Parental Control App - OurPact

Thank goodness I trialled this with our younger daughter first. I can’t quite imagine the horrors that would have ensued had we dived straight in and tried installing this for our eldest, who was actually the one most in need of help to use her phone safely and appropriately. Our younger daughter, who is very sensible and mature, was rather upset to see that OurPact had lost her carefully chosen wallpapers and customisations, removed her app folders, and randomly made lots of blank icons appear for long-deleted apps. She found it really irritating (“insulting” was her word) to have to go into the OurPact Junior app to press “Play” every time she wanted to use anything on her phone, even checking a homework app or her calendar. Our eldest, who is at sixth form college, where unrestricted phone use is more or less assumed for accessing college resources and communications, but for whom we most need to monitor phone use (long, sad, story), would (a) be very singled out by this amongst her peers, which would cause yet more issues, and (b) probably just try to source a phone clandestinely, at which point we would be in the you-know-what. If it is possible to exclude any apps from screen time allowances, e.g. ebook readers, the Apple Music app, we couldn’t work out how to do so. Given that this was one of the major reasons for trying OurPact, being a valid complaint about the limitations of iOS ScreenTime, we just gave up at this point and uninstalled the whole thing. I don’t know whether it had anything to do with the installation of OurPact, but the iCloud backups which my daughter had performed before the installation was no longer visible, so we could not simply restore her earlier configuration and all the Home Screen layout and customisation she had had previously. I think one would have to be having SERIOUS issues with overuse of phones to put up with the clunkiness of this app. I will also be wary in future of apps that install management profiles, because they do seem to make quite a mess of phone settings that really should be nothing to do with their function.

I try to chill and this stupid app makes me unable to do so, i can’t even delete unused apps meaning storage is out of the question

What’s with the two weeks free trial of Premium +? Once you click on it it says that if you use it or even download it then you have to pay £80 odd quid for the year???! That is NOT a free trial of the upgrade. I reckon negative reviews about parenting must be written by aggrieved teenagers. Kids should not be spending the amount of time online that they do. They are living virtual instead of real lives and this helps to bring them back into the family!! Edit: A couple of years later and still subscribed however suddenly they have taken half the options off that I used to get. It’s one thing offering them for extra but if someone is paying on subscription you can’t suddenly remove stuff !!!

I paid for premium on this app but the controls, especially adding extra time, did not work which caused tension between my girls and me. One of my girls’ phones was hacked whilst paying for premium and she watched someone remotely opening her phone and accessing her messages. I contacted OurPact support three months ago but my messages have been ignored. Don’t waste your money on this app. It’s terrible.

I am writing to express my disappointment and frustration with OurPact’s service and customer support. Despite being a paying customer with two children attempting to use the service, I have faced ongoing service issues and inadequate responses from the support team. Below is a timeline of events leading to this complaint: 1. Initial Contact (Aug 22, 2023): Reported an issue regarding my subscription being canceled despite continued payment through my Apple ID. 2. Subsequent Communication (Aug 22, 2023): Explained my consistent payments and requested a resolution for the missing payments. 3. Further Follow-up (Aug 22, 2023): Suggested that OurPact resolve the issue with Apple and requested either service restoration or a refund for the 4 months of unprovided service. 4. OurPact’s Response (Aug 22, 2023): Promised review by a team lead and further contact. 5. Repeated Follow-up (Sep 8, 2023): After 17 days of no response, reiterated the need for urgent resolution. 6. Automated Response (Sep 5, 2023): Received an automated message indicating that my ticket had been reviewed. 7. Final Follow-up (Oct 2, 2023): After 41 days since the initial contact, requested assistance in obtaining a refund for 5 months of charged but unprovided service. As of today, November 30, 2023, it has been over 100 days since my initial contact with OurPact on August 22, 2023 and my issues remain unresolved without any contact from the company. During this period, I have continued to pay for a service that is not working. This situation reflects poorly on OurPact’s commitment to customer satisfaction and support. I am seeking a full refund for the months during which the service was not provided. This situation has caused significant inconvenience and disappointment. I am sharing my experience to caution potential customers and parents and urge OurPact to address these serious customer service deficiencies and deeper security issues.

Have tried a few, but this is the best there is out there. Keeps the little ones safe and they can earn more screen time as needed. Your search for THE parental app is over. If parental guidance apps are started early enough, there will be better acceptance by junior! Support are excellent.

Do not download this app it is collecting your child’s personal information

Alright, let’s get one thing straight here. What I am about to say should not mean that I don’t deserve the respect of being listened to, so please don’t skip past this review, instead please listen to what I have to say. Thank you for your understanding and kindness. Yes, I am a child. Yes, this app is being used on me. But please, listen to me, because if you are a parent and considering getting this app for your child, you deserve to know what consequences, albeit unintended, this will have. In getting this app, my parents have taken away the people I trust most, broken my trust in them, and caused my mental health to severely decline. Here, let me explain. To me, my friends and family are the most important things in the world, and I have a lot of friends that can only communicate on social media apps such as WhatsApp, Discord, Zoom, Instagram, and TikTok. We don’t get to see each other, as they live far away, and this is the only way we can communicate. We are so close that we consider each other family, and I feel so safe with them. They are the people I trust most in the world. But recently, I was diagnosed with CPTSD and autism. So my parents decided to block all my social media using this app. And just like that, the people I trusted, the ones I could say “I trust you” to and actually mean it, were torn away from me. This was months ago. I haven’t been able to speak to them since. Ever since then, I have been having mental breakdowns every other day, including panic attacks, meltdowns, auditory hallucinations, and more. Every night, I have at least one nightmare, either about my narcissistic abuser - aka my “best friend” and her family - or about something awful happening to those friends and me not being able to save them because I wasn’t there. The days I don’t have mental breakdowns, I spend a good portion of them crying silently so that no one can hear me, because I don’t trust anyone here. Not even my parents. Don’t get me wrong, I love my parents -1000000 times more than I love myself (it’s a negative number because I hate myself and a negative number times a negative number = a positive number), but since this app took away the people I trusted, my trust in my parents completely shattered. It’s so painful for me to not be able to trust them, and to be so separated from the people I genuinely trust most in this world. I feel so violated, controlled, and trapped, and it makes me much more distrusting, irritable, and in fact, aggressive toward

OurPact is no longer working with Face ID. Every time I open the app I am required to login again. I have now had 2 assurances that they have resolved the issue, followed their instructions and the problem remains!

Had this app a long time but all of a sudden it requires you to log in with email and password each and every time. This is so annoying and frustrating. It was never this way before. Totally useless now, what a waste!