Childminder terminating contract

[hoolahoolay]

Surely I'm not being unreasonable. So my son is due to start with a childminder next week when I go back to work after maternity leave. We have settling in sessions this week

So she sent the invoice for January out early December and she said to let her know if there were any errors, the due date on the invoice was 1st January. For one reason or another we haven't paid it and instead of reminding us she has messaged this morning to say she's terminated contract as invoice is 5 days late.
Surely she could have sent a payment reminder.

WTF can I do now?

You live a different life and I don’t insult you for this - you insult me.
You make jewellery so people pay on purchase. This is an important distinction because you are making a commodity. There is a contract and you should offer a return and refund if faulty or not as ordered. Childcare is a service that I have paid afterwards with an invoice.

Surely as a new parent going back to work, paying for childcare to enable you to do so would be very top of the to do list?

Childcare, and decent childcare that I was happy with, was my top priority when returning to work after my first child. This is not an excuse and surely paying to ensure your place is secure would come first.
I don't know how the OP would have gone so long without even thinking of it as this would be the first thing on my mind when returning to work and ensuring the childcare place is all ok.

Absolutely this.
Tardy payers who are reluctant from the get go are serious bad news.

Zero excuses for not paying her.

How's she going to sue for alternative costs when she broke the terms of the original contract by not paying on time?

This. All those saying " Oh but it's your first month. You should have been given leeway" This is exactly why you haven't as YOU have set the precedent as a bad payer whom she may potentially have to chase every month. Why would she want to do that?

Then entitled old you pops up on here complaining how unfair it is when the situation is entirely your own fault.

If you take the, quite frankly daft, advice of taking her to court for your costs you will A) be laughed out of court, and B) Will never find a childminder again as childminders talk to each other and no-one will then touch you with a barge pole.

Either you take the excellent advice of grovelling and paying 3 months in advance or you try and find a new childminder which may prove tricky this late on.

Just going to ignore every other service I listed, and has also been repeatedly listed in this thread?
Paying in advance for services, especially related to your child, is the norm. Your nursery was the outlier. It may be your experience, but it is the outlier. It is very odd to claim you’ve “never heard of such a thing” when almost every service people have discussed on here, and more, are always paid in advance.

Funnily enough, I don't think the OP is coming back!

I, like the majority, agree with the childminder. It doesn't look great failing to pay the first invoice. If you have a genuine awful reason why you didn't pay, then I think it's worth approaching her, but if you're going to use a "we were just too busy to remember" then I wouldn't bother

Sorry but I think you are being unreasonable. She clearly laid out the payment terms and it’s not a good start for you to be missing payments already.

Why did you miss the payment anyway?

Chalk it up to experience and find someone else. And pay them before the deadline next time.

For one reason or another we haven't paid it

This bit is very telling. So, you didnt think her bills were important enough for you to worry about.

And you're now surprised that she wants to terminate the arrangement? 😵‍💫

Contracts usually outline the terms for late payment. I bet that this cm is in breach of contract because it’s odd to be able to terminate a contract on five days late payment for an advance service and to add that she has not worked for you yet. You are a new client. Check on this op. You might be able to get your alternative cm costs paid until you find a replacement cm.

Hilarious. Of course YABU

What can you do now?

Learn from this

This absolutely smacks of ''The Childminder isn't important, why should we pay her on time, she can wait on us until we can be bothered to pay her.

Fair play to her. I would also cancel you if you had not paid on time I would worry that this would be a pattern of crap behaviour. You have no choice but to look elsewhere.

If you were sent the invoice in early December why the hell didn’t you just pay it, my dad runs a business and lets people off for this kind of thing, she runs her business well. YABU

Would you be so understanding if your employer was to not pay you because it was a busy time of year?

I agree with pps, you had a month to pay OP and you didn't so I can quite see why she is terminating the contract - it's hardly an auspicious start on your part.

It’s not a job. It’s an on-going service from a business. It’s completely different.

If I sign up for a gym I pay on the 1st of Jan and then I can use that service for the whole month. The gym doesn’t bill you at the end of the month, because there is a risk that the person will disappear without paying after using the gym for a month, or they might say that they went on holiday for 2 weeks and so only want to pay for the 2 weeks that they actually attended.

If I sign up for Sky TV, I pay for the whole month before they will let me start watching. They don’t let me watch for a month and then bill me after. And risk having to chase non payers.

If I sign my child up for ballet lessons, I pay for the whole term up front. If I don’t pay upfront then I don’t get a space.

I don’t know why people find this so difficult to understand.

You need to grovel, promise sincerely that it will never be late again.

Would you like it if your employer just forgot to pay you on time?

Yes agreed. She sent an invoice, you didn’t pay. Would you continue working for a company that “forgot” to pay your wages? No.

This was on Mumsnet re paying Childminders:

''There will always be parents trying to take the mick - the trick is to weed them out before you take them on. Personally I hate the business side of cm but I'm getting tougher with experience.''

I think yabu. She's probably had bad experiences of people not paying before and sees this as a sign of what's to come if you've not paid the very first payment.

@hoolahoolay Just had a thought about what you could do... You could phone the childminder apologising profusely, and saying that you will pay for January today if she agrees to restore the contract, and that you will add on 10% as compensation for messing her about. You can also promise to pay on time in future and say that you will add 10% to future bills if you go even a day late. If she realises that you understand you've behaved badly she may relent.

It’s a service job. Are medical professionals, teachers, police, firefighters, bin men, carers, etc paid at the start of the month in advance of their working month? Answer is no. They are paid after doing their jobs.

These are salaried workers. Childminders are self employed. This comparison makes no sense.

It absolutely isn't, no. Nevertheless, if I terminated all the customers who paid late, without a reminder, then my colleagues would lose their jobs. My solution is to build up a relationship with the customers, get them to pay and ...... everyone's a winner.