Nursery fees driving me crazy! PLEASE HELP.

CharlLily

My son went to nursery while I was at university, the fees were sometimes late due to the fact my fees were paid by a grant and it was an absolute nightmare getting them on time. In the end my son ended up getting turned away from the nursery due to the fees not being paid.

Now, my mum dropped him off on that day and she asked if I would be charged from there on, or if there was a policy to make me pay for the rest of the month etc. The nursery manager told her that no I would not have to pay further, I would just have to pay what I owe up until now.

To cut shorten the story, after a while I received a letter from ACT Credit Management saying I owed a sum of £2600. I did not believe I owed that amount at all so I called ACT to dispute it, they said they would put the file on hold and be in contact with the company that own the nursery. I waited for months, in that time calling them a couple of times to just be told it was still on hold. A while later I received a letter telling me that I was being taken to court if I did not pay the full balance, I called them again and told them I was informed the file was on hold and I was disputing the amount owed, yet again I was told they would be in contact with the nursery's company and the file would be put on hold so I did not need to worry about court proceedings.

I called them today and I have been told that the nursery's company have confirmed this is the amount that I owe. I told them that I want an itemized bill will all my previous transactions listed, just to be told I had been sent one via email in APRIL, which I was never informed of! I've told them to send it again and that I would be in contact with the nursery because I strongly believe I do not owe that great of an amount. I was told 'okay call back when you know'. I don't think this is very professional, I've basically been palmed off for months, I want to pay it off as I do not wish to be in debt, but I don't want to blindly pay something without knowing how much I truly owe. It's been that long I'm not even sure myself! Between this time I've moved house and during the process all my old invoices from the nursery have been thrown out!

I'm really worried as I can't just afford to pay off that much money in one go and they have made out to be that it all needs to be paid at once.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Sorry the post isn't extremely detailed or well written, I have a toddler sat on my lap!

Charlotte x

bluedrop

did you check you old emails ?

You should have been more careful about the invoices etc - knowing owe them money.

Did you call the nursery directly and ask for copies of your invoices and payments ?

CharlLily

bluedrop wrote: »

did you check you old emails ?

You should have been more careful about the invoices etc - knowing owe them money.

Did you call the nursery directly and ask for copies of your invoices and payments ?

I've had a look at my old emails just now and there is nothing there at all. I've also called the nursery several times and asked them for invoices, they always tell me they will get back to me, it seems like they don't want to give me my invoices or they will post them, but I never receive them, they have my new address and I still have access to my old address and I regularly check the mail there.

Angry_Bear

Write a "prove it" letter - there is a template around here somewhere that you should be able to adapt to your purposes. Make it clear that you've already tried to resolve this several times and been palmed off so now you want all communication in writing.

Send a copy to both the nursery and the DCA, and keep a copy. If the DCA try to ignore you and take you to court you will have evidence that you are disputing the debt (which means they aren't allowed to take action). Currently, with just phonecalls, you don't have any evidence that you've tried to sort this out - DCAs tend to be a bit more "reasonable" when you force them to leave a paper trail .