Nursey nightmare advice please

Burton64

Hi

Can someone please offer some advice. My child's nursery hasn't provided invoices for over 12 months even tho iv been asking and it turns out that they hadn't been taking the direct debit payments but I didn't realise - stupid I know seeing before this point I was in credit. I know I have to pay the money that's fine. since I found iv been trying to come to an arrangement where I over pay each month. Initially they didn't respond to my offer until I said I'd make a reduced single payment to make it go away. They wouldn't accept that but are now demanding that i pay a large amount plus additional monthly payments - which I can't do as I can't afford both. As I refused they've withdrawn the nursery place and are threatening all sorts eg courts and debt collection. Where do I stand? Any help would be great

susancs

It seems poor administrative procedures on their part to let you run up arrears of 12 months worth of fees, without contacting you to ask for payment and withdrawing the place before now. However I expect the way the Nursery may be viewing it is that if they have not claimed the money from your bank account, then you would have allowed for this each month and it should still be in your account to pay them in full. They also may wonder how you did not notice the non payment on your monthly bank statments for such a long period,query it, and offer payment especially as you were asking for invoices, hence the reason they may not be willing to make more concessions regarding the debt.

Are you claiming Child and Working Family Tax credits if on a lower income or employers Childcare voucher tax relief if on a higher income? If not then you could use this to help payback the additional fees in on top of the lump sum in future.

The bottom line is that you probably signed a contract to pay the fees and had the service, so will have to pay them. You do not want them to get a County Court Judgement against you as it will affect your long term credit. Also you probably need the childcare to allow you to work, so the sooner you get this sorted out the sooner you can return to work. Maybe you could look at paying them the debt in full by looking at loan options from your bankers or via credit cards (info on lower interest ones on this site).

Good luck with it.

Sambucus_Nigra

Wouldn't you just say 'invoice me and I'll pay'?

Burton64

Hi

Thanks a lot for your reply. I use the voucher system and the nursery has been receiving this payment. I accept that I was foolish in not watching my bank account in great detail but this account is only used for direct debits any extra money in this account is used to pay other bills etc which is why it's not built up. I have previously not had a problem when paying for my older child for the past 4 years and have received invoices and payments have gone out with no involvement from me which is why I assumed it had continued even with the invoices stpped arriving. Up until the invoices stopped I was in credit but didn't know how much and my monthly fees are always different due to changes in the number if days attended, which of my children attended and whether the older one was getting the gvt free place. I'd rather not have to take a loan out to pay off the debt but would prefer to make them regular payments until it's paid off is that not a plausible option. If it's passed to a debt collection agency what exactly happens? Or if they decide to pursue it thru the courts what's the process.

Thanx again for ur help

mountainofdebt

Personally I think you need to contact the owner of the nursery rather than the manager and have a face to face meeting and once a repayment plan has been agreed, confirm it in writing.

The point about the account not building up though, while plausible, didn't you feel that you were paying alot of other bills from this account than normal?

cheepskate_2

so if you pay other bills with the money remaining in the dd acount, then surely you would need to know how much is in that account otherwise you could go overdrawn, Your telling us that in a year you never looked at that account or looked at the statements at all but still managed to pay xtra bills that came in and never once looked to see that you had not been overcharged / missed a bill/ funny bills comming out, I can fully understand why the nursery thinkis you are at it, and wants it in full

adamantine

i had a similar nightmare with my boys old nursery. i asked every single week for a bill and got 3 over 2.5 years and they were incorrect. i told them what was wrong (wrong hours and wrong hourly rate!) and they said they would issue a new bill. they did 2 more times but it was still wrong. i got hauled into the office and asked if i was going to pay and i did what Sambucus Nigra suggested

Sambucus_Nigra wrote: »

Wouldn't you just say 'invoice me and I'll pay'?

and got told they have given me a bill so i should just pay that. then i got a berrating and i pulled my kids out the folowing day with no notice.

i then got a bill from them that was incorrect again and started to pay it off by cheque per month. they didnt pay in 2 cheques so i assumed they had been lost in the post or mislaid in the office. the day after i cancelled the cheques to issue them a new one they tried to pay them in and they were obviously rejected. then came the snooty call from one of the owners saying my cheques had bounced and they would cash as many in one month as they liked. so i handed it over to my solicitor. he got another bill which was again incorrect and then it was handed to solicitors who again had another amount that i owed! then the solicitors got another different bill that was again incorrect!! thats 6 different totals from the nursery if you struggled to keep up!

i argued that everyone else got 2.5 years to pay the fees and i would take the same time as it was not my fault that the bills were incorrect. they wanted me to pay £800 a month and have it paid off in a few months but i dont get £800 a month to begin with!

they could say that you should have known that your DD wasnt being paid but you can argue the same back that they should notice you were not paying. mistakes on both sides here. you should be able to come to a mutual agreement of how much you pay over how long and if they are not willing to meet in the middle i would think about where you put your child to nursery. in my experience if they cant even get a bill right and know what child is in attendance on what day then scratch a bit further and there are so many other things that are not right with the establishment.

Burton64

Hi

It's the owner iv been dealing with and who has excluded my child. Iv been trying to come up with suggestions that could be workable for us both and I made to lump sum offer as they suggested this to another parent who was in the same position. But I could only make this if I borrowed it from family but can't pay them back and pay anything of the remaining debt. Tbh I know I'm really stupid but as the amount varies quite a lot I hdmt being paying much by dd as the vouchers and the gvt grant had covered the fees I'd not really noticed. And when I did discover a problem in June iv been constantly asking by email and in person for the information so I could sort it out they've been telling me that I'd get the info by the end of the wk or within the next few days etc or just didn't bother replying to me, which is why iv allowed it to drag on for so long. As soon as they did provide the info I asked if they could suggest an agreement they never responded, then I suggested paying £100 on top of my fees to refuce the amount, they never responded it was only when I suggested that Id pay 1k to clear the amount did they say they wanted that by the end of the day plus a monthly topup payment and started threatening that their bank would demand immediate payment in full if I didn't give them it and when I said I couldnt but would happily pay the extra £100 per month they threatened to remove the place when I still said I couldn't but would make a monthly payment she excluded my child. Is that normal behaviour in a situation like this??

Sorry it's a saga but I'm so annoyed and worried about it

Burton64

Hi cheapskate I look at the amount in the account but don't check what payments have gone out as I stupidly thought that once a direct debit was set up the money was just taken every month and as no one had ever said that there was a problem I stupidly assumed there wasn't. I think iv just explained in my last reply which crossed with urs about the amounts varying and before I stopped receiving invoices I hardly been paying anything as my older child's fees were being covered by the vouchers and the gvt free place for 3 yr olds scheme. I fully admit that I ve been stupid and that I owe them money and am more than willing to pay them back monthly but just don't have the cash to pay them a lump sum and extra monthly.

Hi adamantine thank u so much I was starting to think that it was all my fault and that the bailiffs would be knocking any moment. They nursery have said that they would bill me for the outstanding amount (that's essentially invoice me then isn't it Sambucus nigra) when they last emailed me excluding my child. I replied that I'd set up a standing order for 110 so do you think I should just do that and see what happens as the bill can't continue to build if my baby doesn't go there. Iv not had chance to go through all the information that they've provided yet as it approx 100 pieces of paper with invoices, receipts and credit notes for payments theyve reversed as they've allocated then incorrectly?! And a bit scared to tbh honest as I'm not sure what else I'll find

princeofpounds

Firstly don't panic.

This is a civil dispute. You won't HAVE to pay anything until they sue you in the small claims court and get a CCJ. Even then you can pay in the next 10 days without it remaining on your record. You don't want it to go that far as there will be some court costs (not solicitors, just a hearing charge) added on top, but understand that this gives you time to think and plan a little.

In fact, given you have tried to reach a settlement and they were non-communicative the court might not even award them their costs. And if the court were to make an award to the nursery they wouldn't be likely to get much more than the sort of periodic repayment plan that you are suggesting in the first place, if what you say about the tightness of your finances is true.

There are not going to be any bailiffs at your door on Monday, nor is their bank going demand anything (make sure your direct debit is cancelled).

Is their behaviour unreasonable? A bit, yes. It appears it was their administrative mistake. Of course you should also have been on top of things, but I regard this very much as a secondary issue. Stopping the place for your child is unfortunate but just something you have to work past.

If I were you, I would be looking to sping things out as much as possible, whilst working to pay what is owed. You might find that if you start to make weekly payments unilaterally they will quieten down. They will probably realise it is not worth paying to sue you for the money. As suggested look for loan sources (at reasonable rates) to make a more significant payment sooner. They probably think that you asking for a plan is just delaying, as I'm guessing you haven't actually paid ANYTHING yet despite knowing about this since June right? So stop delaying all payment.

If they keep harassing you, tell them that they are welcome to take you to court. A lawyer would probably advise them not to bother and they wouldn't be able to reclaim legal costs from you. Even if they went ahead it would take them weeks to get a hearing and the judge would probably not be amused that they have wasted the court's time if they took you along if you had been making reasonable repayments.

Burton64

Hi princeofpounds

Thanks for replying. Ok I'll stop panicking now i know someone wont be bashing my door down next week. No I don't want it to get as far as a ccj and do genuinely want to pay the money I owe and always have.

Right ok I'll contact the bank to cancel the dd and I will sit down and look again to see if I can pay more than the amount that v suggested. No iv not paid anything on top of the vouchers since I found out about it in June because at that point they gave me invoices for two random months with no explanation of where the figures stated in them come from and it was at this point that I asked for a detailed breakdown of my account which they didn't provide until recently. I now realise that I should of started paying some amount at this time but this is when they didn't bother replying to me or told me the info was on it's way so I stupidly let it drag on - one thing is for sure I won't be so soft in the future.

So should I not wait to hear any more from them again should I just start making the payments immediately? sorry for a really stupid question but what is classed as a reasonable payment?

Thanks a lot for taking the time to read and reply