First View Reviews

There is no way to view the estimated arrival time for the bus anymore. The information given seems more appropriate for the district, not a parent, as it tracks the number of stops the bus makes and the start/end time of the driver’s route, all of which is meaningless to me. I’d like to know when the bus is coming, which the old app was able to predict. Now it just shows where it is on the route, which is not helpful especially considering our bus makes a circle around a few streets before it comes to us, so we cannot tell at a glance if it is heading for us or if it’s doing the circle portion of the route down the side streets near us.

Also, I set up distance notifications for my son’s bus but not for my daughter (different bus for middle school). Yet it still sends push notifications for both buses, that they’ve arrived to school etc. I don’t care that her bus has arrived to school because we drive her every morning! There seems to be no way to turn off those notifications. Really terrible app all around.

FirstView is a big downgrade from this app Classic. You can no longer select a specific stop. You can only select a route. You can no longer see the ETA of the bus arriving at your stop. All you can do is create a notification for the address of the stop and get notified when the bus reaches your desired distance away. This doesn’t work great when the bus is driving around the neighborhood in and out of the radius. Please bring back the features from the classic version.

This is an awful app. I can’t tell when the bus is coming or timing at all. This is a huge downgrade from the past this app app. I have no idea how you went from that to this. All I want to know is how far away the bus is from my stop and there is no timing. Trying to click on the bus does not help in figuring out how long until the bus gets to our stop. I cannot express how unhelpful FirstView is. One of the worst apps.

FirstView is a complete disaster, just like your previous one. It’s a travesty that such an unprepared application has been released and used by our school district. The deletion of trips is just the beginning. There’s a lack of communication and it’s not user-friendly at all. There are alerts for routes that aren’t chosen, and the list goes on. I’ll be speaking to our district leaders and urging others to do the same.

Set up two radius distance notifications and neither notifications fire when the bus is within the radius. Notifications do not work, which makes FirstView useless to be able to know where the bus is to be notified. I do receive notifications for start of service and when at pick up location, so notifications partially work. But the notifications that matter most DO NOT work!

The new version is awful. It constantly has my address pulled up in a bubble, so I can’t ready anything. Also, it never gives the estimated time of arrival anymore. It use to say “5 mins”, etc on when the bus would be here. Since our bus is never on time (sometimes 30 mins late), it was nice to have that feature. It doesn’t work on the new version. Furthermore, nothing ever pulls up! Hopefully our school district ends the contract with FirstView ASAP

Barely better than nothing. If the bus route isn’t totally linear? Predictive notifications don’t work. If they use a different physical bus one day? Too much for FirstView to comprehend. God forbid there’s a problem then the bus company blames FirstView and FirstView blames the bus company. In today’s AI world, FirstView is made with no intelligence. There should be standards for what our schools spend money on because this wouldn’t make the cut in my opinion.

The bus times listed for my kid are for the bus’s entire route. It goes to other schools after it drops him off…which I don’t need to know about. The old app simply stated the assigned pickup/drop off times for the kid, not for the bus driver, next to their names. If there was a way to view the pickup time, I couldn’t find it. Also, the old app updated est arrival times constantly so you could gauge how late it was running more accurately. That also seems to have disappeared.

The school just moved to this new app. It's awful. Half of the time it won't alert me when the bus is near. And this morning it just deleted all of my kid's routes. I tried multiple times to add the routes back, but it won't let me. I deleted the student profile and tried starting from scratch. Nothing. I deleted FirstView and tried starting over again. Nothing. It keeps asking if I want to set notifications and then tells me I can't actually do that because he doesn't have any routes. AND THERE IS NO WAY TO ENTER THE ROUTES!

Missed the bus the first week of school because FirstView erased our trips and notifications. Since then, I have to keep entering trips, saving it, setting new notifications, making sure all permissions allow the notifications, and I still get nothing. Cannot rely on it at all to alert you. Useless unless you sit and keep your eyes glued to the live map. It doesn't tell me when the bus is scheduled for our stop, or when it reaches the school. The old app we used was better even with it's glitches.

Wow. Just like the title states. I think the children that go to my child’s elementary school made FirstView. All I want is to be able to get a push notification when my child’s bus leaves the school in the afternoon and then another push notification when the bus reaches its destination. That simple. But instead, what I got is an app that sends you a notification about every single Bus that has to do with my child’s school. And then when I try to save the notification settings for Monday through Friday and then geo fence for the drop off, It disappears for the next morning so I have to redo it every day. I hope the developers read these bad comments cause good lord they should be ashamed of themselves for putting this out.

Their routes show up in FirstView settings, but some days not on the map, like they are set up, but not active for the day (even though the settings show they are). This means notifications don’t work on those days (which are random) AND the route can’t be followed, so we can’t make our own estimation or check that the bus got to school.

Notification are very customizable based on location, but require knowing the route before your kids get on and streets and intersection names (especially if your stop isn’t near outside your house) and there is no simple estimated time like the “classic” version. So you can spend lots of time setting them up for the locations and times you want and then 3 days a week they don’t work anyway.

I wish we could go back to the old app.

I miss the ability to be able to pick the bus stop location and the estimated arrival of the bus. The new version does not seem to have this like the old version. The distance notification is taking several tries to figure out what a good notification is. Hope these can be added back in. Loves the old version. Hate the new version

this app 1.0 is definitely not an improvement from the original app. The notifications only allow for a distance, warning, which generally doesn’t happen. A time update as to when the bus is expected, similar to the original app would be way better. Not sure why I’m even wasting my time with FirstView. It is so inaccurate.

If your bus driver is doing the same route every day with no changes, it works great. But once the drivers have to cover other/multiple routes or your regular bus goes in for service, FirstView is useless. You're tracking a bus that's not coming. There needs to be a way for the bus driver to specify which route(s) they're covering and have that information flow through to everyone on FirstView that's following that route, so they can predict the ETA of the bus even if there's a service interruption.

Some days it doesn’t update that the bus has gotten to the location for the pick up and return, it’s done in twice in the first 3 weeks of school. Luckily I could track my daughter’s phone.

FirstView gives me such peace of mind in the wild world we live in. Being able to confidently see the bus on a map and being notified when the bus is close to picking up or dropping off my babies is something all school districts should offer.

Simply put, I love getting rid of guessing when the bus will get to our bus stop or when people will arrive back home. Wish we had this sooner!! I only get two school years of FirstView!

The new app has been great! The multiple customizable distance notifications have been accurate and helpful, and I love being able to see my kiddo’s status on the map.

The notification they send you what time they pick up and drop off times are wrong they need fix that