A nursery charges for closed days (staff training and Bank holidays)!!!

trungdong

Thank you all for sharing your experience and/or opinions. I'm glad that many of you share my view.

To be clear, as an employee myself, I'm absolutely not against staff training or holiday pays. I am also happy to arrange alternative childcare when they need to close for training. I understand that we, as customers, ultimately have to bear all those costs (as with any other products/services). However, as apples1 said, I believe that those should be taken into account in their fees. It is ridiculous that customers have to pay for no service under whatever circumstance!

As suggested, I'll write to the nursery to tell them how I feel, but I won't hold my breath.

We're quite happy with the service at this particular nursery, except their rigid management. On a different thing, they annualise my daughter's fee and invoice us the same amount every month. However, since her pattern of attendance has recently changed, we'd lose out because of this annualisation. I politely requested them to invoice us based on the actual sessions we book for the month, but they came back and said their system does not allow them to do so. I will still have to get back to them because there's no way we have to pay more money just because they can't calculate our bills the right way!

It's such a pity because the nursery is just across the road to our place. It's so frustrating since we wanted to ditch them many times, but had to stick with them because it'd be a big inconvenience for us. :sigh:

zorber

Lip_Stick wrote: »

Surely they should be trained anyway, or at least any training days be during holidays? It's not a state nursery. And why would all staff have to go training on one day? Plus it's a paid for nursery. Parents have to work and can't have the odd day off because staff at their kids nursery are not up to scratch.

Valli wrote: »

Hang on a minute... this is a NURSERY run as a BUSINESS as opposed to an educational establishment paid for by the GOVERNMENT or LOCAL AUTHORITY and required to provide/notify staff training days.

I see NO REASON why there should be training days at all - and certainly not training days which some parents but not all must pay for. This is childcare for working parents not government-funded educational provision.

I get trained at work or get training days not because i poor at my job but to help me perform better at my role and because legislation changes which means that we may have to do things differently.

A nursery worker can get various training from fist aid in case you child hurts them selves through to the new way of resraining your child if need be.

I dont like paying for days where my child is home i.e bank holidays but its tough and i expect to get paid for bank holidays

aheaton46

aheaton46 wrote:

Just like any other business, if you don't like their terms and conditions you can go elsewhere.

The fact you choose to stay with them suggests you are happy enough with their service overall. Perhaps in part because they have happy staff who get bank holidays off and get well trained?

Lip_Stick wrote: »

The majority don't agree with you. My son's nursery never had these training days, and I sure as hell would have objected to paying full price for a day when my son wasn't allowed to attend!

So are you saying you'd have been unhappy, but kept your son at the nursery? The only reason you'd have done that is, on balance, you still preferred that nursery over the alternatives. You would choose not to go elsewhere.

Or are you saying you'd have chosen to take your business elsewhere?

Either way, it seems you actually agree with me.

aheaton46

Valli wrote: »

Hang on a minute... this is a NURSERY run as a BUSINESS as opposed to an educational establishment paid for by the GOVERNMENT or LOCAL AUTHORITY and required to provide/notify staff training days.

I see NO REASON why there should be training days at all

It is a private business. They can do what they want.

Do you feel you should dictate the staff training policy of (say) Marks and Spencer? If not, why should this business be any different.

If people don't like it, they will take their business elsewhere.

AsknAnswer2

I never have and never will pay for a service that is unavailable to me. A former childminder decided she was changing all contracts to include full fees for her annual leave and her own sickness, whilst at the same time was no longer going to provide snacks but wasn't decreasing the fees to relfect the loss of this part of the service. I informed her that I wasn't prepared to pay for a service that was unavailable to me in addition to the costs of sourcing and paying for an alternate service. She told me if I wasn't happy with the changes I could go elsewhere. So I did exactly that. Oh, she wasn't happy. She was trying to increase her income but it ended up decreasing significantly because she lost two mindees and their fees along with it.

The difference is that I would never sign a contract with terms and conditions I wasn't prepared to accept. As you have already signed the contract, you have no alternative but to pay.

halibut2209

I'd change nurseries and let them try and sue me. I doubt they would as the negative publicity would be too damaging

Sneezy

They still have to pay their staff on the BH.

halibut2209

Sneezy wrote: »

They still have to pay their staff on the BH.

Then add 50p to every single session to cover that. It's not fair for those who only have their children booked in on monday to pay.

We had a similar issue when our nursery wanted to charge for the days they cancelled due to the snow. Everyone refused to pay it and they backed down.

Sambucus_Nigra

Lets try and unpick this a little....

Presumably, the business gives the stat minimum annual leave entitlement which may or may not include bank hols. Thus, the staff's leave is paid for by a share of every one's fees - so why would it be different for bank hols? It's all part of the same pot.

Also training days, they know they are having them, they know how much it costs so the cost of these comes from the share of everyone's fees as part of the overall business. Not just the people who were hoping to have their child in on that day. Otherwise, don't book them in on that day.

Also, what determines whether or not you are charged for the day. If, when you are putting your monthly plan together, you tell them up front that you will not be sending your child on a bank holiday - then does this mean you don't get charged? Or is everyone who ever has their kids in on a monday get charged? Or if they don't go in on the tuesday/thursday as well, do they not get charged? It's all very confusing and the company - in order to make sure nobody is paying more - should add all these charges across the board and level them out across the year to give a flat hourly rate to everyone.

It's all very confusing and to be honest, I'd not be happy and would be arguing the toss with them as well. If they say '[parents of] children would would normally be here on a bank hol have to pay' then say 'they aren't normally going to be in as it's a bank hol innit'

go_cat

This is one of the reasons i don't have my DS contracted to go to nursery on a monday. It would mean 4 days a year that I would be paying full price for him being at home

On a plus point our nursery are open for the Royal Wedding when I thought they would be closed :T