SMART tag Reviews

After yesterday’s update it’s not showing when the bus leaves the bus barn and is in route to the house. Would have missed the bus if I hadn’t looked out the window. Unlike the web based version from last year that actually worked this one does not. SMARTtag is garbage. It stops showing the bus location when it is about 3 blocks away from me. Having to stand outside in the rain so we don’t miss it. Same thing happens in the afternoon when it’s coming from the school. CCISD says it’s a developer issue. SMARTtag developer says it’s a school district issue. Someone needs to fix this. Our tax dollars are paying for it and it’s not working as expected.

Customer support team is about as bad as SMARTtag . Contacted them today because I stopped getting notifications of when my children load and unload since the first day of school despite them having been on the bus everyday. Just wanted to see if that was an issue they were still working on. I receive a response on how to set up my app. ??? I then explain my issue again in another email and state that my app is set up already. I later receive a screenshot which shows my children’s riding activities on the first day of school and nothing else. She then tells me there’s no record of them tapping on or being entered manually- EXCEPT I WATCHED my son tap on this morning which is what prompted my email. I would just appreciate if someone read my email and responded accordingly instead of wasting my time with boilerplate responses. We’ve now spent the entire day emailing back and forth and I have less confidence in SMARTtag than I did before and I still don’t know the answer to my previous question… as a matter of fact I’m left with more questions? Like how is this SMARTtag providing any parent assurances????

App is glitchy. Cannot load my kid’s info, nothing pops up when I open so I can’t even change the pickups. Gives me the circle of death. I’ve tried restarting SMARTtag and my phone. I’ve deleted SMARTtag and re-downloaded it. Nothing. It’s a terrible app and I wish my child’s school didn’t use this. Waste of time. Emailing the school officials is a lot faster when it comes to changing pickups and it’s probably faster and better at this point.

I have screen shots of SMARTtag being blank on my end. My ex has downloaded SMARTtag and it works fine for her. Maybe SMARTtag doesn’t allow two devices to use it at the same time but we’ve ruled that out. I asked her to log out and I logged in and it’s the same. Screen is blank on my end and no info pops up.

Had to delete it and reinstall to link my student even at that the student page is blank and notifications are bank. After i successfully linked the student i couldn't see any bus routes and information during pick up time. Now SMARTtag is telling me to link students again. I called the smart tag number was on hold for an hour and still i wasn’t connected to an agent. Plus i’m using the current version of SMARTtag . SMARTtag is really frustrating to use.

First of all, it won’t download to your actual phone. So the only way that you can actually access it is you have to keep going back into SMARTtag Store and click on it that way. In Other words, when you download SMARTtag , it doesn’t appear on your actual home screen of your phone.

Also, after you register your child, and it says, click on dashboard, or link another student, none of those buttons actually does anything. You click on them and they flash, but you don’t go anywhere. If you exit out of SMARTtag , and try to log back in, your child that you just registered has disappeared and you have to start all over on a loop.

I was initially excited about the text updates but found that SMARTtag itself doesn’t always load even though I’m connected my home wifi. It seems to happen when my children are suppose to getting on the bus. I’m not sure if it’s because there’s too many parents try to check at the same time causing it to crash but this is a major issue. Just sits on a blank screen attempting to connect and won’t.

I’m so tired of getting these notifications late. My app is updated and today I got a notification stating the bus was 5 minutes away. I got to the bus stop and got a call from the bus barn and they said my son was going to be taken back to transportation office because i was not there to get him. I work from home and so I make sure my students have something to do so I can get to the bus stop in time to get my child. This is so frustrating because now I have to find someone to go pick my child up because I can’t leave work and pick him up on top of that my car is broken down. Last year this was never a problem because I would get a notification 15-20 minutes before the bus got here and I would track the bus location on the map and be there to get him. PUT THE MAP BACK UP!!! I’m tired of this!! And it stresses me out that I have to go through all of this to get my 5year old off the bus

SMARTtag is the worst thing I’ve ever tried to use! Most of the time the screens are just blank, as if trying to load data and can’t (doesn’t matter where I am, on cell network or wifi). Have not been able to see my students profile page and the last two days, the two times I was able to get a notification to show up, I couldn’t get any gps data for the bus. To say SMARTtag is useless would be an understatement. I don’t even understand how the company would release an app this bad. Are we beta testing it? And our district will no longer let us just use the website, which was 1000 times better than this bc I could actually see where the bus was (isn’t that the whole point of the smart tag system?) I’m hoping our district transportation gets enough complaints that we can at least go back to using the website because otherwise there’s no point to having the smart tags.

From the beginning, SMARTtag has been a hassle. Getting my husband signed up as coparent was ridiculously difficult. SMARTtag is glacially slow to load or refresh, notifications don’t work at least half the time, and every other time I open SMARTtag it says there is no student linked to my account though nothing has changed on my side of SMARTtag . My husband‘s version, on the same model phone and at the same location for connectivity, sometimes displays of semi-live map of the bus location with notifications. Mine, the main parent account, has never shown a map.

I cannot fathom having a first-time bus rider and thinking I would be able to rely on SMARTtag to inform me of the bus details and movement of a younger child! Our child is older, and could likely write a better, more robust app. I’m going to be at the next school board meeting to discuss how much money they are wasting using this sad excuse for an app.

Thank you for the “canned response” but I have read & fully understand the directions. I have also read the FAQ page. I am fully aware that “for safety & security” blah, blah… BUT, what safety & security does it provide me, as the parent, if I cannot see where my children are? I have the alert settings on for 10 minutes (then increased to 15 minutes, now 20 minutes) but received an alert at 4 (FOUR!!) minutes that the bus will arrive…hmmm. Is this tech not properly programmed for math? We, as parents, understand that traffic, etc happens, so when the bus is late & our elementary aged children don’t have phones & I have no way of knowing where they are, how is this technology helping us? Food for thought.

WHY IS THERE NO LIVE MAP ANYMORE?!?!? Seriously, I wanted this to work and I wanted to like it better than the website, but this is so dumb and unreliable! I signed up for “alerts” 10 mins away…I get “bus will be there in 4 minutes” A map appears, then disappears. It constantly tells me that I don’t have children, then about an hour after school starts (when no one is using app), I suddenly have children again! This is terrible!!

My son missed the bus because I depended on SMARTtag and it’s estimated time I should’ve known better than to trust SMARTtag. It showed an estimate of 11 minutes so we took our time walking to stop only to realize the bus got there literally 3 minutes after we received notification. I wish we could track the bus on the map like we used to before they turned it to app only. Now it only tells you when and where bus picked up or dropped of child. It was extremely dependable when we could follow the bus on the map and make our own estimated time. Now it’s anyone’s guess. And the other day I got a notification that bus would arrive any minute now, 16 minutes later is when it arrived. It’s extremely difficult for myself since I have to walk in 105 degree heat with the blaring sun and extreme humidity with my 2 year old to the bus stop and be waiting 30 minutes or so since I cannot depend on SMARTtag. Please go back to letting us track the bus movements on the road map so we can make our own predictions of time since we are familiar with the area and traffic flow here. Please incorporate the gps tracking on SMARTtag for the parents, this heat we’re having in my area is extremely dangerous and I would like to limit having my daughter and self out there while we wait for siblings. Thank you.

I don’t know if this review will be seen by SMARTtag developer or the smart tag company but SMARTtag is essentially a mistake. The website worked and had more functionality than SMARTtag. SMARTtag is clearly not ready with bugs and being overwhelmed during busy times. We should have the option to use the website since SMARTtag is not ready. Maybe SMARTtag will get better but we should not be beta testers for SMARTtag . We should have alternatives during SMARTtag ’s development.

I’ll go ahead and add on to the other reviews that have said they can’t login because it says “Incorrect email or password” because our school district hasn’t adopted SMARTtag yet. If schools won’t use it until the 2024/2025 school year as developer responses say, why release it so early? Just wait and I’ll happily update the review, but so far parents should not waste their time with this.

Downloaded SMARTtag but it keeps telling me my email and password are incorrect. When I do it on the website it works only issue with the website is the map doesn’t load up.

Wonderful concept but it is a faulty app. I am unable to log into my account through SMARTtag . I verified it through the website and I was able to log in just fine, but when I tried logging in through SMARTtag , it just continued to give me an error of “incorrect email or password”.

This really doesn’t work. I am the primary parent. This doesn’t recognize my child mail. Then it links me in as a secondary and doesn’t pull my ONE child that rides a bus. Pointless app.

Issues literally arose literally week 2 of school starting. I randomly get notifications of the bus arriving but in SMARTtag it tells me I have nothing in my notification inbox. So if I click the notification in my banner it’s lost in space bc my notifications are always empty, so forget seeing the bus on GPS, which hasn’t loaded for weeks anyway. Secondly, in the student area, it says “something went wrong, please try again later.” No matter how later it is, it has yet to work. I rely on this application for assistance and peace of mind and it falls short in both areas. It’s upsetting because I am forced to have the application because the website prompts us now, so there is no way around the frustration. Deleting SMARTtag and reinstalling leads me down the same road. I just want it fixed please!!

It only shows you the map after you have been notified. Doesn’t tell you that that’s the way it works my wife has notification set to 20 minutes and can see the map at that point I have mine set to five minutes and can’t see anything till my notification pops up. No way to see it before then even if I were to change to a later notification just to see the map it doesn’t register.

SMARTtag is really terrible! You can’t see the map of where the bus is located when last school year you could which was great. When you try to refresh SMARTtag it’s always saying “something went wrong” it’s forever always giving the wrong information. I mean I’m better off without SMARTtag because you never know anything. And it’s frustrating because i have a 6 year old and i need to know everything once on and off the bus and how close and far the bus is. I wish i could no stars.. yall have to do better because this truly isn’t “smart.”

If i could give SMARTtag -0 stars i would.
What a horrible app our district asked us to download SMARTtag to use for our children bus information. Prior to SMARTtag we were using the online website which worked fantastic. But this new app is horrible it does not work properly it’s supposed to send notifications but does not send anything and when it does work it sends the information incorrect one time it said my child was in the bus when he didn’t even attend school that day. 90 percent of the time does not work horrible horrible horrible

SMARTtag I apologize is useless. I’m hoping this is just first week of school kinks that need to be straightened out but one moment I can see my kid liked and then I can’t. When I go to link him back to my account it just spins. Actually the entire app even after force quitting and making sure nothing else was open on my phone is JUST SPINNING.

I changed my email this year. So now the Smart tag says they can’t link my student and that I’m the coparent which there is not one. So I delete SMARTtag , but then when I reinstall it, it keeps the same email and will not allow me to change it! Very frustrating! I try to link my student manually, but then put me as co parent.
I changed my email with the school district to the same one on SMARTtag, but still tells me it isn’t matching to the district. Wrong. And same for my phone number. Why is there not a number to call for help? Do I call my district transportation?
Anyways, it worked great last year using the portal. But SMARTtag , no success until this is fixed.

SMARTtag is pointless. My students have been linked from previous years. SMARTtag will tell me that my kid has been picked up under notifications but also shows I have no students linked and will not show them or their routes (to see pickup/dropoff times). Luckily I checked on a previous day when it was working so they’d even know where to go this morning and took a screenshot for them.

What's going on with SMARTtag?? The school bus dynamic updates once every 15 seconds, and the school bus speed is 15 seconds slower. The point is that SMARTtag can still be used in the morning, but it can't be used in the afternoon, I can't find the student information when I log in, and I can't re-link, the system says my email and phone number don't match?? It is not as good as the previous web version, log in to show the location of the school bus, the school bus is also updated in real time, simple and direct.

I think SMARTtag needs to be upgraded and updated to where parents/guardians can actually track the bus in real time, whether the child is on the bus or not, just like it was when we had to use the Online version in which that no longer is an option. We were able to see where the bus was in real time that way parents/guardians didn’t have to wait outside for long periods of time. I had to wait 25-30 minutes outside in the blistering heat because the bus was that late and I was not able to track it.

Me estresa que no me deja ver el bendito camión 🥴 en el web era más fácil

SMARTtag has an issue where it doesn’t always show where the bus is on the route. Makes it kind of a pain. Some days it looks like it’s working and other days it doesn’t.

I absolutely do not like having to use SMARTtag. I wish we could go back to just seeing the actual map. If I look at the view map it shows the bus but if I go out of SMARTtag and try to go back in, it will not let me view map again for a while. And sometimes when viewing the map it goes off and yet again have to wait too long to see the map again. Please fix this!

It’s okay I rather get on the website but it’s no longer available only tracking thru SMARTtag it crashes a lot I’m guessing is cuz a lot of people are on it at the same time sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t i prefer if we could start tracking once the kids get loaded not till it’s near drop off

I really need help to remove a child from my account, my daughter put a random kid i dont know into the account how do i remove him?

In the web application, I can see my child after his badge scanned. So I know where he’s at. Now the map only started to appear after he’s approaching and the message sent. In normal situation, this is ok, but when weather happens and the time is way delayed, it is useless to have SMARTtag as I am blindly waiting for the message to appear.

Love the idea of SMARTtag. And loved it the first couple days it would work. I have experienced the same issue as the other comment, the approximation time is not completely accurate as mine to has missed the bus by the bus being earlier then specified. But that part was ok. I didn’t mind.
Now it seems though, for 3 days I have not been able to get my app to work. I have removed it deleted it closed it out turned off my phone and back on disconnected my wifi and back on I have disconnected my cellular connection and yesterday I was still getting the text alerts but not able to use SMARTtag , I have now faced nothing being loaded on SMARTtag , and it just says try later and try again later and I have. It does not even give me the option to log into my account, I do not even receive the text alerts.

Last year I also had my grandson linked to my account but he isn't on my account this year. Even though I've tried to add him SMARTtag doesn't recognize my phone number and when I manually put in the info required it states that he can't be found. My daughter also has the exact PROBLEM. What do we do and why was the information changed from last year?

I appreciate the notifications to let me know when to expect when the bus will arrive or depart. I would like to see the bus route as well. Real time where the bus is at I used to be able to see this on the website before it was an app. It gives a piece of mind if there is a delay or breakdown.

Please update the naming convention so that it is labeled as “Smart Tag” rather than the current listing as “Parent App” on iPhones.
Search and listings of SMARTtag in menus falls under “Parent App” and really doesn’t fit into the more commonly known name, “Smart Tag”.

Update: App is stable now. Looks like that major issues where fixed. To me looks like it is useful and I can track the bus and my kid. Thanks for supporting us.

I receive push notifications for any time my kids are checking in/out to the bus but if I go to SMARTtag it does not display anything. Then if I refresh SMARTtag , all the windows will continue trying to load content forever and nothing is displayed. I can’t see my profile, bus route, my kids, etc. After about 4h SMARTtag loads the information but I need to refresh because it says no activity, so it goes to the first stage in an endless loop.

App wasn’t sending notifications. Customer service replied quickly and helped troubleshoot, now it’s back to working great. Love SMARTtag !

SMARTtag is amazing. This really eases my mind as a parent knowing where my kiddos bus is and what time it’s expected to our stops. Very easy to set-up the account and link my student. Thank you for giving me this visibility.

I had the smart tag app and it worked perfectly the first couple of days however I started having issues with it never loading anything up. I reached out to the customer service email and they were very patient and helpful and they resolved my issue.

Finally it arrived! Functionality is great and I love the SMART Locate feature where I can track the bus on a route viewing it on the live map! And notifications come as push-notification which I like better than email or text. Hope more districts migrate to using SMARTtag sooner so that more parents can enjoy its benefits.