Lightspeed Retail

Avantages

I never got a chance to actually try the product. We purchased a company that used them and the transition was supposed to be "seamless" during our free trial but they transferred inventory from a marina (not the company we bought) several states away and they were locked out at the first of the month and could not do business. We called Lightspeed to let them know and we were then locked out of OUR "back end" and we could not get customer service help to get us back in. They are still trying to bill us, changing their name by one or two characters to get around the block that we have on our bank account for any payments to them. As of May, they billed us for $516 (we terminated on the 7th day of our free trial via multiple emails and a phone call) and then signed an affidavit with our bank that we have a contract so they could use our new debit card info for auto-billing. This is FRAUDULENT and we have had zero contact from customer service in 3 weeks since we filed a claim.

Inconvénients

[sensitive content hidden] the Customer Service Rep. - would not get back to me on issues, did not try to help when I was beyond frustrated, sticks to the party line "sign into your back end" even though that was the entire issue. Refuses to cancel billing.

Avantages

Ease of use and easy to track sales. Payment processing is good.

Inconvénients

Nothing of great concern. Good for high sales

Avantages

nothing ITS ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!

Inconvénients

the customer service is completely horrible. I have been trying to cancel my subscription with the for 2 months now and still no luck. They just have me jumping through hoops sending me from one person to the next.

Avantages

There isn't much I like about the systems ease of use.

Inconvénients

It is impossible to speak to any customer service representatives. All they do as an attempt for customer service is to send you articles to read which have nothing to do with the issue you are having.

Avantages

Ease of using the system and the accuracy of sales reports

Inconvénients

Improve on the turnaround time for support when contacted using email.

Avantages

I enjoy using Lightspeed. The features are easy to navigate, learn and train. There is a newsletter that alerts us to new features and interests. We were offered a significant start up discount for the first year, and the terminal was free. Once we set up the system, it has been clear sailing. Any time we have had a question, on-line customer service has been wonderful! We have never not had an issue unresolved. Lightspeed offers capital advances after a certain period of time, based on sales. This could be useful to help with additional expenses as they come along.

Inconvénients

I do not love the monthly fees now that our yearly discounted rate has come to an end. That is really the only thing I dislike about the entire system.
I do wish that Lightspeed would partner up with Faire, the wholesale platform we often use, to integrate the inventory and invoicing.

Avantages

Good foundation. Simple to use POS with valuable connected integrations.

Inconvénients

Customer service used to be outstanding. In a few short years, it provided some of the worst customers service I have experience in any industry. I can confidently saw even our basic employees/user understood the system better than ANY of the customer service reps from Lightspeed.

Avantages

The fact it could do the basics well. i.e. take payment of an order.

Inconvénients

The integration issues, added costs of including so many additional applications and the delayed payment over the weekend, where lightspeed invoices did not match bank account inputs due to when the eftpos fee is attributed. This adds a lot of manual effort when reconciling.

Avantages

I like how easy it is to pull data on Lightspeed Back office and how easy it is to have it communicate to your POS device.

Inconvénients

Connection to the card reader goes in and out frequently and it Lightspeed only works with certain processing companies.

Avantages

Lightspeed has the basics complete. Matrixes, easy sku set up and fairly intuitive POS.

Inconvénients

The customer service is terrible. The team is constantly selling new add ons that don't work and then no one every responds. Overall, I have felt the system does not do what they say it does. For example, we were sold on a shopify integration, which is not true. We were also sold that their reporting is great. It is not only terrible, but you have to pay a lot more for any reports that give you actual information (like inventory valuations).

Avantages

Nothing. Wasted my time and energy with false promises of functionality. Total fail. Terrible experience

Inconvénients

Questions I asked at demo:
Does it include integrations with Woo and Amazon? Told it did. It does not! Demands additional software to integrate with Woo, Amazon, and Shipstation.
Where is support? Told North America. It is not. 4-6 days to get email response. Phone support has no answers, creates email chain.

Avantages

Appears simple and easy to use, simple to set up and cost effective.

Inconvénients

Be very wary. Lightspeed will take you on to use their epos system but once you have settled in, they will penalise if you do not use their payment services in conjunction. The monthly penalty for not using their payment gateway is huge. Support is limited to non existent and the account manager's primary objective to sell you their services, and if this is not accepted, they will pressurise you to take the services regardless by way of charging you £335 per month as penalty.

I would highly recommend you look into other Epos providers before committing to Lightspeed. As you will then be faced with the pressure of moving away from them quickly. Note they only give you 18 days to pay for the penalty invoices before suspending service.

Avantages

Inventory management was easy. The retail system is fairly easy, but the api from retail to ecom is one way, which is a major flaw.

Inconvénients

Their ecom is terrible. Only thing worse than their ecom is their customer service. You can’t call anyone. Tickets take weeks to get worked. Only option is online chat. Try explaining a complex situation in a chat.

Avantages

Fast, all online, easy to import and export between excel

Inconvénients

Basic functions simply do not work and have not been fixed after months to years

Avantages

Canned reports were good, Intuitive for the most part.

Inconvénients

Very lacking in customer service. Unwillingness to meet specific requirements, dismissive.

Avantages

Help desk , they answer soon but for my case couldn’t help at all , just referred to higher level with no result

Inconvénients

Inventory management , huge inventory deduction with no reason

Avantages

NOTHING

Inconvénients

THEY SELL YOU THE WRONG PLAN AND THEN WHEN YOU FIND OUT THERE IS ANOTHER SERIES THAT WAS THE PLAN YOU WANTED THEY THEN TELL YOU TO PAY ALL THESE EXTRA ADD ONS WHICH IS MORE EXPENSIVE AND WILL NOT EVEN ALLOW YOU TO CHANGE TO THE RIGHT SERIES. THEY ARE LYING THEIFS AND USELESS. HIS IS IN SOUTH AFRICA. SO I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS FOR ANY SOUTH AFRICANS

Avantages

the amazing POS and Inventory management offered from Lightspeed.

Inconvénients

That we didnt start using Lightspeed earlier.

Avantages

User-friendly and makes it easy to manage inventory, process sales, and check stock quickly. Helps speed up transactions and reduce errors. The system’s ability to handle multiple payment methods is also a big plus.

Inconvénients

The system can sometimes be slow, especially during busy times, which can frustrate customers. There’s also a bit of a learning curve when it comes to using some of the more advanced features.

Avantages

its easy to use and train other servers on, you can colour coordinate and organize items how ever you'd like with drop down tabs

Inconvénients

nothing it worked great for us. I would recommend to anyone

Avantages

Eficiência e responsabilidade frente á demanda tecnológica atual, atende a demanda do mercado de forma satisfatória ao cliente.

Inconvénients

sem nada a dizer, não há nada que desaponte a credibilidade e seriedade no Lightspeed.

Avantages

When it was Shopkeep.
It has only gotten worse with every update.

Inconvénients

They buy out the competition and change the system to a new hybrid version every other year.

Avantages

Ease of use. And CustomerService the way they used to do it.

Inconvénients

Credit Card processing customer service.

Avantages

Inventory, POS, Reports, and discount features are all easy to configure and use.

Inconvénients

When completing an End of Year inventory count, you must submit the entire count before seeing the total cost of products counted.

Avantages

There’s nothing I like about the company.

Inconvénients

Customer service and support is nonexistent. Management only communicates through email (absurd). Messages and voicemails aren’t returned. Emails are automated blanket emails.

Avantages

Deffinelty not the customer service. Very poor.

Inconvénients

Definitely the customer service was the worst. Basically forced to use Lightspeed payments otherwise high monthly fee. Can't pass on bank fees to customers still! Extremely poor customer service. Been trying to speak with someone for Months.

Avantages

The software itself was ok, but fairly clunky to use.

Inconvénients

The support team are very poor and extremely slow to respond and remediate issues

Avantages

I wanted to share my recent experience with Lightspeed POS and their customer support

Inconvénients

Nothing but a nightmare since we signed the contract. Some of the worst customer service I have ever experienced. Haven’t even been able to get the POS up and running. Support is no help, and our onboarding person is non communitive. Less than a month in and we have no working POS systems. When I reached out to cancel my contract they threatened me with a $4k fine for breaking contract.

Avantages

It integrates with several systems and card payment terminals which allows you to use it easier

Inconvénients

Nothing I can complain about as it a great product

Avantages

Can hold a large inventory amount...we have 3000+ products

Inconvénients

They never seemed to upgrade there system. Its been the same for 8 years!!!

Avantages

Used to like the use abilities of the POS but to be forced to move to their payment processing or pay the fine of almost $7000.00 per year as an ADDITIONAL charge has been a disgraceful decision from them.

Inconvénients

The rip off decision to push existing users to use their high priced payment system.

Avantages

Honestly, not a lot of pros.
Its simple enough if you know how to dink around and look for things.

Inconvénients

Features are not up to par
The way ecomm is set up for connecting to retail is a mess

Avantages

I am a credit card processor that recommended Lightspeed to my clients
None of my clients are able to get custom service
It’s so bad that I personally been trying to email light speed and call for the last 5 days
The only response I got is “how can we help”
Once I wrote what I needed , no one ever got back to me
I’m going to recommend to all my clients to leave lighspeed
I’m even going to buy them new pos systems just not to deal with lighspeed anymore
Non of my retail or restaurants were able to get customer service
I’m writing this review to help other in their pos decision
Please save yourself a lot of headache and not to use this POS system
I have nothing to gain by telling you this

Inconvénients

Customer Service is beyond horrible
I’ve been calling them and emailing them with no success

Avantages

This was an amazing system until they showed their true colors by forcing me (and others) to pay them $400 more a month if you don't use their payment system. After comparing their prices to my current rates it is cheaper to pay them $400.

Inconvénients

This company has no ethics. They forced their user base to switch to them to do payment processing. They said it made it easier to do it that way. Complete lie. I pull my sales from them to quick ooms them pull my banking from eleven I to quick books. At no time.e does their system need me to use their payment system but they still are foing to charge an extra $400/month if I don't move to their higher rates. One way or another they decided that they needed more of money.

Avantages

I'm so angry and annoyed at speed right now that I have nothing positive to say.

Inconvénients

Lightspeed has been high maintenance and extremely picky to set up our account and completely useless in making things function on their end.

Avantages

Sounded good when they pitched their product.

Inconvénients

Not intuitiveToo many stupid reductant boxes need to be checked when adding inventory and epically laborNot honest about their company and focusAn absolute waste of time to try and get any tech support. Lightspeed auto increased our rate 300% do to credit card processing Extortion is how they opporate

Avantages

The support staff, while unelpful, are friendly

Inconvénients

The entire system was over promised, and entirely under delivered

Avantages

The system itself is wonderful. The invoicing and product management helps us stay organized and keep track of product that has not yet arrived.

Inconvénients

I can't even explain how frustrating their POS app on an ipad is. The app crashes at the worst times. I have a panicked call from an employee multiple times a month. The card processing is slow, which is particularly frustrating at Christmas when we have a line to the door. The bluetooth cc reader is constantly disconnecting or not able to even be found. When we reach out for help we either don't get a reply for days from our rep and I am sent to one specialist after another, no one with a direct explanation on what is happening or why.

Avantages

That it would allow us to put our inventory online

Inconvénients

They [sensitive content hidden] misrepresented the product claiming we could store our inventory in bin locations which is not true. Upon reaching out to cancel, they make it hard by ghosting our emails.

Avantages

It seems to have everything in one solid platform

Inconvénients

This System DOES NOT work with Android which I was never told!

Avantages

[sensitive content hidden]
i know, better than [sensitive content hidden]
i dont know

Inconvénients

frustrating to utilize. lots of data to enter, once you start using it, it's hard to break away. they always blame the other guy when problems arise with integrations

Avantages

Originally, ease of use. Now is not the case.

Inconvénients

We have had Shopkeep/Lightspeed for 9 years. It does not make doing inventory easy at all. We have nothing bur problems with the chip reader/swiper, continuously disconnects. Cannot make sales. Have spent many calls to fix, they make us buy new card readers every time. Also multiple problems with scanners not working! Problem has not been resolved in 9 years! Our other stores using another POS does not have these problems. Looking to switch.

Avantages

Ease of implementation Multi location abilityPortabilityLinks to e-commerce optionAbility to use multiple terminals to access data and input sales/work orders/purchase orders etc over cloud

Inconvénients

Lacking in some reporting function, is available at added costNew fee structure for users not interested in Lightspeed payments

Avantages

Ease of training - So simple a caveman could use it

Inconvénients

Customer supportPayments not applyingCustomer support

Avantages

Makkelijk in gebruik maar beperkt . Jammer

Inconvénients

Te beperkt. En wil je wat meer kan dat niet

Avantages

Accuracy is very important and when I run a report or look at inventory it is correct.

Inconvénients

The sales person told me I would have reports and I did for about 4 months, I was then locked out of the reports and could not pay my suppliers. I had to pay more money per month based on their employees mistake. I went with Lightspeed based on the monthly price. It is not completely what I needed for my store but the price was within my budget. Now I have to pay hundreds more per year so I can run one report to pay my suppliers. Be warned they do not stand behind their employees promises.

Avantages

nothing but time waste and I dont think you will like it for sure

Inconvénients

Please save your time and not to invest your time and efforts

Avantages

Easy to set up and initial entry of inventory was very straight forward.

Inconvénients

Lack of human support options. We have lost more revenue waiting to speak with Lightspeed technical support that we spent on the system. DO NOT BUY Lightspeed unless your business has only plain vanilla types of customer interactions because you will not be able to reach anyone at Lightspeed for assistance after your get their system..

Avantages

nothing, absolutely nothing. The company gives us zero confidence.

Inconvénients

every part of it as well as the lack of customer service

Avantages

The only two positive things I can say is Lightspeed payments work seamlessly and Dylan, our trainer was great.

Inconvénients

Cons:1. The register pops open on every transaction-including charges2. Try and find a sales transaction from a couple of months ago. Lightspeed only shows a limited amount for each day.3. There are limited amount of reports available.4. Only uses Dymo printers which are cheap, always jam and the product tags are extremely expensive. If you tag your mechandise, get ready to spend alot!5. Jumped into training mode without a warning and no way to prevent soneone from going into training mode.6. Lacks a variety of controls that you can give a user. 7. Products can only be priced by markup not margins.8.Good luck tracking returns.9. Payment reports are confusing.10. When you call support, be prepared to know more than they do!

Alternatives envisagées 

Shopify

Pourquoi choisir Lightspeed Retail 

We wanted a better product

Pourquoi passer à Lightspeed Retail

We liked some of the features with Lightspeed. We thought we were signing up for lightspeed the R version but got talked into the X version. The X version is so juvenile compared to Quickbooks POS.