Busy Bees (390+ nurseries, UK's biggest chain) have told parents that from 1 April, all payments must go through the Busy Bees App. If you don't use the app, you get charged £4 per payment.
We pay via HMRC's Tax-Free Childcare scheme directly. That's how the government designed the system to work. But Busy Bees say paying that way means it "is not being made correctly" and now want to charge us extra for doing it.
The app doesn't just handle payments. It also processes child observations, messaging and account management. So the only way to avoid the charge is to consent to all of that. I don't want to link my government TFC account to a third-party app with poor reviews just to avoid a penalty.
I raised a formal complaint with head office. They defended it as covering "manual reconciliation" costs, but every TFC payment already includes a unique HMRC reference. They wouldn't give any detail when I asked about their data protection impact assessment.
I've filed with the ICO and Trading Standards. We're leaving early because of this head office policy. Other parents at our branch are doing the same.
Anyone else at Busy Bees been hit with this? Is it happening at other branches too?