techs that are from Lithuania.
Terrible TERRIBLE customer service, TERRIBLE product, and TERRIBLE value for what you get.
Response from Revel Systems
Hi Steven,
I am sorry that Delivery Management and Virtual Tills are causing some frustration. It sounds like there are settings that could use an audit to ensure that both features are being used correctly.
I have located two articles that would help explain how Virtual Tills work and how each employee should be set up under Employees - Role Permissions, as well as a few articles on Delivery Management. Once the two are set up correctly for your particular business operations, your issues would be resolved.
https://support.revelsystems.com/hc/en-us/articles/209483726-Till-Management-Guide
https://support.revelsystems.com/hc/en-us/articles/205526155-Delivery-Management-Settings
https://revelsystems.com/revel-university/delivery-management-overview/
In terms of our Support team, they work very hard to troubleshoot any issues and we do see that you worked with a Database Engineer, who, yes, is based in Lithuania. Truthfully, it doesn't get much better than working with an engineer to resolve software issues regardless of where they are located.
Revel also offers extremely affordable Account Management services that would allow you to walk through the many Settings Revel offers, help you get Virtual Tills and Delivery Managment set up to best suit your needs.
Hope the articles help in the meantime.
Best Regards,
Sarah at Revel
- Industry: Apparel & Fashion
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used for 2+ years
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Review Source
Unreliable
This is the most unreliable system I have ever used. The support team are not trained equally. Some are helpful and give you a lot of detail to make sure you have everything in place properly. Others simply do not know & dismiss the need to ask or transfer you to someone else. We have two stores, both with this system. We closed both stores to conduct physical inventory. After being on the phone a full day the day before we began the actual inventory, closing for 1 week and paying employees for working inventory, only to find out the original tech support didn’t sell us the app we needed, did not tell us we had to purchase the app for each individual that planned on counting & did not properly instruct us on the setting up of our backend for inventory, not one item we counted was able to sync. 1 full week, 2 locations, closed = 0 income, employees payroll for inventory = 0, this was completely hurtful to a small business and no responsibility was excepted by Revelup. The tech support said exactly “every computer app or system does have its own issues, they all have a glitch” Thank you revelup
Response from Revel Systems
Hi Kim,
Sorry to hear you are experiencing some frustration with troubleshooting the Physical Inventory App. I do see that your help desk tickets are now resolved and we do apologize if you had to call into Support more than once to get it figured out.
I have escalated your case to our customer relations team to ensure we address all of your needs. It looks like you joined Revel by way of our partner, Intuit, and we do apologize if your Intuit rep was not in possession of the info you needed to perform Inventory using Revel. You do have a Revel account executive and the customer relations team will be happy to share their info with you.
Best Regards,
Sarah at Revel
- Industry: Restaurants
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Will be a good POS if it works like they said
My overall experience has not been positive since day one. There have been operational errors from the very beginning to the degree that using Revel has cost us money thru loss of customers who get frustrated with all the online ordering errors and just go elsewhere. Counter service has been slowed down due to having the system freeze up or force an unscheduled update in the middle of service. Customers get frustrated and the employees just make fun of your "provided services"
Pros
Nothing, none of the functions they promised works fine, everything is a headache and all I have experienced is losing customers which result on losing money, I wish never purchased this system since it tends to make us lose customers regularly as their frustration rises.
Cons
The programmers are screwing up everything every time they make an update, don't they test their work before applying it to their customers? Apparently no, I have many other reasons to hate this POS now but don't feel like wasting more time writing about it.
- Industry: Food & Beverages
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Had to get rid of system after 2 years - integration problems with Apple updates. Constant...
It was a learning experience for sure.
Pros
Easy to add specials and new items, great to check sales and labor costs on my phone wherever I was. Light weight - easy to use.
Cons
Terminals went out of sync with each other and caused major problems with ordering and reports, affected customer service. Every time Apple does an update the system does not work (2-3 times a year). Customer service is not much of a help. We had to remove the system after 2 years we had so many problems. They still send me daily reports a year later after we cancelled with them.
Response from Revel Systems
Hi Thomas,
I am really sorry that you had such a poor experience. We have listened to our customers' feedback and we have increased our Beta testing to mitigate potential bugs in conjunction with software releases. Unfortunately, we cannot control Apple's releases, but do our best to time releases with theirs. Your feedback is appreciated.
Regards,
Sarah at Revel
- Industry: Restaurants
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Good - but has great mobile app partner in PepperHQ
Revel itself is a solid system, but it was not until we integrated it with a mobile app platform (one of their partners, who seem to only work with Revel) that we really started to get a return on investment from the Revel system. The two systems work brilliantly together and have transformed not only the customer experience, but also our operational efficiency. Revel itself is only part of the solution, Pepper HQ - check them out at http://pepperhq.com - is the key to unlocking the value and extending the features within Revel and I think Revel have been very clever getting these guys to partner with them - massive advantage over any other EPOS provider.
Pros
as I said the best thing out the solution is that it integrates so well with our mobile app from Pepper http://pepperhq.com
Cons
not the greatest support; people seem to leave the company all the time...
- Industry: Retail
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Review Source
Like the product when it works ...
Pros
The Cloud based implementation and the amount of functionality available. Would prefer more focus on quality over the amount of enhancements.
Cons
Support and Quality is very poor. Getting attention to issues is very difficult that are not solved easily. The quality of releases has improved but we still hold our breath anytime we do an upgrade. There is very little information available on how to use new features or even existing ones and to get any help beyond basic level help takes a long time. Each time we have an issue I expect to spend hours dealing with emails and calls to get it addressed. There have been times when I report a problem and the first response is to do something I indicated in my request I had already tried or done. There is no commitment on the amount of time they will get back to you and I have had issues where my POS was down completely and could not get any help for hours and hours.
Response from Revel Systems
Hello Marck,
I've sent you an email to discuss your feedback in greater detail. I'm sorry to hear you've experienced some frustrating support issues. I'd like to hear your suggestions for improvement. Thank you for taking the time to share your experience here.
- Industry: Retail
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Unmitigated Disaster
Pros
Nothing. There is nothing redeeming about this POS system and I have personally used over 20 POS systems over the last 12 years.
Cons
The code is deeply bugged. We have worked with the most senior professionals at Revel including the officials and others in Tier 3 tech support only to realize by admission to them that the system has several critical failure points that will result in financial loss if you are an advanced user. Be EXTREMELY careful using this POS it is underdeveloped and has costed us hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses over the last two years (contract period we were unable to terminate).
- Industry: Retail
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Great customer service
Pros
Once you get the hang of it, everything is very easy to navigate. Also customer support is great every time.
Cons
It would be nice if you could actually go in and delete an item, class, etc. and reenter it rather than making it inactive
Response from Revel Systems
Hi Lindsay,
Thank you so much for the 5-stars all around! Happy to hear that Revel is working well for your store.
In terms of the inactive product issue, I am happy to share your feedback with our product developers. From a technical standpoint, our product engineers would not want to ever delete any data as it is historical -- doing that would impact your historical data and would have a negative impact on your reporting. That said, I know that our product team is working on a way to make the inactive products less in the way.
Thank you again for sharing your feedback on Software Advice!
Cheers,
Sarah, Customer Advocacy Manager at Revel
- Industry: Restaurants
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
A disaster from start to finish
In theory, it should be great. But this system loses orders, loses discounts, moves voids from one ticket to another, loses payments, combines checks that have been split, splits checks that have been merged...I could go on and on. All the functionality in the world doesn't matter when a POS can't handle the basics. By far the worst experience I've ever had with a POS. It's cost me thousands of dollars in lost customers, lost credit card payments, money that I've spent paying my bookkeeper and other staff to straighten out all the issues, food that I've had to comp because orders were lost, etc. I've receive a total of $ in compensation from Revel. I've been stuck with this useless system for five months and cannot wait for the day I'm done with it.
Pros
What it can do in theory
Cons
The reality of how it actually works. The cost. Tech support. Customer support. Losing customers because of POS mishaps.
Response from Revel Systems
Hi Shan,
I am really sorry to hear that you have experienced so much frustration. I have taken a look at your ticket history and I can see what the source is here. Software updates are consistent across all iPad based POS software. Most clients never hit a bug, so we're very sorry to see you were hit by one or more in a row. This is not standard and we can assure you we're working to improve testing and our overall quality with each release. I can see that you are now working with a senior agent and that things apprear to be moving in the right direction. Again, we apologize and appreciate your patience in working with us.
Regards,
Sarah, Community Manager, Revel
