to be pissed off that I'm being charged for the snow days

[DefinatelyNotAPooTroll]

Children's nursery closed for the 2 snow days a couple of weeks ago and nursery have made the decision to charge for those days.

I feel really pissed off as I had to take unpaid leave + make time back in lieu.

I have two under three so it's not bloody cheap either!!

Apart from this I couldn't be happier with them. It's a wonderful nursery. They're worth every penny we pay them but I'm really naffed off they charged for this!

I'm being unreasonable, aren't I?

Their decision to close so they shouldn’t be charging you. They should have reserves to cover the costs in a situation like this, it’s part of running a business. And I say that as a small business owner. We didn’t get out to a couple of our clients during the snow a couple of weeks back so they weren’t charged.

It entirely depends on your contract.

We have used one nursery in the past and DH has worked for 2 nursery chains. In our experience it's always stipulated in the contract one way or the other.

I completedly see your point of view - it would frustrate me too. But I can image its standard - think of the private schools who close - do they refund all their parents two days out of their fees?

I think this is outrageous.
I work for a tennis coaching company, we couldn't give tennis lessons in the snow so we refunded everyone that missed out.
A couple of days has cost the business over £2000.
All of our overheads (inc staff) still have to be paid

If they cannot provide the service they should not charge for it - especially as their customer has incurred extra expense

I can see why you are pissed off with it. But I think they probably still need to pay rent, salaries etc. Their outgoings won’t change.

I presume the op still has to pay her rent & living costs too.

What other businesses can charge their customers when they have not provided a service ( or goods) due to being closed due to snow? They also have overheads and staff.

In saying that I think it's probably in the contract, it was in our nursery including paying when closed for public holidays.

YANBU! Ask about it - perhaps if you push back a bit they will take it off your invoice for next month. But at least ask; they should know that this policy is costing you in this way.

What other businesses can charge their customers when they have not provided a service ( or goods) due to being closed due to snow?

Independent schools.

Feel the same. DS kindergarten closed (but every other local nursery open) because they could not grit a long driveway. They want to charge, and they are not going to get it for a service they did not provide.

@Slarti How has the nursery 'won?' Did they get a refund on the rent from their landlord? Or a refund on the council tax from the local authority? Did the staff not get paid? The utilities? Even the heating probably wouldn't be switched off for those days due to the risk of frozen pipes etc. So at the most, they might have saved a couple of pounds on electricity to run the cooker/kettle/steriliser/lights.

The business owner still has to pay the same costs and if they have any business sense they would make sure that the contracts they sign with clients do not make their business non-viable for that week/month.

@RufflingFeathers - what insurance exactly provides cover for snow days? I am not aware of any policies that cover this?

It is a shame that the parents bear the cost of childcare that (at short notice) does not get used but from my perspective, I know that the small nursery that I use often struggles to meet overheads and that if they were to start giving certain days for free whilst still paying those overheads, it is likely the business would eventually close. I know that it seems like nurseries must be some kind of gold mine because daily rates are so expensive but my child's nursery happens to be run by a friend and there are various points of the year (such as waiting for the government funding for 'free' hours to come through, which is almost always late and always in arrears and always at a lower hourly rate than the nursery would normally charge) where things are extremely close to the bone.

Like I say, a couple of days fees free of charge would be lovely but in the wider scheme of things, I'd rather a nursery ran well and stayed financially viable than the alternative (which would leave me with no childcare whatsoever).

In terms of what exactly is the business providing here, they are providing childcare for every day that it is possible for them to open, all year round. I've used the same nursery for four years and have only had to pay for two snow days where they were closed. In the big scheme of things, I don't begrudge them that.

I think it's fair enough. Factor beyond their control.

Just say no.

They closed.

You're paying for a service. They didn't provide that service.

Didn't cost them anything not to open, so why charge you?

The nursery "win" because they get their costs (daily running costs plus profit margin) covered without actually providing a service.

The staff win because they (hopefully) get paid but equally don't have to work.

The shareholders win because their profit is unaffected.

The OP loses.

Flobella the nursery's rent is not the op's concern.

They are charging for a service they did not provide.

If you called out an electrician and he couldn't get there to do the job because of the snow would you still pay him?

And on top of paying the electrician that didn't come would you also pay a second person to do the job too? That's the same as the ops situation

This whole debate is academic unless we know the terms of OP's contract. If she has signed a contract with a clause stating that parents will be charged in the event of inevitable closure then she can be as pissed off as she likes but it won't change anything.

Double-check the contract. I too think that a business should not be charging for non-service. Thinking also of sport, I've had several games cancelled because of snow and public holidays, and none of those were charged for; and I'm sure it did cost the company dearly, and some of their freelance staff. I am freelance, and I wouldn't dream of charging my customers if I don't appear.

(I personally think that "snow days" shouldn't happen anyway; this country is far to quick to cancel things for the white stuff, and keeps shooting itself in the foot over the white stuff, and as a child I never once had a day off school for snow, but all that's another debate.)

But I can image its standard - think of the private schools who close - do they refund all their parents two days out of their fees?

We don't get a refund but they calculate a daily rate and take that off next term's fees.

It is a fairly new situation though, school has never been closed in the 8 years DD has been there!

No sorry - if they decide to close then you shouldn't be charged imo, if you had decided not to go and they had stayed open then fair play. I would be challenging that decision and if they won't back down I would be asking for some sort of extra 'free days' in lieu of it.

As people have said, check your contract. I would imagine it is covered in there. We have to pay if they close for things like snow for a certain number of days. I know that and knew that when I signed the contract. No point making a big fuss of it now if you didn’t bother to check before you placed your children there.

As it happened, our nursery stayed open despite everything else being closed!

Slightly off-topic, but are people saying that they'd expect the staff to be paid for a snow day? I always thought that if you couldn't make it in because of snow and couldn't work from home, that you had to take it as annual leave or not get paid. That's what my work (NHS) have always done anyway - is that not correct?

Sorry OP for derailing slightly. I'd be pretty annoyed if I were in your position. I was a little bit irritated that my (ridiculously overpriced) gym seemed to close at the sign of the first snowflake but I pay monthly for that and just sucked it up. Although to be fair, now that my whole understanding on staff sometimes being paid for snow days has been rocked (rocked!), I'm feeling a bit better about it if my money went towards the gym staff being paid.

Agree that it will be spelled out in your contract. Usually for snow days (or any closure days, except over Christmas), we split the costs. So bank holidays, etc. and snow days charged as 50%. That's fairly standard as they have to still pay their staff on those days and cover infrastructure costs.

It's not OP's responsibility to make sure the nursery staff are paid. That is up to the nursery owners. She shouldn't have to pay for a service that was not offered. Perhaps it's in the contract. But the nursery should be taking the financial hit and not the customers. It's a profit making business after all.

@BarbarianMum yes the OP loses because she has had to pay for days that she hasn't used but the alternative is that the nursery has the same overheads with nothing to pay them with which is a dangerous situation for any business to be in. It's great if the nursery runs a contingency fund for these things but I'd be surprised if many do.

This is why most nurseries will cover this in their contracts and why most nurseries do not give refunds for other days like the children being sick or clients not needing childcare during school holidays - it would be great if they could but realistically, how many businesses could operate like that?

Childcare is infuriatingly expensive in the UK and there is often woeful support for working parents so any nursery closure is going to hit hard but like I say, it is just one of those things.

If it bothers the OP that much she could look for another childcare provider that offers more favourable terms. For me, the nursery I use is excellent, convenient for work, flexible in lots of other ways so I just suck things like this up. I think they provide excellent value for money in lots of other ways (we get free forest school opportunities, for example, that other providers charge extra for locally) so I just take the rough with the smooth.

I hear what people are saying in terms of sports matches being cancelled for team sports they participate in but you can't really compare the two business models - they are quite different. I did laugh at the comment about shareholders - I don't know of any children's nursery that has shareholders! Occasionally there might be a small chain of nurseries operating but they tend to be quite small-scale operations really, with one proprietor. I think some people are imagining greedy, capitalist pigs operating childcare settings and backslapping with the board of directors on the golf course!

It's great that some people are talking about their childcare providers not charging or giving some compensation - lucky them! But if the contract stipulates that closure due to unforeseen events will not result in a refund of fees then the OP needs to consider whether she wants to continue with that nursery or find one with more favourable terms elsewhere. I personally wouldn't uproot my kids out of a great nursery for the sake of the odd snow day - on balance, it's not worth it. But maybe the OP has other reasons for disliking her nursery or the way they do things?

Just a by the way, we had huge snow drifts here where tractors were struggling to get through and snow ploughs were coming off the road so the closure of the nursery was totally sensible. In this case, I wouldn't have put my son in the car, even if the nursery was open. I just didn't feel it was worth the risk to travel and wasn't at all surprised when they closed (they wouldn't close for the odd snowflake like the gym mentioned above). I wouldn't have looked favourably on the nursery manager if she had been happy with her staff travelling in those conditions. I hope that they did get paid - childcare workers get a pittance of a wage and they work so hard with my little boy that I actually care more about them getting paid than I do about me being theoretically out of pocket. We budget per month for childcare, we know the terms of the contract and we set aside that money anyway so I don't begrudge it, to be honest.

So you look down on nursery staff and think they shouldnt get paid? Nice.

They are probably on minimum wage anyway.

Typical selfish person.