Nursery charging top up fees since August!

[antonia2003]

Hi there!
My private nursery where my child goes have been overcharging me since August. I applied for 6hr20 min entitlement with them and now find out they were only using 3h10 min. My child also goes to another nursery (within primary school) for the other 3 days of free childcare.
On occasions my son also goes for full days at the private nursery. I paid all invoices before as they do not really show the hours that have been provided for free, just the monthly fee paid by EYFE. Because he goes on occasional day here and there, as well as his regular once, the amounts every months were different and to me they looked alright.

Now the nursery themselves (kindly, which I am grateful for!) bring to my attention that "I am not claiming all of my allowance" (whereas I filled in the claim form last year with clear 3h10min x 2 marked!)
They said they will try to back date it since January ( I don't know why) and they contacted the local childcare information service to see whether they can back date it all and reimburse me. The reply that came from the council said that since I signed for the invoices ( you get an invoice in the envelope and sign & date on the sheet once you get the invoice) then the payment cannot be backdated.

Can you please comment on where do we stand here? The total amount I overpaid since August is probably around 400 pounds.

Thank you!
xxx

[DawnMumsnet]

Hi antonia,

We're going to move this thread over to our Nurseries topic - hopefully you'll get some advice there.

[FishWithABicycle]

I think you would spend more than £400 worth of time and stress trying to get this rectified and would probably not be successful. Chalk it up to experience and be happy that your bills will come down a little now.

[HSMMaCM]

I suspect you might be able to get your money back from the nursery, but they won't be able to get it back from the council. It is the nursery's error.