Charged £90 for being 3 minutes late to collect children from nursery

[Justastorminabcup]

3 minutes late! I thought I was on time. nobody said anything when I arrived, they just sent me an invoice in the post.

I can understand that they need a system to prevent parents regularly being late. They have a business to run and staff to pay etc, but £90!?! For three minutes! How can they think this is reasonable???

I've used this nursery for 4 years and have never been late before.

AIBU to be utterly shocked that a childcare establishment who must know that many parents struggle to be able to afford daycare for their children could feel it is acceptable to charge such a fine? Is this normal? Would other care providers do this?

I don't understand those people saying, "Well it's in the contract..." blah blah blah. It is ridiculously grabby, like those councils who send parking attendants round to give you a 60quid fine for going 3 minutes over the parking time. Who approves of them? Yes, it's fine if you get a parking fine for being on a double yellow or parking all day for free, but when the 3 minute thing happens to you, do you all think "Fair enough!". (It happened to me once).

I would definitely query it, and say you are really sorry, it's a first offense etc. Unless you were 3 mins late on a 15 min window, it is really out of order to do this to someone you have a relationship with and look after their children.

I wouldn't want my kids somewhere like this, although there seems little point removing them before September. I'd just tell everyone I knew how horrible they were about it, if they refuse to reduce it.

My nursery were amazing only ever charged parents who took the piss.

In 4 years we were very slightly late about 3 times and never charged.

There is no way that can be right

Have you ever been charged before?

As someone said earlier the differential between clocks watches etc could be negligible.

How many times do you pick them up before 4-30. Like 4-25 for example.

Bill them for minutes owed to you at their rate. Good will is a two way street.

They might need a favour from you / other parents one day. It's not like you are a habitual offender.

What would judge Rinder say? If its an invoice ask them for a breakdown for their costs.

The fact that the nursery was open for another three hours would totally p me off.

Do you have any way you could double check how late you are and contest it based on that? If you go into Google Location History it might be able to tell you (I haven't figured out when it tracks you and when it doesn't)

These charges should be in your contract, and made clear - double check what it says - they can't just suddenly start billing you without telling you I don't think.

Ridiculous price. Leave.

Refuse to pay and if they complain make sure everybody knows about the charge. I'm sure many other parents would leave if they knew that if they were ever half an hour late it would cost them £450 per child.

And yes, us staff do get really pissed off with parents being late, but 3 minutes is nothing really, and £15 per minute is daft. I bet it's not passed on to the staff.

Just realised it was an early pick up. WTF!!!

Its not the same as parking merry

Overstaying in a carpark, doesn't mean staff have to stay and wait with your car. They're are no legal staff/car ratios to consider

Ridiculous price. Leave.

1st - it's not a price. It's a penalty.
2nd - other nurseries around may have similar penalties. I'd definitely check it before moving to another one with the same regulations.

They must have had a lot of problems with parents collecting late. Ours has a late fee but is relatively flexible. We're a commuter town, if the trains are playing silly buggers and you keep in touch to let them know what's going on they generally don't charge a penalty fee if it's a rare occasion. There's a real mix of goodwill and a good working relationship to be balanced with not letting parents take the piss.

I would have thought that if if this really the first time you have been late in four years (and only three minutes at that) you could query it and they might let you off for a first offence. I bet they don't have any habitual offenders with penalties like that so in fact the policy probably does its job and I can understand why they need to be strict. if you are going to have a penalty it needs to something that will make parents think twice - a pound a minute might not be disincentive enough for some people. Three minutes is very precise though - do you have to clock in when you arrive?

You can type anything in a contract doesn't mean it's reasonable or enforceable

Its a contract that presumably people sign so they are well aware of the policy first. I do agree though that £90 is excessive but this attitude pisses me off - my DH is a childminder and gets the parents to sign contracts at the start, with his terms and conditions, including amongst other things lateness payments, paying for holidays, sickness etc. Parents sign it to say they are happy. No-one is forcing them to sign. Why shouldn't it be enforceable just because he is self-employed? Thankfully its never came to that so far.

Are you in employment and have a contract? If your employers tried to shaft you and then said "oh well your contract is meaningless and not enforceable" - would you be happy? No dont think so.

That cannot be correct, it must be a typo! Are they paying their staff £30 a minute? Tbh, I would seriously recodnisder the nursery, because I would think they were more interested in squeezing money out of parents than caring for the kids

I understand the point above about having to make fines significantly more than the hourly rates otherwise people will just use it as 'extra time'. But 30 quid a minute is just taking the absolute piss.

They should specify in their policy exactly how they identify lateness. (Time noted from CCTV or preschool clock that staff can point to in front of you or similar.)

Otherwise you could argue that you weren't late and they can't prove you were so long after the fact. I would if it was going to cost me 90 quid.

walking after reading your posts I'm laughing at you calling me ridiculous. The op signed a contract with the nursery. Of course she has to pay. Also, you do realise that nurseries need to have insurance? So a child being there out with the opening hours means they aren't insured if there was an accident. It's a big reason as to why nurseries have these late clauses.

Anyway op, from your update it sounds like an error on the nursery's side, so hopefully that's that and you won't have to pay!

Ann has a good point - how do they define lateness? Do they time it from when you ring the bell? Or when they answer the door, there is often a difference.

I think you needed to say that you had two kids in the first post, really.

£45 for a late fee, per child, isn't unreasonable. It may well involve someone staying late to keep staff within ratios (it doesn't need to be the end of the day for this, we have a few staff who work mornings/start at 5am finish at 3pm/etc).

Even if it doesn't, it's a deterrent. I believe the nursery that I used to work at (back at 16, so a long time ago!) charged £30 for the first half an hour, £50 for the first hour, £150 for any longer and they'd turn the child over to Social Services after 55 minutes. This was per child. We still had a lot of parents late - some routinely late every day, and some that were usually on time, but that doesn't really matter if every day there is still a child or two not collected on time. They don't need to be the same children each day for that to become inconvenient.

That said, if you're not usually late, it was 3 minutes and nobody mentioned it, I'd go and see the manager. They may well waive the charge if they think you're unlikely to do it again - it's already served as a deterrent then, without needing to be paid. I shouldn't think they're paying overtime for 3 minutes.

Or is it even the time you leave?

It was in opening hours *PaulAnka".

"I thought I was on time" - so you won't have apologised for being late at the time, which won't have helped.

"I've used this nursery for 4 years and have never been late before". How do you know if you thought you were on time this time? They might already have waived the fee several times without you noticing.

It always really annoyed me in my days of collecting from nursery that the occasions that I thought I was really tight collecting at the end of the day, there were still people arriving to collect as we were leaving. Always the same ones, and always wanting to have a lengthy chat about the minutiae of DC's day.

Having said that, £45 per child is a bit steep.

Why shouldn't it be enforceable just because he is self-employed?

Not because he is self-employed but because the CM is a trader and the parent is a consumer and terms in contracts with consumers have to be fair. Parents don't want to fall out with the people who look after their children, and a CM-parent relationship is very personal, more so than with a nursery. But I think quite a few of the standard terms in CM and nursery contracts are unfair. For example, my nursery said they only had to refund fees if they were closed unexpectedly for 3 days or more (so if two days, tough). If I am not getting the service why should I pay for it. Fortunately the one time it happened, it was more than 3 days and it happened when we were on holiday. So we got a refund and it hadn't affected us anyway.

And people sign contracts because they have to. Try going into M&S and asking them to change their contract of sale for you. Hint: they won't. But that is precisely why they have to be fair terms.

My DCs nursery charged £35 for the first 15 mins you were late and then something like £5 on top for every 15 mins. I signed accepting that as I understood the reasoning of massive deterrent plus the staff cover required, fully intending to pay if we were ever late.

My issue would be with the not making you aware at pick up. I think our nursery had a standard note available to hand over to late parents warning them that they've triggered the late payment. I don't think it was used often, and there was definitely discretion going on.

I wonder if they've had problems with a lot of other parent's being late and unfortunately you have been caught in the crossfire. Also, are you sure you were late? DS's preschool opened 5 mins late the other day because their clock was wrong. It was only when they double checked with some of the waiting parents they realised.

Laguna It's not about being self-employed. It's about whether the contents of the contract are reasonable and within the law. If the contents of your DH's contract are both of those and signed by the parents then there isn't an issue. If they are not then he has a problem but that is his fault and not the fault of the parents.

I take your point Paul but in this case the children weren't in the nursery outside the opening hours. There were still 3hrs (or 2hrs 57 minutes) left.

If you don't think you were late, I would dispute that point. If they are going to dispute down to the minute, I'd imagine they need a fairly fool proof way to prove their point. It really ought to have been agreed with you at the point that you were actually late. If they think that would be too much of an onus on the staff, then they need to rethink their lateness policy.

As this is your first late, and you've been with them for so long I would be asking them to forget about it. And if they don't I'd give them notice.

They are taking the piss.