Revel Systems Reviews & Complaints

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How did they treat you? ▼

Overview

In this article, we take a focused look at Revel Systems, a leading provider of iPad-based point-of-sale (POS) solutions, catering to various industries with its innovative software and hardware offerings. We'll dissect key aspects of their service including rates and fees, contract terms, and the specifics of their comprehensive POS features like inventory management and secure transactions.

An essential part of our analysis involves addressing common customer complaints, industry ratings, and user reviews to provide a well-rounded view of Revel's performance and reliability. Additionally, we'll touch on Revel's own bundled POS and payments service, Revel Advantage, and its impact on the overall user experience.

We also examine the user-friendliness and security of their systems, the benefits of cloud-based accessibility, and the scalability of their solutions. Insights into Revel's customer support effectiveness and a concise overview of their fees and pricing structure will also be provided, to give potential customers a clear understanding of what to expect. Join us in uncovering the complexities and user experiences of Revel Systems, a significant entity in the POS landscape.

About Revel Systems

Revel Systems is a point-of-sale (POS) system provider that offers software and hardware for the iPad. Based in San Francisco, California, Revel offers custom POS solutions for the service, entertainment, restaurant, grocery, and retail industries. Revel initially partnered with PayPal, First Data, Worldpay, Newtek, Adyen, Moneris, QuickBooks Payments, Tyro, and Quest Payment Systems as its integrated merchant account providers, but the company has recently started offering merchant accounts through Revel Advantage, its own bundled POS and payments service.

Revel Point of Sale

The Revel point-of-sale system offers just about every hardware option in the industry, including standards such as tablets, swipers, and cash drawers, but also fulfills more specific merchant needs such as kiosks, printers, barcode scanners, network solutions, diagnostic hardware, kitchen screens, bumpbars, caller-ID displays, and scales. POS features offered by Revel include custom user access, social media integration, split bills, payment encryption, WiFi management, gift and loyalty programs, delivery tracking, sales reporting, mobile device management, payroll services, bar tab management, online ordering, and PCI compliance. Revel also claims that its software can be paired with over 95% of credit card processors through the USAePay payment gateway.

Feature-Rich Software

Revel's POS software comes with an extensive range of features that streamline business operations. These features include inventory management, employee scheduling, customer relationship management (CRM), and advanced reporting and analytics. This comprehensive software suite enables businesses to manage multiple aspects of their operations through a single platform.

Integrated Payment Processing

Revel POS systems include integrated payment processing services, allowing businesses to accept a wide range of payment methods, including credit cards, debit cards, and mobile wallets. By combining POS and payment processing, Revel offers a seamless and efficient solution for managing transactions.

User-Friendly Interface

Revel's POS systems are designed with user-friendliness in mind. Their intuitive interface allows businesses to train their staff quickly and reduces the risk of user errors during transactions. This user-centric design contributes to a more efficient and enjoyable payment experience for both employees and customers.

Secure Transactions

Security is a top priority for Revel POS systems. They employ advanced encryption and tokenization technologies to protect sensitive customer data during transactions. Additionally, their systems are Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant, ensuring a secure payment environment for businesses and their customers.

Cloud-Based Accessibility

Revel's cloud-based POS systems provide businesses with the flexibility to access their data and manage their operations from anywhere with an internet connection. This cloud-based approach enables businesses to monitor their performance, track inventory, and make data-driven decisions in real-time, contributing to overall growth and efficiency.

Scalable Solutions

Revel POS systems are designed to grow with businesses, offering scalable solutions that can be easily expanded or modified to accommodate changes in business size, structure, or industry. This adaptability ensures that Revel's POS systems remain a reliable and cost-effective choice for businesses as they evolve.

Location & Ownership

Revel Systems was founded in 2010 and is a registered ISO/MSP of Fifth Third Bank, Cincinnati, Ohio, and a registered ISO of Wells Fargo Bank, Concord, CA. The company maintains its headquarters at 575 Market Street Suite #2200, San Francisco, CA 94105. Greg Dukat is the CEO and Lisa Falzone is the founder of Revel Systems.

Video Summary

Pros & Cons
Pros: Cons:
In-depth reporting capabilities System failures during initial implementations
Intuitive, user-friendly interface Issues with merging or disappearing orders
Effective support for enterprise systems Reporting limitations for financial needs
Flexible API Integration Not ideal for high-volume, multi-location companies
Reliable and portable, uses iPads Long orders poorly consolidated, challenging for restaurants

Revel Systems Customer Reviews

Here's What Their Clients Say

Customer Reviews Summary
Total Online Complaints 100+
Live Customer Support Yes
Most Common Complaint Product Malfunctions
Recent Lawsuits Yes

Moderate Complaint Total

We are currently able to locate over 100 negative Revel Systems reviews across various consumer protection websites, some of which outright accuse the company of being a scam or a ripoff. Common complaints include difficulty setting up the system (even with on-site technicians), high pricing, poor tech support, and persistent software and hardware malfunctions. These issues vary greatly in their specifics because of Revel’s customized nature, but the consistent theme is one of disappointment in the system’s performance for the price. The combination of the high initial cost of the service and the poor customer support provided appears to be the main problem for complainants, who claim to lose even more money when trying to get the system running correctly. If you have your own Revel Systems review to make, please do so in the comment section below.

Revel Systems Lawsuits

The District Court for the Northern District of California approved a $2.75 million settlement in a class lawsuit filed against Revel Systems in April of 2019. The case, Bisaccia v. Revel Systems, was filed by a group of inside sale representatives of the company who sought unpaid overtime wages. The suit details the company’s culture of pressuring its sales representative to close deals within their standard 40-hour work weeks. However, employees who worked in excess of 55 hours during some weeks to make their sales goals were not compensated for their overtime.

Revel Systems’ defense against the suit claimed that the sales representatives were exempt from the overtime protections codified under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) on the basis that they earned a commission on the basis of their job performance. However, the FLSA does extend overtime protections to commission-earning employees. It appears as if the company settled on that basis in order to mitigate its liability for damages and restitution that a ruling would have been given to the plaintiffs.

Revel Systems Customer Support Options

Although they have a low-to-moderate complaint total for a company that has been in business since 2010, many of the complaints are recent enough and severe enough to negatively impact Revel’s rating. As a point in its favor, Revel provides email and phone support for its users, although the effectiveness of these channels is disputed in merchant complaints. The general dissatisfaction with Revel’s customer service team supports our decision not to include the company in our list of top-rated processors for customer service.

Revel Systems Customer Service Numbers

  • (415) 744-1433 – General Support
  • (833) 437-3835 – Sales
  • (415) 744-1433 – Atlanta Office
  • (415) 744-1433 – San Francisco Office

Other Support Options

  • Support form
  • Information database

Revel Systems Online Ratings

Here's How They Rate Online

Online Ratings Summary
BBB Reports 12

Moderate Complaint Total

Revel Systems currently has an “A-” rating with the Better Business Bureau and is not accredited. The company is showing 9 complaints filed in the past 36 months.

What Merchants Say

Revel Systems has also received 3 informal reviews on its profile, and all are negative in tone. In 2020 Revel Systems seems to have taken up supplying PPE. There are many recent complaints relating to this service. The most recent negative review describes charges before getting equipment and poor customer support:

We are a customer since 2014 and have many terminals and subscriptions with Revel. Similar situation and recent experience as *********** review below from 2019 with Revel. We had pricing and equipment currently in place. Their operations team and sales team pitched me a new gimmick to get our credit card business but they used some non-ethical business practices to trick me and sent me used equipment. The contract was signed in March and I didnt receive all of the equipment until June. By this time, I am fed up with all of the nonsense and coverups that the Revel teams have created to run me through a maze with no exits. I decided to cancel the contract because of all of the issues and non-professionalism from them and they continue to turn off my pos stations and claim I was not paying for them. It is hard to escalate within Revel and your attempts to “right the ship” get punished by their teams. They created a Quid-Pro Quo situation with me over the new equipment they never provided and would not send it to me unless I changed my credit card processing over to them 1st. They would not give me a timeline on the new equipment, but they did start charging me for credit card processing before I ever had the back-ordered terminals (because they sold me equipment that was not available in March but did not disclose this to me). BTW: The charges did not match the negotiated rates. I am still trying to get my services back but they do not make it easy. They use creative manipulative tactics to get you to pay more fees. They are supposed to give me the service I had before the new contract that they breached, but they are snakes in the grass and I am still trying to get my services restored. I truly hope there are still ethical businesses out there. Revel is proving to be an unethical business built on shady practices managed by contracts that are all in their favor. Beware before entering!

An “A” Performance

Given the company’s complaint total and resolution ratio, we agree with the BBB’s rating at this time.

Revel Systems Fees, Rates & Costs

A Closer Look at The Contract

Cost & Fees Summary
Cancellation Penalties No
Monthly & Annual Fees Yes
Processing Rates 1.00% - 4.99%
Equipment Leasing Yes

Recent Pricing Disclosure

Since a previous update, Revel has begun listing its pricing on its website. Initially, the company preferred for clients to get in touch before discussing specific service packages. One reason for this may be that pricing was highly variable through Revel’s partnerships with resellers. Now that the company offers its own payment processing, the company has chosen to make some of its pricing available for public view.

Revel Systems Pricing

Revel’s software starts at $99 per month, per terminal and includes inventory management, customer-relation management, employee management, and reporting and analytics features. The POS system requires a three-year agreement and must be used with Revel Advantage, the company’s new payment processing service. Revel Advantage is advertised as having a flat fee, but Revel Systems does not disclose the exact rate quote. It is probable that the company’s payment processing rates and fees are subject to variation depending on a merchant’s size, business type, and time in business. Revel’s system installation fee starts at $649 and likely ramps up depending on the number of terminals required and the size of the business.

Costly Up-Front Expense

The company’s original preferred processing partners are generally known to have industry-average contract terms that often include long-term agreements, early termination fees, PCI compliance fees, and other fees. Still, it is unclear how competitive Revel’s own processing fees compare to low-cost merchant account providers. Its overall software and installation price points are not especially competitive with other cloud-based POS solutions, so business owners should specifically be sure to determine whether they are doing sufficient monthly volume to justify the high up-front expense of a Revel POS system.

Revel Systems Employee Reviews & Sales Tacitcs

Should You Work For Them?

Jobs & Marketing Summary
Uses Independent Resellers Yes
Telemarketing No
Misleading Marketing No
Discloses All Important Terms No

Inside Sales and Resellers

Revel Systems appears to market its services through an in-house sales team as well as through third-party resellers within the payment processing industry. The company has recently begun offering a bundled merchant account with its POS service, but it has avoided providing specific rate quotes and contractual offers that are commonly seen with other payment processors.

Some Negative Reports

There are a low-to-moderate number of Revel Systems reviews related to the company’s sales team, specifically with respect to unrealistic guarantees made by sales agents. Complainants mention undisclosed fees, higher-than-expected costs, and misrepresentation of the product’s full capabilities (specifically with respect to QuickBooks integration).

Get a Thorough Explanation

It appears that the sales experience through Revel is strongly correlated with the sales agent opening the account. Businesses with specific or unusual point-of-sale needs should be sure to voice those needs before signing up and ensure that they receive a satisfactory explanation of how Revel will fit into their payment environment. Additionally, business owners should consider seeking a third-party statement audit to find and eliminate fees that could potentially be hidden in their Revel Advantage contracts.

Our Revel Systems Review Summary

Our Final Thoughts

Revel Systems rates as an average point-of-sale solution for credit card processing according to the available evidence. The company offers a very robust array of features for an iPad-based POS, but it has received some complaints related to its high cost, poor customer service, and equipment installation. Revel Systems appears to a good solution for businesses that are interested in its full service suite and able to comfortably afford its high up-front costs. Other businesses should seek a lower-cost reliable iPad POS system if they do not require all the features Revel offers.

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Which is Most Important for You?

If you had to pick one, which quality would you say will be the most important with your next credit card processor? Tap or click your selection to register your vote:

  1. Low Transaction Fees
  2. No Monthly Fees
  3. No Contract
  4. Reliable Customer Support
  5. Quick Signup

Testimonials & Complaints

How Did Revel Systems Treat You?

86 User Reviews

  • craig cooper

    I’ve had Revel for almost 6 years not and the cost has gone no where but up. While other systems have integrated solutions included in software costs Revel nickel and dimes you to death. The best part is they get you to sign a contract at a rate they can change whenever you want and when you threaten to cancel because they raise the rate over and over they hit you with the hidden $15,000 cancellation fee baiscally forcing you to stay. The software is average at best and for the cost it’s not worth it for a single establishment business.

  • Harim Leyton

    salspizza

    Purchased a new iPhone installed the app and it wouldn’t let me log in to my store (Terrace 149) because I don’t have a new license key? Called revel support and talked to Marius who was absolutely no help because “it wasn’t his department.” Revel makes it impossible to get a License Key because their “operations department is closed” is this a joke? We pay large sums of money to view and operate our businesses on this system but we have to wait for the operations team to be at work to do so? What kind of operation are you guys running? Why isn’t there a better, faster more efficient way to retrieve a license key rather than get a generated email that my request has been handed over to operations with a “low priority.” We pay our service fees on time so we expect our business to be accessible via the app when we need it not when the operations team decides to finally reply to our “low priority’ request. More than a joke this is just an insult to business owners.

  • Jen

    DO NOT USE REVEL! I am a small business! The equipment and service is expensive! They had an email address set up for me that I have no idea where it came from. Then I ran into an issue when they shut down my system claiming outstanding invoices. I never received notification of invoices. Ever! So after I called and they told me how to locate them there were several errors. Plus I found out their notices were going to someone else’s email! Not even a typo. An email that was someone’s full name…and not associated with my business in any way. They demanded I pay all the invoices immediately over the phone or they wouldn’t turn my system back on. Which they shut off in the middle of a business day. I told them no because I needed to check the invoices against my bank account since they had already made errors. So they proceeded to make a withdraw of the full amount of the invoices they claimed were outstanding without allowing me time to check. And my system still isn’t on. The customer service is god awful. They do not care about their clients. They only care about getting your money. And trust me..:they get plenty of it!


    This post will help: Best Payment Processors for Great Customer Service

    -Phillip

  • Michael

    They provide garbage hardware with very short warranty periods. Come on…a credit card machine that’s designed to fail after 1 year with light use? And then you force merchants to pay $419 for another one? Big time scam. We do not recommend Revel and are switching to another brand immediately once the contract is up.


    From The Editor
    This Post Might Help: Best iPad POS Systems

    • Eric McNamee

      Hi Michael,

      Credit Cards machine aren’t “designed” to fail however firmware updates can sometimes cause terminals to “brick’ which renders them useless. All terminals though come with a 1 year manufacturer warranty. So if you have an Ingenico IPP350 (from the price you mentioned that’s the terminal I assume you have), you would contact Revel Tier 2 through support to process an RMA on the hardware. Revel provides hardware from the manufacturer, so it wasn’t their equipment, they just programmed it, tested it and shipped to you.

      If the only issue you have is with the terminal it would help if you show what the error was. Was it decline by chip? Null 203? Invalid Merchant ID? or tamper device? Each one of those errors means something specific which can either be resolved by a backend settings change or by a terminal swap. Also it’s important to note that if the terminal is the only issue then this complaint shouldn’t be lodged against Revel Systems but against either FreedomPay or Vantiv, both use the IPP350 or the iCMP Bluetooth reader. FreedomPay would be if you use a processor like your bank or ISO, whereas Vantiv (formerly Mercury) has a direct integration with Revel Systems POS as a payment processor. If you can be a bit more clear as to what your issue is perhaps I can assist getting the issue resolved?

  • Johnny

    If you want your business to lose money then Revel is for you. We had a reseller attempt to convert an item list of nearly 10,000 items to import into Revel, it bombed, and obviously they do not know how to use Excel properly. We had to can revel last year after only 1 month as it nearly crippled our 6 retail stores. Revel still drafted out of our account these ridiculous monthly fees of over $1,200.00 a month and were not even live for 9 months, yes they took over $10,000.00 in monthly fees in 2017 and we were not even live but one month in 2017!!

    In January of 2018 since the company is out over $45,000.00 over this scam at this point for nothing, the reseller was told to get this running now!!! Unfortunately we are now stuck with this junk and it is causing numerous problems at all stores. We got absolutely no training, this reseller basically got this up and running half ass and disappeared. We got no training, still have numerous issues and have no support from the resellers. Folks this Revel POS is not suited for anything but small single store restaurants, trust me you do not want any part of Revel for any multiple retail type of business. I have never seen such a poorly written piece of software. It is lacking so many basic things that any off the shelf POS system has. My biggest concern is that Revel allows these so called “Resellers” become resellers in the first place. In all fairness I sincerely doubt all Revel resellers are as useless as ours. But folks we got screwed big time by this con artist of a reseller.

    • Eric McNamee

      Johnny,

      Please reply to this thread with your business name and I’ll get a channel support ticket submitted for you. It’ll be the part before .revelup.com in your Revel URL. If you’re working with a reseller that’s not supporting your setup then chances are the actual setup itself is a very basic product map. I’m with Priority Payment Systems Gulf Coast and we’re the #1 Revel Support Reseller in the U.S. If you are still dealing with support issues I may be able to assist or at the very least get a Tier 2/3 agent from Revel on with you so you can get your build issues resolved.

  • Sharon Tiedemann

    DO NOT GO WITH REVEL!!!! This company is the WORST, they charged me $5000 to rent their equipment up front, and $324 a month for software. The equipment 3 months later still was not installed. I returned the equipment and still have not received a refund! They are a scam with high pressure sales people!

  • Ryley

    If you want your employees to hate you, get Revel. If you love unasked for updates that move functionality around, ignoring the importance of muscle memory, get Revel. If two button presses to add quantity weren’t enough for you – how about four, now – get Revel. If you hate accountable support staff, get Revel.

    I’ll leave you with my entire staff’s mantra: Revel SUCKS!

  • Timothy H.

    As a business owner please do your due diligence and run from this company. After calling to stop the recurring billing from Revel and receiving a ticket 1245556, which stated it was being sent to billing department for cancellation. Revel continued to bill until i contacted them a second time. Their excuse of needing to speak to someone in client relations (Brian L.) first before they would cancel the service. No indication when the 1st request to cancel (Spoke with Agne) was made that I had to call or speak to anyone else. They go on and on about company policy and how I don’t see it their way. Someone calls to cancel a service, as a responsible business you cancel it, you don’t leave the account open and continue to bill. If I say “cancel”, I don’t need a sales guy calling from customer relations to offer incentives or to gather facts about his product or why am I leaving. Stop wasting customer’s time having them speak to multiple people just to have your company unjustly and perpetually remunerate itself month after month.
    —CAVEAT EMPTOR —

  • Davi

    AVOID REVEL SYSTEMS! This is the worst company to deal with. There are many other POS solutions out there so do yourself a favor and avoid a lot of frustration by taking your business to another company that will value you as a customer.

  • Pokeland

    We been using revel pos about two month already, and we are have so much issue with credit card, and credit card swiper. we call customer services about ten times and spent 500 dollard to purchase their new idtech swiper, and the issue still not been solve. the funny things is we ask them what we do each time new swiper we received are not working, agent told us, we have to call them and put deposit down each time, and they will keep send our idtech swiper until it work, we speak to level 1 and level 2 agent, no one can solve the problem, and we have to unplug idtech swiper power each time to swipe every single credit card.

    Above issue just make our little to trouble to swipe card, and really issue is today we received third new idtech swiper, and it working very will a beginning, after couple to credit card swipe, and issue is show up, message say swiper is not decrypted, and every transaction are missing after using the new swiper, we call revel, and revel want us to call credit card company, and they told us because revel didn’t have any credit card information send to them, and them didn’t have any credit card information received, and our $800 is gone, we been angry, but what we can do? sorry nothing we can do about it, we love revel, but just too much issue going on with this system.

  • timothy Harris

    As a business owner please do your due diligence and run from this company. After calling to stop the recurring billing from Revel and receiving a ticket 1245556, which stated it was being sent to billing department for cancellation. Revel continued to bill until i contacted them a second time. Their excuse of needing to speak to someone in client relations (Brian Leyland) first before they would cancel the service. No indication when the 1st request to cancel (Spoke with Agne) was made that I had to call or speak to anyone else. They go on and on about company policy and how I don’t see it their way. Someone calls to cancel a service, as a responsible business you cancel it, you don’t leave the account open and continue to bill. If I say “cancel”, I don’t need a sales guy calling from customer relations to offer incentives or to gather facts about his product or why am I leaving. Stop wasting customer’s time having them speak to multiple people just to have you stop taking money out of their account month after month.
    —CAVEAT EMPTOR —

    • Davi

      Hi Tim, you and I had the same horrible experience. It’s part of their con game. Frankly, how could a business owner trust their POS system to a company that fraudulently charges their own customer’s accounts. I see a CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT in the making.

  • Denise

    We were initially excited to have Revel implemented in our small bakery, however, after two weeks into the implementation we quickly determined that several limitation made it a horrible fit for our business. We watched all of the tutorials but nothing prepared us to know the limitations of the infrastructure of their system. Their sales person wasn’t even fully aware. We were bounced around from implementation to IT before someone was finally able to tell us that modules were not designed to process custom orders. The worst part was that, with only two weeks into implementation , they refused to refund the $3100.00 we paid siting contract guidelines and charged us an additional $1300.00 cancellations fee. They required us to return the equipment but kept all of the funds paid. Our business is not unique and in good faith, we seriously tried to make it work. I would caution anyone considering moving to this system. No one takes ownership of issues and once they lock you in, irregardless of the situation, you are stuck.

    • Eric McNamee

      Denise,

      It sounds like you may have been setup on the retail license which uses product attributes, versus QSR which utilizes modifiers. I’ve seen bakery setups using attributes, which makes sense in some scenarios but would also severely limit your ability to create custom items on the POS. Also, having the option to override pricing, open items, custom menu and customization of items is relatively easy with Revel as long as you’re trained on how to do so. The training videos are more generic to cover the masses with Revel setups and it sounds like you would need more of a unique touch. If you would like to reach out to me, you can click on my name above and schedule a free consultation or reach out to Revel directly and I can ping my Revel contact and alert them to your issue.

  • Justin

    Long and short, our experience with the Revel systems POS (our intent is to use it in Retail application) has been a nightmare. The problems started early on in being sold hardware components that were not designed to work in the way we needed to utilize them – despite us being very detailed in what we needed – and despite the Sales reps assurances they would (specifically the barcode scanners and printers). We purchased our system in Mid-March but due to delays in the build-out of our store front and arrival of inventory components we were not actually able to begin the on-boarding/product and inventory load until Mid-May and that’s when things turned awful.

    Our initial product information load seemed to go well, however when we attempted to load the corresponding inventory via the method instructed it would not load. Come to find out we were given incorrect instructions and fields/information that should have been on the load sheet were not there. That issue began 5/15 and was finally resolved 5/17. On 5/16 another set of issues started during the attempt at setting up our receipt with logo, company info, etc (figured we’d do that while the inventory thing got figured out. Wrong!) That was finally figured out and resolved by our onboard rep on 5/17 at the end of the day… with zero explanation as to what the issue was and if it could happen again. Since we were finally able to go ahead and get the first phase of products/inventory info loaded (our onboard rep did it for us because no matter what or how we tried it was unsuccessful) we scheduled our POS front end training on 5/19 – which also was a bust because we learned that none of our printers were correctly configured before our system was sent. This also stalled us from being able to barcode the items in the store until 5/26 when that issue was finally resolved with one of our barcode printers and the receipt printer (it is now 6/15 and the second printer for our warehouse still hasn’t been configured… we have literally been dealing with daily issues with the backend system and front end system all this time and haven’t even been able to address that yet).

    Other issues that occurred (that are now resolved but no one can explain the how or why it happened, or will it happen again?) where the backend system spontaneously dumped my login information on 6/7. Our rep basically had to re set me up (2 more days down). Thought we were finally good… got to the actual POS and discovered that the login PINs for myself and 3 of our employees did not work (despite the 3 employees info being present and correct in the backend – my information erased again and defaulted to a generic 1234). Got that sorted a couple days later.

    This weeks issue has been with the integration to Quick Books online. The POS is sending inaccurate info to QBO – and of course no one can tell us why, or worse, how to correct it. One generally assumes that in business accurate financial reporting is kind of a thing… I mean Revel hasn’t had a problem charging us the monthly fee all this time and I’m sure they track that somewhere, right?

    Naturally in the month from 5/15 to today, 6/15, we finally hit our limit and requested information on returning the system (being willing to take the risk of being without a POS system at our opening and just processing manually through QBO). Our onboard rep passed us on to Client Relations and a few days later we finally get a generic, and frankly offensive, email from Tyrel that in no way acknowledged our issues and frustrations – but instead had a copy of our Revel contact attached. I assume the point was to put it out there that Revel only has a 30 day return policy (keep in mind Tyrel didn’t say that in his email… he pretty much implied “figure it out for yourself”). Of course, since we bought our system in March we are well beyond the 30 day limit.

    I really could keep going. I am just shy of now 100 emails back and forth about issue, after issue, after issue – none of which truly got any clear resolution or explanation.

    I’ll save you some time. Do not buy this system. Its bad, the customer support is worse, and like us some of you will likely end up tossing a $3000+ system in the storage room and going to another platform.

  • John Bonds

    Revel provides a good product for companies that need an extensive POS system with many options available at their disposal like restaurants. I just tried cancelling my subscription with them and it took 3 weeks of trying to reach them by email and phone before someone would actually cancel me. They were shady about the whole thing and no one knew where to connect me to cancel. Played a huge game. In the meantime after I had at least wasted 4 hours of my time between long wait times to talk to billing and people connecting me to the wrong departments, I was billed an additional month. I sent 7 emails during the 3 weeks to their so called “cancellation team” and guess what no responses from them whatsoever!!! Was not worth the hassle and aggrevation of this company where there are so many better options then Revel. Also, my sales rep after I added more iPads went back on his rate for additional units after I had agreed to use their product and signed the contracts.

  • Norris McCuen

    Purchased two units for two locations, with anticipated start date of March 1, 2017. Before signing, we asked what the procedure was if we were delayed. We were informed we could pause the account for $10.00 a month per units. Our Architect’s wife/Office Manager of 50 years passed away during our project, which delayed us by 6 weeks. We experienced further delays with our City’s Planning Department. We never heard from Revel Account Manager throughout this period. On March 1st we were billed against our credit card, without warning, for two systems as if they were up and running. Obviously the systems were not running because that would require Revel Systems to guide us through setup and installation. We emailed our Account Manager, no response. We emailed again and we were contacted by a customer relations rep. We explained we did not authorize the charges and asked for our card to be credited. Instead, they have kept our money and are claiming a credit on our account of $700.00 + dollars. We have a “pause” clause that allows a charge of only $10.00 per unit until up and running. Revel is no claiming the pause is only good for 2 months and we must pay full costs thereafter regardless if we are in operation. We asked where in the contract is it stated we are limited to 2 months and they replied it is their policy. There is no time limitation in our contract. We are out over $4000.00 and Revel is playing hardball. There is no customer service and they seem to have the attitude that they can do whatever they want to the consumer. We have now filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission based on unfair practices. We are also protesting the charges with our credit card company. I wish I had found these reviews before signing as it looks like many others have had similar problems. If there is any class action suit now or in the future, please contact me and count me in. This company needs to be put in its place.

  • William

    Billing department never answer calls, at bank of America branch with merchant banker talking to Revel system sales rep, waiting for the account to be activated and not until a week later due to new year vacation, I have my business opened without any POS system, then they call me a week later asking if I need assistance set up my back end, I said I already call to cancel the service, and their technical support team make no exception to new customer, need sales department to approve an account first before helping with the backend, and I don’t even know what equipment to use their system. One month later they deduct my bank for $252 for 1st month service which I have never used, billing finally call me and said they have a valid contract for the first month and ask if i want to cancel the account, that’s my only option. I said I don’t even know I have an account approved with them, they said, unfortunately, yes, I do, and they said they don’t have any record in their system showing anyone from their company had ever called me or I have ever called them to cancel the account. i.e. the charge for 1st month is valid. And the billing department lady keep repeating that the contract and policy of their company, then said will cancel the account for me and will look into the issue, you bet they don’t do nothing after that, I don’t even receive anything from them, not even email.

  • Stuart Amoriell

    I love the functionality of the product, but the concern I had when considering the purchase was related to connectivity issues. In short, would there be occasions when one of the iPads lost connectivity briefly, causing orders to be lost? Well…I was right to be concerned. We have had ongoing issues with lost tickets that don’t make it to the kitchen in a timely manner, sales reports not matching actual sales and overall downtime with server stations when it can’t connect. I was reviewing Lavu at the same time, which has a hard-wired option, and should have gone with that. I went with Revel because they promised it would not be an issue and I preferred the Revel functionality.

  • Column

    We are existing Revel System customer but I think our 2 year relationship is going to be an end. Changing a POS system is not simple but we still choose to leave must have our reasons. I just want to share my experiences with everyone who might consider marry to them.

    1. We were told from their sale rep the QuickBooks integration will 100% work for Canadian customer because of this reason we signed off the deal, however we don’t have a chance to test the integration because it was still under development, we should wait till the launch but we can’t wait because we need a new system to support our grow. We did reconfirm the QB compatibility again and again so we don’t think there will be a problem. We got everything setup and running, about few months later the QuickBooks Integration finally launched but they told us this feature strictly for US customer only, WTF?! This case only escalated to their sales team lead and they refused to go further higher, you have no easy way to reach their upper management team unfortunately we dun have any recording or email for the proof, they only offer a free month to settle the case. They would guarantee you everything at the beginning and once you in everything is just too late, we have learned a lesson.

    2. We are not pleased and disappointed on how Revel handle system upgrade, almost every single incident causes us problem and certain level of business impact, we need to bend or change our business model/process to fit these updates. Revel introduce new feature but at the same time take away the old feature immediately, can you imagine how much trouble causing? For example we never had an option call “Credit Limit”, after the latest mandatory POS upgrade on iPad (this is another matter will mention after), we are forced to commit the new changes, we can no longer take “House Account” credit payment until we enable the “Credit Limit” option inside customer, but this is not the major problem, I am so shocking they don’t provide a batch upload method, instead we are instructed to make this change inside each customer one by one, we have thousands of customers are on account. This is so ridiculous but why they can’t just keep thing simple?

    3. The Revel POS consist by two pieces, the frontend (iPad) and the backend (web management). Periodically they roll out major upgrade (notified) or small updates (silence) at the backend and then you must follow their schedule to download and re-install the new iPad App manually during off business hour to match your backend version, otherwise your iPad POS will not function properly

    4. They have very slow development, usually the iOS App should be prepared and updated on device before the new iOS launch, but Revel work reversely, they will tell you DO NOT upgrade your iPad iOS Software whenever until they ready. They need to understand you cannot disable system update on iPad, until some point you will get the software update reminder popup crazy everyday on the iPad and you must choose “remind me/install later” to bypass but couple times my staffs by accidentally hit the wrong button and fire up the software update, then the till will be out of service until we reach Revel support for fix. I cannot blame on my staffs in this case, Revel have to do something to avoid this to happen.

    4. Support – their level 1 support is useless, even level 2 not really helpful, the most words I have heard are “Sorry” or “This is the system design, nothing we can do”. I have a strong feeling their development teams make whatever changes they want without thinking the impacts would brought up to the customers.

    5. The most funniest thing is Revel have a Voice of Customer team to hear your feedback, this is cool, they do reach out you to hear your problems or complaints but limited to listen only! They don’t follow up anymore, I have one phone conservation and one email both sink into the deep sea, sigh*

    Good luck!

  • Justin Bowis

    Horrible experience! If you are considering Revel for QuickBooks Online integration beware of false advertising.

    While receiving the sales pitch for the product, I was assured that complete integration was available. I specifically asked about house accounts and transferring account info to QuickBooks. Everything was great I was told! We work closely with QuickBooks for complete integration. Blah Blah Blah!

    Upon receiving the system and starting my training(which took a week after I had everything setup). The trainer was confused saying those features would be implemented later down the road. That’s not what you offered me before I bought this! A couple of other minor issues with setup and functionally(all of which were confirmed working over the phone with the sale rep). I promptly asked for a refund.

    I was then told, since I didn’t have those specific requests for features in writing that I would have to pay a fee of $500 for a refund. I only spoke with the rep over the phone. Why would I have emailed the questions, when I just could ask the sales person? My word vs. their word is the only explanation I got.

    After numerous calls and messages(all unanswered). Two full weeks after notifying Revel I wanted to cancel. I was emailed saying I was going to be out close to $800 for canceling. The extra cost was for nonrefundable charges.

    Buyers beware, make sure you have everything in email form so it can be traced. $1587.45 initial cost for buying Revel. If you cancel you’ll only get $750 back. If your Sales team are selling features that don’t exist, the customers shouldn’t have to pay.

    Never Again!

  • fred

    Revel is an awful system that is very difficult to operate in a food business and very complicated to program.
    When programming, you never have an ensemble vision of the products and the various modifiers that go with them.
    When using, tickets get lost easily if servers don’t precisely follow the useless sequences of buttons to push and there is no way to even know what ticket was lost until your customer realises his food is not coming.
    Among other issues…

    • Sandra albright

      We hate Revel..the have no good support..the support don’t know anything about resturants. We have a huge menu w hundreds of option..it so hard b to put an order in to kitchen. .it sucks. Its.not that cheap…using credit cards is a hassle ..you can’t add items when the ticket or charged unlike Micros. The sales person was pushy promised we could do all these thi things..no way total lie. We’ve had it since March 2016 and got little to no help programing…we still have many problems. One of our printers won work..it broke in summer..they said it’s not under warranty. .most have a year..they have 6 months..they won’t bring another out..we have to pack it up and send to HP. The help takes weeks sometimes. .it scares us. The programing you have to hit so many items jut to sell a cinnamon rolls. Is there any where to get help.

      • Paul Menta

        I am glad people are seeing that thismsystem and it’s company service are horrible! Their system was charging credit cards 4,5,6xs and they did not have the correct system or licenses to back it up , their tech while system was in full crash for 6 th time…snuck out and left! If you do more than counter service never ever use this system, they brought us to our knees and for. 200 seat restaurant we went back to paper checks….support was horrible, we learned a very expensive lesson….STAY AWAY

  • J Michael Stamm

    Revel
    is the most incapable POS system, I have ever worked with, from support to “white glove support” the people or techs are unbelievable.
    They “DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF CUSTOMER SERVICE “.
    Staff is not trained well and dont know, trying to fly by the seat of there pants.
    This POS System is a joke.
    You get very little info on how to set it up, in your field, Don’t get this for a Deli with Retail.

  • Chris

    Although it’s an innovative product, the quality of customer service is horrible. Three of our restaurants in Europe run on Revel and we have seen significant decrease in stability / consistency. Frequent updates in recent months have caused complete service failure during lunch time (as updates seem to come in at exactly that time). Our account manager is basically helpless, and can only offer us to pay hefty fees to their consultants as well as VIP services in order for us to get support. Far behind NetPos which we use in our other outlets!

    We halted now the implementation of Revel across our 5 restaurants concepts with 70 outlets and are looking to switch to another provider. Further we tried to implement our mobile app with Revel’s API, turned out it is basically unusable at this stage due to limitation of calls we can make to it.

  • Hadi Makhoul

    Horrible Service. Dishonest company. Desperate to take your money, and they charge you more than they promise. Don’t get involved with them. Many P.O.S. System companies out there are way cheaper, and they provide much better service. Won’t mention names, so they don’t say I’m a competitor.

  • Mario Cardona

    I think this system is good only for retail stores and deli’s. But for my bar and pool hall. It’s the worst system ever!!!!! I hate it. Its nothing but a nightare at closing time. I’m going to change my system ASAP! They sold me on a system that doesn’t work for my establishment. Typical sales men’s, let’s see how long it takes to get my money back. It can’t even print an itemized report at all.

  • Krissy

    I signed up for Revel 4 months ago with the promise that they had integration with Quickbooks Desktop. The salesperson told me that all my data would transfer, that I would be able to accept payments on account and have it applied in QB and that I could easily track all customer sales in one place – Quickbooks. After finally getting myself set up to go live – entering every product/pricing and signing a contract with Verifone for a swiper and everything ($25/mo for 3 years!!), I waited until they got me setup with the desktop app to sync my Quickbooks before we went live. Once the app was installed nearly 2 months later (which took them a month to figure out what the issue was as to why the app wouldn’t install) I found out that the information that would be sent to Quickbooks was just a lump sum sales figure…not broken down by customer, product or anything. WHAT?! I contacted them about this issue and was told sorry. SORRY?! Needless to say, I asked them to cancel my account and give me my money back for the wasted 4 months and countless hours I spent on the phone. They gave me a measly $30 credit for returning their hardware and it took them a month to decide to even give that back to me. Poor customer service! I do not run my company this way and refuse to do business with one that doesn’t have the same standards. I would look into another company before contacting Revel.

    • Eric McNamee

      The agent you spoke with may not have gone through the correct mapping procedure with the QuickBook’s Desktop integration. Integrating using the QB wizard isn’t as simple as the integration with QB online. Did you go through the Wizard completely and map your QuickBook’s account correctly?

      • Hadi Makhoul

        What I was told when I signed a lease with Revel, turned out to be totally different. I spoke with Ricardo Oelkers about specific details to make sure that I am not missing anything, and won’t be surprised later. However, I found out later that Ricardo lied to me. I contacted Ricardo a million times, but he never answers his phone. Dishonest company, and bad service. I advice everyone who reads this review to never get involved with them. I wish I researched this company more before I contacted them.

    • Hadi Makhoul

      Hi Krissy, I totally agree with you. Revel Company has horrible service, they’re dishonest, and they charge more money than they promise. They ripped me off with $3,000 for services and equipment that I never used. They got me into signing a lease with them, they sent me the equipment, and they did not follow up with me to help install and set the System up. They charged me $1,000 more than they initially told me. I cancelled the lease, and sent them their equipment back; never opened the boxes or touched the equipment, and they still charged an additional $1000 for canceling the lease. Many companies out there provide the same features, are way cheaper and provide much better service.

  • Steve

    Revel is great, until you actually start using it.

    We have multiple retail stores with over 5,000 SKUs, and Revel is in no-way equipped to handle that amount of information. It’s made very apparent by the fact duplicating the items across multiple locations requires you to MANUALLY drill down into your categories.

    They duplicated our entire customer database (56,000 customers), they duplicated all of our GIFT CARDS, and they duplicated a lot of our 5,600 products as well. They didn’t use our external reference numbers, and ended up creating over $3,000 worth of duplicated gift cards and linking them to duplicated customers.

    Our barcodes from our old system did not work initially, because Revel did not consult us on WHAT OUR ITEM FIELDS MEANT before they imported our live inventory.

    The support team is a nightmare, Tier 1 is located in the Philippines and nobody has the authority to do anything. Tier 2 is the equivalent of a sales rep, no knowledge of the quick-service or retail industry, just empty promises. Tier 3 is technically capable, but has no understanding of financials. Mix all of these together, and you get a disastrous situation when something goes wrong.

    We transferred over 1,000 products from one establishment to another, and because of a hidden setting that wasn’t even available for me to check or uncheck, those products never left our inventory – but somehow ended up in the other locations’ inventory. Now we have inventory assets that we’re liable for, that don’t actually exist.

    Revel gives you the ability to sell a $100 gift card, take payment, THEN ask you which card you want to add value to. The funny thing is, you don’t have to enter a card number. You can actually just hit cancel, or hit “Ok” without entering a number, and it will close the sale for you, effectively taking people’s money, and not giving them anything for it. Their response to this problem? “Unfortunately, this how the system is designed to work. We consulted with our developers and production team and they specifically demanded that this button stays as it is.” – Tier 2 support, this morning.

    We weren’t onboarded, and learned everything ourselves. The Quickbooks Online integration is terrible, and if you want a report for a basic journal entry in Quickbooks 2014, they actually don’t have one. You need your Cost of Goods Sold? Well, that’s a separate report. You need to know how much your cash was AFTER your returns? Well, that’s something you’ll have to manually figure out.

    It took a month to configure ONE tax rate correctly. All the information was provided to them on the initial import spreadsheet… none of it ended up being imported. We now have to pay tax to the government that wasn’t collected by Revel, on thousands of dollars worth of retail sales.

    If you want to change the passwords for your reports, they have to do it, but only if you’re the owner (according to the Role permissions, not the paperwork). When they tell you it’s completed, it’s not. It’s only for one establishment and one report – so you have to call back 3 TIMES about changing a password, and it takes 25 minutes each time.

    If you want to see what associate created a purchase order? You just can’t. Revel can’t either.
    If you want to see a list of your completed inventory transfers? You can’t. Revel can’t either.

    If you want to print item price tags, you have to do it item by item, and you have to have a $300 WiFi-enabled tag printer. There’s no way to do it from the online dashboard, only the iPad POS. We receive orders with 100+ items, so now we’re using a price gun… in 2016.

    If you want to change the buttons available to your staff on the POS (such as creating a fake item to sell to a customer, or taking payments you don’t accept, like checks), you have to go through them. They don’t give you the option to change any of those settings yourself.

    If you got a new receipt printer, you have to go through Revel to create it on the back end before you can use it. If you get a new tag printer, you have to go through Revel to create it on the back end. If you want to use a different IP than the static ones they provide you? You have to go through them.

    The nice thing about Revel is that the support team can physically view your iPad when you’re having trouble with it, but you’d be lying to yourself it you thought that meant they could actually fix your problem.

    We’re stuck with Revel for now, but if you’re considering going with them based on the reviews on this page – don’t. We have created over 60 support tickets in less than two months for basic issues that still have not been resolved, to this day. Nobody will be able to get you a project manager, nobody will on-board you, and nobody will care about your financials. If it weren’t for me being extremely proficient with Excel, our items still wouldn’t have costs associated with them, they wouldn’t have pictures, they wouldn’t have the correct Vendors, and we’d have given away thousands of dollars of free products.

    • Eric

      “We weren’t onboarded, and learned everything ourselves.” tells me a lot. I’m a Revel reseller and handle the support myself and the backend management console is vastly complex for any establishment type. I see the bullet points you bring up in your post and I understand the frustration however learning this system on your own isn’t an overnight process. It takes some merchants weeks to learn the system which is why many prefer using U.S. Based resellers because it’s quick to get us on the phone for support.

      “It took a month to configure ONE tax rate correctly. All the information was provided to them on the initial import spreadsheet… none of it ended up being imported. We now have to pay tax to the government that wasn’t collected by Revel, on thousands of dollars worth of retail sales.” I recently came across a merchant that was dealing with the same issue. They were using the “Quick Add” feature which didn’t assign the default prevailing tax rate to their orders which resulted in thousands of dollars lost in sales tax.

      My company offered a resolution for a complete rebuild of their backend and we’ve sucessfully moved forward with the Revel system without many issues at all. We’ve only faced one issue with hardware which was MAC address related but we resolved it quickly. If you’re not currently working with a reseller and only work with Revel directly then it will be difficult for you to have a new establishment created but I would advise doing so as it seems your existing establishment contains far too much data (especially with the duplicated CRM data). Feel free to reply to this comment and maybe I can take a look at your setup and see what’s causing so many issues. I support enterprise systems in both retail and hospitality on the Revel POS system and have not come across your issues that you mentioned above.

  • Lisa T

    WORST system and ZERO care factor from a single employee!

    I have actually never posted a reply on a forum. I am usually one to move on from things quite quickly and focus on the positives HOWEVER Revel has pushed me to the point that I want to ensure no one else who owns their own business and that is genuinely trying to do their best to go through what i have gone through over the past 12 months.

    I own 2 cafes in Sydney and chose Revel due to their weight scale integration with an iPad. Our initial experience with the sales person was all positive and as soon as we signed on the dotted line the experience has gone beyond ridiculous.

    Without harping on too much the following is what is occurring:
    1. Once you sign the contract you will never hear from anyone again until you chase Revel about where your system is
    2. You will NOT receive adequate training
    3. Your system will be installed in a hasty manner. They will NOT test it. Once you go live and you have issues do not expect anyone to answer any of your calls
    4. Support staff in Australia do NOT exist. PLEASE do not buy this system if you are based in Australia as you will be left to hang out to dry
    5. If you have an issue outside of Monday to Friday, 9 – 5 do NOT expect any assistance.
    6. They will tell you they have 24/7 support. This is true…however the support is located somewhere where the support staff have NO idea about the system, expect to wait at least 30 minutes for your call to be answered and then expect to be put on hold (and then hung up on)
    7. Expect all of your data to just ‘disappear’ and the answer to be “these things just happen”
    8. if you have scales, they won’t work!
    9. If you have scales expect to be audited by the national body and expect not to be certified and have NO ONE from Revel call or help you
    10. Expect to teach yourself how to use the system

    I will also say that I have 10 years of experience working in IT and have a very solid understanding of IT software and hardware yet I am still dumbfounded as to why this system does NOT work.

    For anyone considering a POS system I urge you to stay right away from REVEL and do not even consider going down this path unless you want heart ache, loss of business and hours of sleepless nights.


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  • Chris urbina

    I like the system more now that before this year. I would have said get away from the company at all cost before where as now they are better. I DO NOT care for the way financial issues are handled, I have had points in the past were I was over charge for months on my statement even after I talked to the head person over sales. They would NOT refund my money instead issued a credit. At that point I wanted to get the hell away from them. Over time they have made leaps and bounds in progress. I am still with them but once again think the pricing on services etc are very high.


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  • Marck

    The quaility of their products are not very good. The product is very feature rich but there are many bugs in their platform and we have constant problems. The service provided sometimes is excellent but most times poor and difficult to engage with. As I write this, I have been waiting 6 hours for a response to an issue caused by an upgrade we had to do yesterday cause our POS stopped working due to backend changes made and the version of our POS. The day before I had sent our DB to Revel Support at their request because of another problem and no one mentioned we needed to upgrade or we might have issues. At times the service quality as increased but generally it is poor. The quality of the product is alright but we spend lots of time dealing with issues and in some cases we have had ongoing problems they are unable to resolve and we have given up. They make constant changes to their service strategy and they do not communicate these changes until you hit a wall due to the change. For the past two days, we have had problems and hold times for calls are hours, using the web ticket system we are getting no response, and their chat service is offline. I would say they are a very immature company and how ever they try to change their service strategy seems uncommitted as they keep changing.


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  • Mark Bearce

    Buyer Beware. Revel is not very transparent, either with it’s costs or the requirements to set it up. They did not make it clear that I needed a network point next to my counter in order to set up the system. So much for iPads and wireless. Anyway, I have to have one installed, and while I’m doing that, the software is useless as it can’t even be activated. I asked Revel to refund my first months charge and not bill me until I can set up the hardware. How did they respond to a reasonable request: by sending me an email sobbing about the costs that they incur provisioning an account for me! “Revel incurs server and service costs as soon as we deploy a backend environment for your business and your hardware is purchased. It is the reason why we start the subscription as soon as your account is provisioned and you get access to the management console. ” The service agent did offer me a solution, however: “I hope this helps clarify why we started to bill you on 1/1/2016 and can’t issue a refund. We can however, pause your account. For your case, I do not recommend this as there is a $200 reactivation fee and I see you are currently working with our Onboarding team and need access to the backend.” Thanks for not caring, Revel.


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    • Mark Bearce

      I wanted to post an update to my above comment. Revel responded to my complaint today and agreed to refund the service charges billed during the time that I am not able to use Revel POS due to a lack of a physical network point in the shop where the POS is to be installed. I appreciate their change of heart. We are making arrangements to install the needed network point and will hopefully be up and running in mid-February. I’ll update this comment at a later date to let you know how Revel is working out for us.

  • Pierre Doleans

    Worst experience with a supplier since my opening!
    I saw the all the bad reviews about the support before signing up but my Sales represent based in UK told me that I will have a UK support and it will be very different. And as an IT, I told myself that I will succeed to setup the POS by myself with the documentation.
    You can’t.
    The documentation is not up to date, you have limited privilege on admin and the support UK or whatever is the most useless support I ever encounter. I have spent/wasted 20 days to try to setup the POS for nothing, spending hours with the ‘don’t care/don’t know support’. I just gave up at the end. RUN AWAY!!


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  • bradley wright

    AVOID THIS SYSTEM AT ALL COSTS. I own The Local Shack in Western Australia. I have 3 sites using REVEL and it has been nothing but a nightmare.
    I know of several other businesses experiencing the same thing.

    They promise technical support (even australian support to VIP customers), Richard from revel for VIP customers wrote me an email a few days ago explaining i will get assistant straight away. Today it is 37 degrees and the Scarborough Local Shack is very busy, revel has begun to not send orders,then it gets worst, all the issues listed below are happening. Rang Customer support (during a busy period) they told me they are too busy to take my call, they are dealing with other technical issues, they said someone will call me back, we are still waiting 1 hour later.

    Issues today,
    1. Can not clear KDS sceen
    2. Orders appearing 3 hours after it was paid for
    3. Orders not appearing for 15 minutes on the KDS in the kitchen after being sent from order ipads
    4. Orders not appearing at all on KDS after waiter had sent the order
    5. Orders going to the Runners screen not the kitchen.

    For the past 2 weeks it got so serious with all the issues that i threatened to leave. Revel asked that i document all the issues and send to them. I did that, lots of emails with table numbers, order numbers and specific times. Lauren from Revel Australia responded 5 days later with (All issues are relating to guided access not being on). This was her response to every issue at all venues. I said ok, lets go with that. 3 days later, all ipads are on guided access, scarborough revel is chaotic and my customers are walking out.

    This company does not care, it offers someone to talk to Monday to Friday during office working hours. On the weekend you are on your own and your business will suffer.

    If anyone doubts this review, ask your revel sales person or representative for 10 other companies near by that are using revel with no issues, i have now asked 25 times, they can not give me 1.

    If there is anyone in Australia i can be contacted on 0433 405 737.

    • Eric McNamee

      You’re having a syncing issue. I’ve seen this happen on setups that have more than 3 terminals and where the access points aren’t powerful enough to blanket the entire establishment with the wifi connection. It can also happen on 1 -2 station installs if there is a lot of interference in the network. To resolve the issue you can either setup Revel ethernet connect or mount the access points closer together so the devices can sync correctly. Also make sure the Main is set as Main and then refresh all stations.

      Ask your Revel representative to verify that your Main POS on the backend is set to “Full Sync” as well. I’m U.S. based though so if you want to email me with your issues I may be able to walk you through the configuration directly so your network is correct. I’m a Revel dealer and provide direct support however the time zone difference could be an issue with direct assistance. You can click my name or search me on Card Payment Options for my full contact info.

    • Paul Menta

      Paul Menta USA, Key West Florida, same exact problems as you with revel….almost shut our high volume restaurant down. Found out they lost ability to have Mac minis as server processor or help,the iPad order takers….so freeze, stuff shows up latter, charges credit cards 11 times….yes 11
      You are not alone , we paid the same and have learned at our expense as they figure out how to run multi units….. 33 years in businesses…worst experience ever …so much for iPads……thought was nice…

      P.s. We have had non stop problems for 4.5 months….we unplugged…..we’re done


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  • James Talor

    Best Point of sale I have used in a long time. I own 5 businesses and switching all over to Revel iPad POS System. If you can only imagine the other systems i have used and they were a total headache. Ever since switching to Revel it is life changing.

    Thanks,

    James

    • Chris urbina

      Revel was the first pos I ever had. It was a complete and total disaster when I first got it right as they released ver 2. At that time I had to input and create my entire menu as well as employee records. There actually was no month of September in the program. The system was the baddest experience I had had in owning a resultant for 20 years. It has improved greatly. They are indeed high on pricing. My support since 1/1/15 has been much much better. As of this year my main issue is quick books payroll intergartion.


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  • Beware Revel

    BEWARE

    Revel claims 24/7 customer support included BUT IT IS NOT FREE

    The numbers they provide are NOT toll free and you will incur costs when the system goes down

    Make sure to find a company that guarantees in writing that the calls will be covered

    • Oscar Romero

      Thank you for your comment. Revel does offer 24/7 support which is included when you purchase the system. There are no additional fees for this standard service.

      Additionally, Revel offers a US based phone number and a Canadian based phone number for contacting our Support staff. Access to this service is free for all Revel clients. For your reference, please see the numbers below:

      USA: (415) 744-1433
      Canada: (343) 700-3366

      • Brian

        This is true for a little while, they call this onboarding. We’ve been with Revel a year now and have had ups and downs with the system. We actually had Oscar as our account manager for some time before they decided to reorganize the company and we were not able to contact him again, having to go through tech support. Tech support is a hit or miss, you will sometimes get someone who knows what to do, other times you’ll get the run around for days. I miss the time when I could get good help from our account manager. Most of the time I end up figuring things out myself and have to email or call them back to let them know. $50/month for tech support that does nothing for you is just not worth it, especially if you’re only making a call once every month or two. The total cost of the POS is $100/month if you decide to have tech support.

        In spite of all this, Revel is an overall decent iPad POS system that is always improving. We just hope they improve their tech support.

        • Eric McNamee

          Brian,

          If you’re paying $100/month for the cloud hosting plus support does that also include a payment gateway? If you’re with Mercury then it’s a direct interface but a lot of merchants who select their own processor opt to use USAePay as their gateway which links to the payment processor. I’ve only seen and charge $25 monthly for Revel direct support which is why I ask.

          Also I would be sure to keep the app up to day as often as possible. On your backend you’ll see when Revel announces a new release for both the front and backend management console. The website on Safari to update is all4231.com and you can get the password for the site from Revel support. Currently the latest release is 1525_9 and there are a lot of enhancements with combos and inventory you should look at. From my installs I understand that Revel may seem very pricey compared to other systems, but when you utilize the entire system as it’s designed it’s one of the best POS’s I’ve ever worked with.

          • Brian

            Eric,

            We don’t use a payment gateway that directly links with Revel, it’s an old swipe and sign on paper so on the Revel app we select Credit+ and it assumes the transaction was completed. Yes, I always keep the Revel app up to date and read the release notes on all the improvements.

            You say you are charged $25/month for tech support and I do remember last year it was that price. We were mysteriously backcharged for tech support the months of June and July this year for $50/month in which we disputed the charges and had to prove we cancelled it last year with e-mail correspondence between myself and our account manager. We pay $50/month for the Revel service, which is a decent price, but when they charge us $50/month for tech support as well I think that is overpriced.

            Revel does offer a lot which is why we use it rather than other POS systems on the market. We are always actively looking into other POS systems because they’ve been making many improvements as well.

        • Rodman

          My tech support is provided in the $50/month I pay for each of my two POS system. So I pay $100/month for everything as I have two systems.

          Are you saying you having to pay more than the standard $50/month for each of your systems in order to get tech support?

          • Eric McNamee

            Here’s the monthly charges for Revel (updated pricing model) which includes support, QuickBooks sync, gateway & cloud hosting.

            $145 first terminal
            $70 second terminal
            $30 per each additional terminal

            POS Cost (Out of the box only. Does not include installation fees, shipping or tax)
            Table Service: $1,899
            Quick Service: $1,699
            Retail: $1,899
            Kiosk: $1,599
            Grocery: $1,899
            Mobile: $349.99 (without swiper) & $699.99(with card swiper)

            The out of the box cost includes all the necessary hardware to operate a full station. Additional accessories can be purchased as well (extra printers, scanners, scales etc).

            I work for a credit card processor but I handle the Revel POS installations and support in house. It is a bit more expensive than other systems out there but you get far more than you pay for in my opinion.

            Rodman: It appears you’re on the older pricing model with your support where the cloud hosting is $49 per terminal & any additional fees are related to either gateway fees, QuickBook sync or additional support. Phone support isn’t billed per occurrence.

            Brian: Revel recently released 1525_10 and there are few additional features that they are building into the backend. Is your $50/month support charge directly from Revel or is it from a POS dealer?

          • Rodman

            Eric,

            Thanks for clearing that up. So Revel no longer offers the $50/month per terminal option any longer and now pricing starts at $145 for the first terminal? Wow! If so, and I was a new customer I’d take a very long look at NCR Silver instead of Revel for that price difference.

            I use USAePay Gateway which connects directly to my merchant account (Heartland). I did NOT want to use Mercury. Heard lots of bad things about them and Heartland is great to work with.

            Heartland only charges me $7/month in order to use USAePay with them. So my total out of pocket each month to use Revel is $100 (I have two terminals) + $7 (USAePay fee) = $107.00.

          • Eric McNamee

            Rodman

            The $145 per month is in lieu of paying the expensive up front license fee. It used to be $1,000 for QSR, $1,500 for Retail & Table service, $2,000 for Grocery then the $49 per month per terminal for the cloud hosting. You would also have a separate charge for QuickBooks integration, Gift/Rewards cards and (sometimes) support.

            NCR bought out Aloha and I rarely recommend Aloha to merchants. They dangle a cheap price point which entices a purchase but then you have to pay additional fees each month for the modules to make the system behave the way you need it to. I prefer the flat fee Revel offers which includes everything – cloud hosting, licensing, QuickBooks sync, gift cards, rewards cards & support. Plus if you don’t pay the NCR/Aloha annual support you’re billed an insanely high amount just to get your system back online. If merchants prefer a Windows based POS then I would recommend Future POS over Aloha any day. Future has P2PE embedded and doesn’t charge additional for module integration.

            I agree that Mercury isn’t the best choice for payment processing. I reviewed a proposal the other day that showed Interchange Plus 0.00% & $0.04, which is an impossible account. Then I noticed the assessment fees which were inflated by 0.20% & $0.15. Inflating the wholesale end on a merchant account is harder to catch because merchants just accept the wholesale ‘as is’ while rarely investigation. WorldPay does the same thing from all the statements I’ve seen.

            As per Heartland though I also feel “eehhhh’ about. They’ve had at least one breach a year for the past three years, which tells me they don’t update their security in the event of a breach. The last one in March someone just walked in and took their computers out of an office, and it’s noted that the stolen computers were not encrypted. Lax in security in my eyes.

            Pricing isn’t always the most important part of a merchant account. Security, service, support etc should all be taken into consideration. If you’re satisfied with your rep at Heartland then definitely don’t entertain switching obviously, but keep an eye on data protection as often as possible. Start by making sure your router that your POS is connected to has WPS disabled and is a private SSID. On your main ISP router set static ports and port forward them strictly for your POS. Maintain a proper firewall and if you have public WiFi use a separate router all together with guest access enabled (never let guest access occur on the main connection).

          • Rodman

            Eric,

            Thanks for all the insightful comments! It’s good to hear that Revel now offers the software cheaper on the front end. That $1000 license did suck. I had to buy two of them. I also bought better scanners (Honeywell Orbit) and cash drawer (APG Heavy Duty) that that they don’t offer but still work with their system. That also added to the cost. I bet I’m somewhere close to $4k in each terminal.

            I was looking at the NCR silver a year ago before I made the decision to go with Revel. In my mind, the downsides to the NCR Silver at the time was no customer facing display and crappy Bluetooth scanners/printers. It looks like they finally got their equipment up to par with Revel and have some hardwired non-Bluetooth peripherals now. I was was thinking that NCR Silver was Android based and not Windows. I know they have another software called Counterpoint I think but that is server/client based.

            It was explained to me that Mercury isn’t a true merchant service but merely a reseller for Global. They hook you in with low fees and then, if you don’t meet their expectations of business levels, they will jack you up to extraordinarily high rates until your contract is over.

            I have been extremely happy with Heartland. I’ve had them now going on 8 years. They answer the phone every time I call (which isn’t much) and they just always work. I can only think of one time they were down in the last several years where I couldn’t conduct credit card transactions. When I spoke to my Heartland rep and told him I was interested in moving to Mercury he asked to see the new Mercury contract and adjusted my discount/monthly fees down to nearly where the Mercury contract was going to have them. I can’t speak to their security breaches. I think this seems more of a common place issue than specific to any company nowadays. I’m not saying it’s excusable I’m just saying that no company is exempt from security breaches any longer.

            I’m a former CCNA so I’m pretty well versed in networking setup and security. That is probably why I didn’t have any of the issues that people are having setting up and using Revel. I actually don’t offer guest wifi. People aren’t in my retail store long enough to need it and I don’t offer them places to “hang out” like restaurants and coffee shops do. I want them to get in and out, preferably with a sale of course, as quickly as possible.

  • Jeffrey A. Stuart

    I’m happy to amend my comments here and report a good ending to my initial negative experience. I did not want to leave my out of date post below, however, CPO does not allow you to edit or delete posts.
    I was contacted by individuals at Revel who were very interested in my story and have taken action to alleviate all of my concerns and ultimately stand by their product. In fact, they are now very persistent in doing so.
    I applaud the change and I still remain excited by the prospect of the Revel/QBO integration and believe our “reboot” will be much better this time.
    Thank you Revel.

    • Eric McNamee

      Hardware requirements for a single station are as follows

      iPad with Stand
      Cash Drawer
      Receipt Printer (Kitchen or Bar printer separate for restaurants)
      Card reader with network adapter
      Single Channel Access Point
      Revel configured router (private network w/ WPS disabled)
      5 Port switch
      Surge Protector
      Home run ethernet line from ISP modem to Revel modem.

      Can you please specify the “does not work as advertised” part of your comment? I setup a lot of Revel backends and offer support on the system and most of the time when a merchant says it doesn’t work as it was shown is because there are sections of the backend that aren’t setup correctly. I can give you a guided walkthrough if you’d like on how to configure the system to your specifications.

  • emily

    The absolute worst POS system I have ever worked with. The positive reviews are obviously all fake. I have had this system for almost a year now and am now shopping for a new POS due to the fact that it is extremely unstable and crashes. I kept hoping that Revel would be able to fix this product and make it function well, but that is not happening. The last crash I had, I spent 2 hours on the phone with support before it was fixed and in that time, it was a busy shift in which the restaurant was sent into complete chaos. For the mental health of myself and my staff, I cannot wait to move to a more stable, developed POS.

    • Eric McNamee

      Hi Emily,

      Can you explain the issues you were having? I’ve installed a bunch of Revel POS’s and the only hardware issue I have come across was an iPad went into a discharge state and wouldn’t hold a charge. That was an Apple issue though.

      When you say “crash” do you mean the iOS crashed or the Revel app crashed? When any iOS app crashes you force close the app out of memory, then do a hard reset which resolves the issue. Also the version of iOS you are on has to be the latest version as well as the latest version of Atlas for Revel.

  • Jim BVR

    Revel POS… where do I begin. We have started a good sized restaurant operation and went with them. From day one, it’s been a complete comedy of errors. Paid for 2 day air and pieces still arrived more than a week later. Ok, no big deal but it did raise the first flag. The Installation Team they use on the east coast is a couple of very nice girls that know how to physically put the pieces together but setting up the wireless and overall integration was beyond their capability. I’m always friendly and with this, can get someone’s life story with ease. Neither of these install babes have an IT background or anything more than the initial 2 week training period. Revel had to hire an outside company to complete the installation and system integration. These guys were good, however we have had the system for over a month now and are still not up and running. Was told yesterday that the original install babes are coming out to do the system training? This should be really interesting since neither of them have any restaurant experience…or IT experience. This will be like a priest giving marriage counseling :)
    Their initial onboarding must begin with a conference call from their support center…in the Philippine Islands. Language barrier anyone? Nothing can be done until this is accomplished. If you are on the east coast, good luck with the time zone issues as the head of the installation department…..is in San Francisco. Other people in the chain of command have phone numbers but you cannot leave a message as conveniently, their voice mail is always full for some odd reason :)
    Bottom line: this is a nightshade IT company and no one in their entire staff has owned a restaurant or even worked in one for that matter. Do not consider this company at anytime. We will try to get open with this but it will soon be sold on eBay for scrap as in one year or less, we’ll buy a professional system like Squirrel or Aloha. I guess if you’re a small, single point system operation, it might work but if have anything similar to what we have, 5 hard points with the iPad minis/cash drawer and printer with 3 KDMs (the reason why we went with them because just having a printer in the kitchen is dinosaur technology and many iPad based system do not offer this or can integrate with KDMs) with the expansion to an additional 7 walk-around iPads for outdoor services…this is not the system for you. Do not be tempted by the seemingly low initial cost and the slick sales guy, literally with the slick hair that can talk the paint off of a wall. Save your money and go with a real system and do not suffer the strategic error that we have made with this system.

    • Rodman

      They must have changed stuff since last year when I joined. I didn’t have to do a conference call at all for onboarding. I just sent them an e-mail that contained my merchant account’s required information in order to process credit cards. That was actually pretty easy.

      But the setup is tough, you are right. Unfortunately, its the nature of the beast if you want to use wireless devices. Not having a technical background can bite you in the ass here during setup. Especially if you need to assign/re-assign IP address, change the channel/frequency of the access point because of interference in your area, running cables, ensuring the access point is providing acceptable coverage to all your devices, etc, interfacing their router with your existing router, etc…

      There is a lot going on behind the scenes that really needs to be done by someone who knows networking. Just dumping it in the lap of someone who doesn’t have this kind of expertise is asking for trouble. It is my opinion that Revel should send out a “setup person” to every new customer in order to install the hardware properly. That should be part of the $1000 fee for the software license.

      It’s the only way they are going to be successful in the small business market. Their branding is taking a beating on line from small business owners everywhere and most of it has to do with initial setup!!

    • Eric McNamee

      It appears you purchased the system directly from Revel versus using a dealer based on your explanation. Is that correct? Also can you give a detailed description of the issues you have with the system versus just the installation?

  • Jeffrey A. Stuart

    Bottom Line Upfront: If you are looking into getting this systems for QBO integration, DON”T DO IT. It’s not even close to being ready for primetime and at least for me, now that it admittedly doesn’t work as advertised, they won’t give me my money back.
    ——————————————————-
    I want to really like this system. It looks polished and appears to be on the right track conceptually and I think it will eventually given Intuit is involved. But it needs to work. I first became aware of Revel a few years ago when looking into another business opportunity that in the end didn’t materialize. We would have needed a POS and Revel was going to be the solution. So with my current business, when it was announced that Intuit was partnering with Revel I was excited and took the plunge immediately.

    The sales staff was very responsive and polished and the equipment was delivered quickly. Setup was very easy and the initial onboarding was impressive. But then challenges set in and getting a response from their troubleshooters was difficult to say the least. It’s been three months since I purchased the system (did it in my business off season) and I have now hit my busy period and don’t have time to help them fix the problems they caused. Specifics:

    1. Upon initial lash up with my QBO, Revel immediately created duplicates of all of my customer files that subsequently replicated with another app that I am running with QBO. It’s a real mess. Revel’s solution was to credit me for buying an app in QBO that I can go through and delete duplicates quicker than one-by-one as QBO affords. But it’s still time consuming, falls completely on me to do it AND it doesn’t eliminate the duplicates from other app running with QBO. So now I have plenty of extra data grooming to do thanks to Revel.
    2. The troubleshooters don’t seem to have a clear understanding of how the integration is supposed to work as evidenced by conflicting information I received regarding the inability of Revel to push inventory data to QBO. In the end, one of their reps simply admitted to me that it doesn’t work and that they need to do some rework on the entire system. So if you think you are going to get a comprehensive inventory management tool working with QBO, that’s not the case. Perhaps they have backed off on advertising this. I don’t know.
    3. Security is a concern, at least in practices of the troubleshooters. In my initial calls, it was suggested more than once that I simply email my QBO credentials to them so that they could log in and look around for problems (Easter egging?) Far cry from the screen sharing that one would expect in such a situation from a more mature service.
    4. Getting a hold of them to troubleshoot is almost impossible. In fact, talking to anyone with the authority to make things happen is very difficult. I scheduled multiple “screen shares” via email only to be “stood up” and only get voice mail when calling to see if we were still meeting. In short, there was no sense of urgency to get this thing fixed even with my busy season rapidly approaching. On a humorous note, one of the troubleshooters attempted to up sell me on their pending service management functionality during one call. Interesting tact when even the basic functions aren’t working.
    I’m out of time to transition my POS for the new season and I’m now at the point that I can’t get them to call me back (I have left four messages and counting) and I will be canceling my subscription to at least stop their monthly draws on my account. I’m out about $3000 that they refuse to refund for a system that they couldn’t get working and extra work that I have to do to clean up my data. My staff jokingly calls it “Revel….P….O….S” and they don’t mean “Point of Sale.” Quite simply, it has been a train wreck and a huge black eye for a company that I was VERY EXCITED to do business with in the beginning. \
    I would welcome a response here by someone from the company and will amend my post IF AND WHEN they do right. I have a few industry colleagues who had been considering this product as well and have dissuaded them by my experience already. All I can do here is likewise offer my cautionary tale to others.

    • M

      Contest the charges. They will never fight it. Then tell you CC company to block all future charges. These clown shoes call me twice a month to see how I am liking the system. I never even went past day 1 with them.

    • Rodman

      Agree with holding off on purchasing them with the intent of the QB integration feature. I use Quick Books for my business but would never think to integrate both the POS and QB together. I see lots of issues with this as its way too many moving parts. Who you going to call when it screws your books up? QB or Revel?

      I actually like my Revel Pos (bought two systems) now but it took months of hard work to get it just like I want it. Lots of tech support and head scratching. I bet I put in 500 man hours of working with it to finally get it polished enough for my cashiers to use it without issue. I’m still not 100% satisfied but it’s better than the old system I came from.

      This is the real issue with it. If you don’t have the requisite time to spend on this software you will come to hate it. It cannot be setup by a person with limited tech experience. It’s simply too complicated.

    • Jennifer

      The QBO integration is horrible, and trying to reach someone who actually KNOWS accounting principles is beyond frustrating – non-accountants should NOT be writing software to integrate with QB!! The mapping is too limited, payments are posting to the wrong G/L accounts, discounts and sales tax are downloading incorrectly. I had to point out to tech support the difference between selling gifts cards vs. using gifts cards as a form of payment and the different accounting practices for both. I am ready to bail out of the integration – it’s causing me more trouble than it’s worth.

      • Rodman

        “non-accountants should NOT be writing software to integrate with QB!!”

        +1

        I think this is another part of the problem with Revel. Their programmers and software design staff have little to zero retail experience. I’ve been in retail for over 20 years and I can point out many problem areas in the POS system that would drastically improve their software.

        I’ve submitted lots of enhancement requests but I fear most fall on deaf ears.

    • Jeffrey A. Stuart

      I’m happy to amend my comments here and report a good ending this.

      I was contacted by an individual by Revel who was very interested in my story and has taken action to alleviate all of my concerns and ultimately stand by their product. In fact, they are now very persistent in doing so. I applaud the change and living up to my promise in my initial post, I provide this update.

      I still remain excited by the prospect of the Revel/QBO integration and believe our “reboot” will be much better this time.

      Thank you Revel.

  • Jeremy Maul

    I ordered a system for a juice bar we are opening. Our buildout has taken a lot longer than projected so I haven’t been able to get them a start date. That being said, I just found out they have been charging me $50 a month for four months. I’ve asked 3 times for a refund and they keep telling me they’re going to get around to it. I’m beyond disgusted with this company.

    • David Grant

      I’m sorry for the confusion on our monthly hosting charges. Once you have signed up with Revel we start your monthly hosting charges. We do not charge based on usage, but have found a flat rate model works best for our customers. The monthly hosting charges cover your management console and all of Revel’s standard services.

  • Aaron Roberts

    Our establishment, Flying Saucer Pizza, has been around since 2005. During this time frame we’ve had 3 POS systems. The first was a Windows-based system designed for restaurants. We were one year in and after 70K transactions the system started falling over. It wasn’t scalable for a single restaurant. When I contacted support the first thing they asked for was my credit card number. Support was only free for the first 60 days. We dropped them like a hot rock. Our next system was another prevalent Pizza-based POS system which also ran on Windows. We ran into these guys at the Pizza Expo in Vegas. It seemed like these guys had it all together. For several years it ran fairly well but it began to experience database integrity issues. This, coupled a lack of support and an inability to upgrade to fix bugs, and a lack of online ordering forced us to look in a different direction. Looking around at other solutions the things which frustrated me about the existing systems was:
    1) Hardware which is going to fail and Operating systems I have to license
    2) The need for regular backups and maintenance
    3) The inability to see solid reporting and control my ecosystem from anywhere
    4) The inability to scale my business

    There weren’t many solutions out there which offered this. I did know that an iPad we’ve personally owned for a few years, was one of the toughest and most reliable pieces of hardware in our house, and not even our 2 year old could destroy it (although she tried). I’m not saying they are unbreakable but Apple had proven they passed the reliability mark long ago. My desire was for something which ran on an iPad but could offer some of the things I needed to support and grow my restaurant. So, I downloaded and evaluated Revel on my personal iPad, and a few months later I spoke with Revel Sales and pulled the trigger.

    While the prices may seem high in comparison to other iPad based POS systems, those prices pale in comparison the cost of an enterprise computer-based POS, so this didn’t bother me as long as Revel could do what I needed. My hardware was shipped and once I had it set up and everything communicating I spent some time working on backend setup. It takes time to do it right. (Note I wish revel had templates for different types of establishments like pizza or coffee shop). There are many settings to consider and review, but doing it right will save you tons headaches later. I suspect many of the other folks in this thread With pizza for example, there are many modifiers, and Revel has made it convenient for you to customize modifiers in multiple ways. This is very powerful. Pricing modifiers correctly can make be make or break for pizza chains. Revel even allows you to build in the raw ingredients to your modifier so you can track your COGS. We didn’t use this feature at first, but are now once we realized what it could do. This is a great advantage of cloud software, the data is there, and we can collect and analyze as much as we desire, and Revel will continue to add new features to make us more efficient than our competition. Once I had everything set up. I performed testing for a several weeks, and had nearly everything ready to go. Then without warning, while I was toward the tail end of my testing phase, my server for my existing POS died. Disaster right? Fortunately I had been running Revel next to my existing system and said to my manager, “no better time than the present”, so we literally yanked the hardware out, slide the iPads into place and started using them. I can’t say it was super easy at first, mostly because my staff wasn’t trained. They had to learn everything but that transition took a few days. There were other issues too, but but we spoke with support and got through them. Fortunately Revel doesn’t charge for support as a separate service. It’s built into the monthly cost of service. I hope it stays that way, and I’d be willing to pay a little more to keep this benefit. This is one of the more expensive parts of running a technology company and so that cost gets passed to us. From what I can tell Revel has off-shored that service and the folks I’ve spoken with have become fairly proficient in answering my questions. If they can’t then they escalate. I’m not saying I’ve been able to get through in every instance. Once there was an issue with our merchant service. They changed their software and that broke revel’s API with the service so Revel was backed up. We ran cash for 45 minutes and a tech did call me back, but by then the service was up again. Revel’s support is far better than anything I’ve seen in this industry. I think a tip for revel would be to partner with someone who could set up systems for non-technical customers (Geeksquad or something). I realize this cost would get passed onto us customers, but it would be worth it. Preparation is key to making any system like this work seamlessly, and while iPads are pretty user friendly, they have may options, and from time to time the Wi-fi stack dies and has to be restarted (so restart your iPads every few days).

    Up until December of this year, for online ordering we were using a service which takes online orders and then faxes/emails them to our establishment. Then my staff has to go through the pain and agony of hand entering this into our POS, and this service was not cheap. We did such high volumes of online orders, our bill was nearly $500/month! Our customers relied on online ordering and we have become very dependent upon it. I knew Revel supported online ordering, but recently, they have had a big effort toward delivering online ordering for their POS customers. The benefit was Web orders just show up in the POS. No transcription of orders…no time to hand enter…no human errors. This was the holy grail for us. So far it’s been very reliable. When we have issues, Revel is quick to fix them. It has honestly made my kitchen staff 20% more effective, because we’re not dedicating someone to deal with this. My only nit here is that the look and feel doesn’t fit that of my website, but Revel does offer the ability to have your own web developer download code and build your own branded version of their interface for your establishment. We’re heading that direction so we can have total integration. My next goal is to provide the kiosk version of revel in several craft beer tasting rooms around us for their customers to order pizza, so this system is allowing us to grow outside of our restaurant’s footprint.

    So, in summary:
    1) If my hardware fails, I can run to Staples and have an iPad in 20 minutes and replace the one I pulled from another station in another 30 minutes, while my system continues to operate.
    2) I don’t worry about backups or maintenance any longer.
    3) I have a bird’s eye view of my establishment from anywhere and can see exactly what’s going on at all times!
    4) When I open another store, it’s a piece of cake.

    I know I took a gamble going the direction of a cloud-based POS, but I think that gamble will allow my company to beat competition by putting info at my fingertips I didn’t have before, scale my business, help us adapt and change to new forms of social media, payments, and digital marketing yet to be discovered. I think those who can’t adapt will go the way of the book store.

    • Rodman

      Aaron,

      I have basically the same experience you have with using Revel for my business.

      The bottom line is that it takes time to learn this system and you MUST be somewhat computer savvy. I spent several months learning and training myself and my employees before we went “live” with it. I couldn’t even tell you how many hundreds of hours I have spent in the backend, frontend, reading the manual, watching the videos, and just experimenting with the system overall. The person below who left a review expected the system to work on opening day without any training or learning curve isn’t being realistic.

      But once it is up and working it works really well. I will admit that I wish they spent more time adding features to the retail side of the system versus the food side of the system. It is quite obvious that it was originally built for the food industry. But for my retail needs it works fine.

      And like you, I also like if I have an iPad that craps the bed, I can run down to Wal-Mart and pick up another one and be back up an running within the hour with no configuration.

  • Peter

    Like everyone else posting comments above, I thought that Revel was a great solution to my needs until I started using it. All the parts that I could test before I purchased worked great but all the parts that I could not test did NOT work well. Our biggest problem which ultimately made us switch to another POS 6 weeks after purchasing Revel was a bad access point that tech support could not fix. We were unable to process credit cards or open our cash drawer for almost a week and they never sent someone out to fix it. Additionally, the inventory management system is terrible, many reporting features don’t work as they should, the system crashes and the company is extremely disorganized.

    Avoid revel, worst decision I have ever made!! I’m fighting them to get my money back.

  • Matt

    I have similar experience as most of the negative reviews here.

    Decided to switch to Revel after reading some good things about them. Started the process of signing up. It became clear almost immediately I had made a mistake. Nobody from Revel reached out to me about getting everything after I received my equipment. Despite various emails and phone calls to them. I started to also here some bad things about them from various people in the restaurant/bar business in NYC. It was enough to make me change my mind on them.

    Two weeks after signing up for them and never having the system actually up and running I informed them of my decision not to go with them. Told them I wished to return all equipment, which had never actually been even taken out of the box. After that all I received was hostility from them. Emails were never returned and phone calls were short and I was passed around with never getting any answers or resolutions.

    About two weeks went by and I noticed a $400 charge on my CC and a $49 monthly charge. At that point I contested all charges from them including the initial charges from them for the equipment. I don’t think they even contested the charges because the dispute went to the 30 day mark and I was refunded.

    Check my CC account today and I have more charges from them. Just contacted Amex and they are now blocked from making any other charges to my card.

    I made several attempts to resolve this with them before I searched out forums to start posting about this.

    STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY

  • Cloud9

    We purchased the revel system for our Frozen Yogurt & Coffee Shop. There is no other way to state this other than this purchase was and still is a nightmare. We did not gain access to the back end in the time frame promised as ‘they were busy’. They uploaded their own spreadsheet incorrectly so at 1AM, prior to our grand opening I was working with a tech to straighten it out. Completely their fault, which the tech admitted to. Had we been given timely access and had Revel responded timely we would not have been against the clock like that. The system would do things Revel would tell us was impossible from a programming standpoint, yet they witnessed it happen. We had several problems from day 1 including sales not tracking – which we were told was a ‘small’ problem. Not sure how one runs a business without sales tracking. Most sales were unable to be recovered even though they sold us total recovery from the ‘cloud’ if something went wrong. Support desk techs told us that communication within the company and especially from the techs to the program engineers was almost non-existent. In the 30 days we had the system, we were on the phone with tech at least once per day, if not more. Many times calls were not returned. They’d send us updates which wiped our previous fixes so our problems compounded rapidly. The President of the company even closed a work ticket with “I don’t know what this is – closing” which of course didn’t get resolved because it was closed – until we called asking for update. We have over 100 pages of documentation of problems with Revel. Approximately 21 days into this system, we expressed our intent to return the system. We called several days in a row asking support to send a message to the President or someone we could talk to about returning the system – never a response back which we were told by the tech would be the case. We sent an email to the Director of Accounts, sent certified letter to President of company of our intent – all with no response.
    As a side note – in our many, many calls and conversations with multiple people at Revel, only 1 (one) had restaurant experience of any sort. Their system shows this.
    We unplugged the system and sent it back. Revel recognizes receipt but refuses to return any money. We have paid for the month we used the system – used it in a manner of a fancy calculator as it did not perform as advertised. It continually crashed; did not report sales most of the time; did not properly send credit cards for processing (we had over 3K$ in unprocessed credit card transactions but didn’t know it as the system wasn’t tracking sales – and for the record the credit processing company said that they have the most problems with the Revel system), intermittently would not close the business day; they could not produce a COGS report, which they said the system could do…..and on & on the list goes. The lack of internal communication is evident in the working (or nonworking) of their system. They are quite bold – we get monthly calls asking how the Revel system is working for us, how our account manager is performing and now we are getting calls from a collection agency stating we owe Revel money. We tell them we no longer have the system but calls still come.
    Revel has ignored requests by our attorney to refund monies, San Francisco BBB inquiry resulted in a response well after the deadline. With all the competent POS companies, I would highly recommend you steer clear of Revel Systems. We are using Pinnacle’s Calypso System and couldn’t be more happy. Calypso’s look might not be as ‘hip’ as an ipad, but it works!

  • Lilly

    I’m afraid my experiences with REVEL are very similar to Daniel’s I’ve been a customer since 2011 now I’m searching for a new POS provider. Why? because they apparently think it’s O.K. to take money out of my Bank Account Randomly without warning or AUTHORZATION. When you try and talk to someone in Billing you are sent around a maze of people who cant help you ultimately directing you to E-Mail. Three e-mails later and still no answers. They don’t know anything about customer relations or proper protocols. I’m not talking about a small amount of money either but a large sum. My advice is to stay away from these people they don’t care about their customers they don’t even want to talk to you. It’s too bad because it is a pretty good system, just no-one should mess with my money. That alone should be enough to scare you away.

  • Daniel

    We enthusiastically and optimistically signed up for REVEL for our business, wowed by all the promised features, including KDS, online ordering, kiosk mode, and tableside ordering. We are a cafe/restaurant that does both takeout and table service but we primarily do table service. REVEL from the get go was extremely buggy. The handhelds continually have connectivity issues, our printers keep reprinting orders, our stationary POS stops connecting to main server for no apparent reason, our receipt printers stop communication with the POS (which hampers our ability to open our cash drawer), and support is extremely difficult to work with! The list goes on and on of issues we have had. Kiosk mode was incomplete (though they charged me for both the software and monthly fee to have it), online ordering was far from done (recently finished but ugly and im afriad to touch it for $50/month based on how their in house software works), and the handhelds for tableside ordering are useless and we use one as a stationary POS (though im paying for 3 additional handhelds on a monthly basis). The “Account manager” who has had glimpses of being a nice person, is too busy for her own good to deal with a small time account like ours, not that she has anything she can help us with. They also don’t realllly do anything in regards to requests in feature changes. I have made multiple requests to my account manager that have disappeared. Also updating the app is a hassle, you have to delete and reinstall the app on each ipad. If you have more than 2 ipads its a major inconvenience.

    A few other frustrations with them:
    -no bill for my monthly charge, just a charge to my CC so im never 100% sure, unless i check with them of when they are charging me and for what. They were charging me for 3 months $50 a month for gift cards services that we weren’t interested in using (they also refused to give us back the $50/month that i had paid already- they have a strict no refund policy).

    -Some updates on the backend have caused some custom setting we like to change for no apparent reason (an easy fix but frustrating).

    – Some features on the backend are unavailable to us, up until recently, such as role accessibility and configuring table layouts.

    -I received a courtesy call asking on our experience and I told them im extremely unhappy and am strongly considering leaving….the gentleman apologized, said he’d pass it along, and haven’t heard from them in a month following.

    -Support Sucks! in an emergency situation there is no one who can truly help us effectively. Expect to be on the phone with them for an hour, even during your rushes at the bussiest times of the day, until a solution is given. Communication with support is very difficult as well. I don’t know if there is a language barrier but there have been times when they just straight up don’t listen to what I just told them (in basic and plain english).

    – The worst part of REVEL is the fact that they are so expensive. You would think a company who you pay thousands of dollars for software licenses to use their products and a high monthly fee to use their product should work and have great service but they dont!

    The only positives I have experienced with REVEL is their back office and some features. Their back office is accessible anywhere and they have a couple of nice features, which are available on other ipad POS systems. The only person who ive spoken to whos been genuinely helpful and seemed to care about helping us was an upper level support gentleman. It took us days to be able to reach the right level of support and speak to someone who can address our issue properly (though we still experience some of the issues we were dealing with).

    We are still using REVEL for the time being but are actively seeking to move to another POS that works consistently and cares about its users. My recommendation if you are considering using REVEL, it seems to be popular and useful for the retail sector of the food world, not for table service. It handles transactions relatively well but when it comes to running a full service restaurant, there are too many problems for it to be a reliable POS.

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