Instrumental teacher refusing to teach my child

[MairSS]

I just cannot believe the email I’ve just received from my child’s instrumental teacher!
DS has been receiving instrumental lessons at school for a couple of terms. The music teacher is freelance and therefore parents pay fees directly to her.
We pay up front each half term. She invoices us. I had overpaid by one lesson last time, and she had not realised this. I therefore sent her a message telling her to check her account. She immediately did and apologised saying she had not realised and adjusted the invoice accordingly. I wrote another message saying that in fact I always pay on time and didn’t appreciate getting messages saying I hadn’t paid when I had.
She then said on reflection it may be better if I found an alternative teacher as she doesn’t tolerate rudeness and reattached her terms and conditions!
surely she can’t do this? How unprofessional! I’ll be making an appointment to see the headteacher on Monday!

but you said ' I thought it was also beneficial to the teacher as she would have had extra money in her account. '

a whole £7 yes seven pounds !!!

Hmm, so it's only now that you realise she's worthy of your time? Now you've realised she has control of something you want?

The OP really is lady bountiful, isn't she. Unfortunately for her the teacher isn't grovelling as expected!

That's the right price for half-an-hour of a private lesson. A one-to-one lesson of any kind normally costs about £30 an hour.

Just to add that my late husband and I attended group music lessons some years back: it was a council initiative - there were various instrumental groups of various levels.

One of the instruments taught was violin and the group lessons were very successful, judging from the end-of-year concert and ceilidh.

'I’m paying £7 per group lesson (20 minutes) and going rate for 1-1 private lessons in my area is £16 (30 minutes) so you can see why I want to keep lessons in school!'

So why deliberately go out of your way to antagonise her?

You've whit yourself in the door and you appear utterly belligerent to the fact you have behaved badly.

If this is how you go through life then your child is either going too copy you and have a massive chip on their shoulder or will realise your behaviour is unacceptable and will distance themselves from you.

Then why are being such an arrogant rude person then?

you shot yourself in the foot here and you know it but rather than swallow your pride for the sake of your child you are acting like a complete ….

she will probably do the lesson then take back the violin on Tuesday because she knows fine you’re going to be as disrespectful difficult and manipulative as you can and if she does that then you have nothing to hold over her.

OR YOU CAN

be genuinely apologetic while showing you take full responsibility for your own actions in this situation and for your behaviour then ask nicely if she wouldn’t mind drawing a line under this and you promise you won’t treat her with such contempt and disrespect again.

so you started all this fuss over £7 🙄

And she'll go thanks for bringing the violin back bye now.

Why would you put your child in that position?

Being paid early is not helping her unless she is literally starving.

Wow.

My DDs lessons were twice the price.
What’s sad is that (often) people with the most money are the ones least likely to spend it or treat people with respect. Op seems to be tight as a gnat’s chuff and no mistake. Please treat people better @MairSS . Seriously. It’s just shameful to not apologise. I’m embarrassed for you.

It also sounds like it was your mistake in the first place paying the wrong amount last term. Then expected the teacher to spend time reconciliating her accounts when I’m sure she’d have rather been teaching. If you thought you were ‘doing her a favour’ by choosing a random amount to pay her and expecting her to keep track of all the crazy parents who Think they know better than just pay the right amount you were very wrong. The. You doubled down and didn’t apologise.

you handled it really poorly and you child will now suffer.

She's freelance. She gets to choose her clients. Nothing school can do about it.

You were shockingly rude to her because she didn't notice a mistake that YOU made. You refuse to apologise to her fir your rudeness so she is quite rightly dropping you.

She doesn't have to actually refund you, as long as she can evidence that she has offered you one and you didn't accept. It doesn't mean she is obliged to teach your son.

You were rude and unprofessional and now your son will pay the price. It doesn't matter if it isn't fair on him, prioritising him is your job, not hers.

Wow you seem very entitled!

What do you expect the headteacher to do? It's not like they can force the teacher to keep giving your son lessons if she's decided she doesn't want to because of your rude behaviour. One of the perks of being freelance/ self employed is you can choose to bin off rude customers, as there's still enough nice people out there to make a living.

I'm sure the teacher wasn't trying to scam you out of 7 quid, so I'm not sure why you felt the need to e-mail her a second time after she'd apologised for making a mistake. If you've never made an error at work then good on you, but most humans do get things wrong from time to time.

Maybe you shouldn't have been so rude to her?

In your shoes I’d email her and apologise, just simply say
‘sorry if I came over rude, my son enjoys his lessons with you and has had no part in this, could you please reconsider teaching him because I don’t want him to miss out because I was having a bad day!’

Good for her.

You were rude, she doesn’t want your business any more. It's your own fault that you've ruined it for your child. Maybe reflect on how you talk to people in future.

I'm still confused here..

You were originally pissy because she sent an invoice reminder, for the term you haven't yet paid for, that is due at the start of term..

You have only paid for 1 lesson of that term, not the full term and you did that as an overpayment of the previous invoice.

So you have not paid this terms invoice. Were you planning on paying that late because you'd pre-paid the first lesson (without discussion or agreement from the teacher it seems, or surely you'd have said so earlier in the thread).

You do realise she almost certainly uses some invoicing system that simply sends out reminders automatically to those who haven't paid the current invoice. It won't be able to recognise that you over paid previously and are still technically 'in credit'...

I cannot believe you're being this shitty, and seriously thought that overpaying £7 without prior agreement, was any sort of benefit to the teacher!

My DH is a personal trainer and has cut contracts with people before for being extremely rude. They are providing a service and quite simply don’t have to put up with it if they don’t want to. ‘Fight’ it all you want but I get the feeling you’ve shot yourself in the foot here and will find yourself hobbling away.

Surely, she can! She’s a small business who simply didn’t notice your payment in her bank statement. Just a simple mistake; perhaps she’s better at music than admin. Anyway, you’ve offended her so that’s that!

Wow, you are awful 🫣

MairSS - on another thread you describe yourself as a music teacher working with small groups in schools. So I am assuming this is a reverse??

So you deliberately paid an amount which didn't match your invoice? Then you expected the teacher to go to the additional effort of manually adjusting your next invoice to account for something done for your own convenience.
This sort of behaviour is one of the most frustrating parts of my job!

Interesting... 🤔
Thanks @cansu