Any advice on tax free childcare - losing the will!!

[MaltbyMaeve]

DS started a new nursery in July last year - tax free childcare supposedly made a payment for a month and half’s worth of fees at the end of August. After much toing and froing it transpires they didn’t actually make this payment. So they remade the payment in January... only this payment for circa £1600 never reached the nursery.

We raised a complaint... tfc said there was nothing they could do and the nursery should check with their bank. The nursery has repeatedly spoken to their bank about it who are adamant they don’t have the funds.

Understandably the nursery are now putting a lot of pressure on us to pay the missing funds. We escalated our complaint and today we phoned to check progress (Tfc’s deadline having long passed) and they have lost our complaint!!!

Agh!!! We literally don’t know where to turn next. I’d be so grateful if anyone could suggest any ideas for what to do next or indeed how they resolved things in the same situation.

When they say the supposedly made the payment did you send it yourself?
On my tax free childcare account I can pull up all the history of the payments I’ve made for the last year at least.
Does that show the payment being made?

Are you doing the repeated payment or is it one off payments? I don't understand what you are trying to get at when you say they supposedly made the payment. What does the online log of payments show?

You added your money to the account, selected and added the right childcare provider and sent it that way? And it never reached them? Have others using the system had the same problem?

It should show all your transactions in your account? Are the payments showing? I log in monthly and do a one off transfer rather than setting it automatically.

You should clearly be able to see the funds debited from your bank account and paid into tax-free childcare. You should also easily be able to see in your tax-free childcare account when a payment was made (including how much of it was your money and how much was added with the top up). So it should say going to the specific childcare provider.

I'm assuming you have been paying this nursery all along and it's just this one month? So there is no way you have added the wrong nursery to your list of providers to be paid. Personally, I would assume that if you haven't made a mistake, then it seems really unlikely that 2 payments have gone missing and are untraceable. I think I might be raising your concerns with the nursery. If you can see that the payment went out from tax-free childcare on said date (I'd screen shot that and give to the nursery), then it seems to be an issue that the nursery needs to resolve. Either they aren't keeping up on their accounts (and they have been paid) or something is wrong with the transfer of funds between the two of them.

It just seems a bit fishy that two very large payments were made but didn't make it to their bank, but they seem to be receiving payments from others (and presumably you, in the intervening months).

Did you make the payment yourself or is it a repeated payment?
When I do it I log on to my tfc account, add the funds. Wait a day or so until its cleared then pay the nursery myself. Our bill is different each month so I dont do a repeated payment.

So you sent a one off payment but it never arrived? Have you checked all the obvious things like it's the right provider? Presumably you can go back in your history and print off the payment to show the nursery?

DH normally deals with it all but I got up to speed to draft the complaint letter so apologies if I’ve used the wrong terminology.

The nursery is aware of the situation and have tried to phone tfc but of course tfc won’t speak to them as it’s our account.

The payment is showing as having gone out of our account but it did for the August one as well until they admitted on the phone the payment hadn’t gone.

I just don’t know what to do and I guess we’re going to end up paying it again.

Thank you yes we checked it was the right provider - there is only one of that name.

Thank you Mindutopia the nursery are not great with admin and I suspect it may be their issue but again we cannot speak to their bank to try and resolve it.

You might be able to raise a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman if you think it's an error between the two banks involved. You can call them and ask if it's something they can help with.

TFC only have call handlers who read the same script to everyone. We had a nightmare when it was first introduced, told incorrect information and had promises which never came to anything. In the end I had to contact my MP who got through to a different department and sorted in a few days.

It’s reassuring that we’re not the only ones struggling to deal with them! I had wondered about going via our mp but wasn’t sure so that’s great to hear they were able to help you!

I take it you paid the money from your bank into the TFC account and then waited until it cleared and then paid it to your childcare provider? I hadn't realised you had to move it from your TFC account to your childcare provider when I first did it.