Issues with missed private music lessons - AIBU??

[Marvololo]

Hello all,

I started having private music lessons last September and the teacher said I'd have to pay a half term upfront. I didn't sign a contract and no written terms and conditions were provided. I didn't have an issue with paying half a term upfront and I had to miss a couple of lessons due to my work commitments. However, on January, I contracted COVID at the start of the new term. I had to cancel my lessons whilst I was testing positive (2 in total). I then developed bronchitis and was very unwell. I asked the teacher if I could pause my lessons and start after the February half term because I needed time to recover. The teacher said I have to give half a term's notice to stop lessons so I owe her for all the lessons for this half term. I've also discovered that the teacher has been offering virtual lessons during the pandemic, however this was never offered to me when I couldn't attend.
I've had experience with a music teacher charging a late cancellation fee but I've never had such onerous terms as this. I don't feel it's right to be paying for half a term's lessons that I've not even received, especially with no written contract. In any event, I feel that the relationship with the teacher has broken down and I'm now receiving "robust" messages and emails demanding payment.
Am I being unreas

TIA

This is something that you just have to accept op. It's happening to everyone at the moment. My grandchildren have missed weeks of after school club and swimming lessons due to covid. Both had been paid for in advance. Businesses would go bust if they had to return all the money to people who missed sessions due to covid.

Please pay her.

She is running a business. She has made her time available to you and can't fill it. It is YOU who can't make her lessons.

I do think she should have offered you the virtual ones though.

For you and those who think you shouldn't pay. Imagine it like this...you work in an office job for a salary. One day you turn up to work, and the office is shut. You can't work that day. They say they're not paying you because you didn't work.
So through no fault of your own, you can't work that shift, and youre not getting paid for it. That is the same as you do when you don't pay a small business person when you don't turn up.

Of course you must pay.

YABU to not pay for missed lessons.
YANBU to pay for the remaining lessons. If she never told you that there was half a term’s notice before signing up!
Other people doing it ‘normally’ is irrelevant. You weren’t told so you shouldn’t pay.

How hard is it for people to send over a short text of T&C’s to every new student. The laziness of people who don’t do this…

*YANBU to not pay

Also why didn’t she offer virtual lessons?
Seems like a bit of a jobsworth

Yabu

This work is her income. If she is keeping Tuesdays at 4pm for you, she can't take on a different pupil in that slot, so there's nothing different she can do at 4pm on a Tuesday if you don't show up. The half term's notice is also reasonable, it gives her a chance to recruit a new pupil fir the slot.

All teachers of music and instruments like this will consider someone like you, who doesn't respect their time and expects them to take the financial hit whenever your own convenience requires it, to be a nightmare. They won't want you as a pupil. By all means refuse to pay if you wish, pp are right that without a written contract it's unlikely that she would be able to force it through the small claims court. But these teachers talk to each other, and you'll soon find that no one will accept you as a pupil without a tightly written contract requiring that you pay up when your own availability is unreliable.

I have piano lessons and so does my daughter. Her terms are standard to be fair.

Really pleased to see how this has gone.

I’m a tutor and regularly have people saying they can’t make it. If at all possible I reschedule the lesson. I recently had a client who cancelled 3 lessons in 6 weeks. I let him off one but on the third occasion I said he had to pay. (The student wasn’t ill just didn’t want to do it that week) He was outraged and refused because he had given 2 weeks notice. I said I could no longer go on with the lessons and he was horrified, saying I didn’t care about my students and was only concerned about money. He seemed to think I did the work for fun!

@nordica

A verbal contract is enough. This is normal for any private lessons/sessions of this type and absolutely right too - the slot is held for you so why should the teacher not get paid because you're ill or otherwise busy?

It’s not though. Some people have a cancellation fee (rather than standard ‘pay for all missed lessons). Some allow notice before X period.

There’s no such thing as ‘standard’ if OP wasn’t told before then she shouldn’t have to pay. Of course she was told and now wants to back out she’s being a twat…

‘The teacher said I have to give half a term's notice to stop lessons’. Even if you verbally agreed to that, which isn’t clear from your posts, the teacher would have trouble proving it should she take you to a small claims court.

It’s unprofessional to have no written Ts & Cs.

Of course you need to pay for the lessons you missed plus half a term notice (which is generous - it's normally a full term's notice). This is absolutely standard. You can't muck someone around like this. Please just pay her and next time don't make commitments you can't fulfil.

This is this woman's livelihood. Would you be happy if your workplace routinely asked stopped providing you with work and stopped paying you. And then tried to let you go without giving you any notice or paying you notice pay?

And contracts can be verbal as well as written, and what she is quoted is absolutely standard and reasonable, so I think she'd win if it ended up in court.

@Loopytiles

‘The teacher said I have to give half a term's notice to stop lessons’. Even if you verbally agreed to that, which isn’t clear from your posts, the teacher would have trouble proving it should she take you to a small claims court.

It’s unprofessional to have no written Ts & Cs.

Exactly. I don’t understand why people are all going ‘a contract verbally is still a contract’ blah2. True, but… If these people wanted to be treated professionally they should behave as such. Which includes T&C’s and payment records if a client wants them.

If you treat it like an ‘informal’ arrangement expect people to not respect your time.

I think the virtual lessons may be a red herring . I'm presuming that you are just talking about the two you missed when you tested positive? Unless you made it clear to her when you were cancelling that you felt fine but were just isolating I think it was reasonable of her to assume you were unwell.

It’s not at all ‘standard’ not to have written Ts&Cs.

Would you work a job where you only got paid if someone else turned up? Where you didn't get paid if someone else was ill? That's basically what you're expecting her to do. It's not her fault you're ill, she still has to feed her family.

At the start of the new term in Jan, did you pay upfront for the half term of lessons and / or actually have any lessons?

It sounds like you didn’t. So the onus is on the teacher to show that an agreed (verbal) contract was in place to give half a term’s notice of cancellation, which seems likely to be hard to do.

Just to add I don’t make people give notice.

I have posted on other threads about similar situations because I am a keen musician with experience of giving private lessons. I would agree with PP who say that you have a verbal contract and that you are paying as much for the teacher’s time as anything else. I was always understanding if an adult pupil had, say, an unexpected work crisis (I didn’t expect them to risk their job or business for a hobby) or if severe weather conditions stopped someone attending at the last minute (? storms Dudley and Eunice)
but otherwise I expected 24 hours notice or I charged for missed lessons. Some pupils/parents of pupils seem to think you’re like lesson vending machine not a person with the same 24 hours in the day as anyone else. As a slight aside, I remember one parent who, despite being my worst offender for last-minute cancellations, was the most
insistent that her little darling should
keep taking exams!

I think these are normal terms for music tutors. I had a verbal contract with my dd music teacher years ago and same as yours. You need to pay and continue or pay and give notice. It is you breaking contract not music teacher.

You should pay for the lessons you missed, regardless of the reason it’s not the teachers fault

But you shouldn’t have to pay a notice fee if you never had any t&cs or contract warning you about it

If you just "pause" for half a term is the teacher just supposed to earn less and survive?!

She can't exactly fill that space at no notice for only a half term. You are just asking her to accept holding your space and losing income because that's what suits you. I dont think half a term notice is unreasonable at all.

@Youcansaythatagainandagain

General rule of thumb If you miss a private class you pay. If the tutor misses a class, she makes up the class.

This. This is her job, she isn't doing it for a laugh. You have a place and she cannot give that place to anyone else. You are paying for the right to retain that slot. It is not her fault that you have had health issues. If she had had health issues, and had not taught you, you would be expecting her to make up the time. The roles are reversed and her, entirely appropriate expectation, is that you will pay for what you have booked

On the basis that she didn't offer you 'on line' tuition, I'd not pay the full amount, maybe half.

It’s not a gesture of goodwill to pay her, you missed your lessons. People rely on the income they make from teaching and tutoring, it’s not a hobby or a favour. If my kids can’t attend their tutor I still pay her for her time, because she can’t use that slot for anyone else.

Would you have been ok with her saying you can’t have your usual lesson because you cancelled and she gave someone else your slot? There are a finite number of hours she has available to teach and she needs each of those hours filled to give a stable income - the cost of those hours need to cover the time she needs for lesson prep, the costs associated with running her business etc and she needs to be able to predict her income, as we all do.