Unprofessional accounts department?

[msbossy]

I've had numerous financial issues with DD's nursery, the latest of which is a 10% charge for late payment.

We are invoiced a month in advance and have 14 days to pay. DH paper voucher is sent by post as soon as an invoice is received, my voucher is paid electronically, and the balance is paid by standing order. However, I get paid on 20th of the month, therefore my employer's childcare voucher provider makes electronic payment on or around the 20th of the month.

The 10% charge they have levied is 10% of the £243 I contribute despite them having more than 50% of the payment. Does this sound reasonable? The history of issues with their incompetence is making me feel that they are being unreasonable, but I'd like an objective opinion.

My second issue is that they refuse to speak to us about this on the phone. Invoices are stuffed into DD's nursery bag and have no contact details on them. Any verbal communication is via the nursery staff. I feel very strongly that invoices should be posted, there should be a phone number for someone in charge of finance, and that it should not be made the responsibility of childcare staff to deal with financial issues. DH was provided with an email address which he used to request that someone call him. The response was that they don't make calls and would respond to email within 48 hours. Again, is this an level of service others would accept?

is it really very difficult to ask a memebr of staff who you should speak to regarding your invoice? also, surely you have a contact number for teh nursery? whoever answers the phone will also be able to tell you who you need to speak to. any nurseries i have used have put invoices in teh child's nursery bag.

One side point -- I am on the parent-nursery association committee at our nursery and it's flabbergastng how rubbish some of the voucher companies are. For example, even though they are showing the payments to the parents as having been made regularly, some of them pay nothing at all to the nursery for four months and then three months' payments will arrive at once. So don't necessarily assume that they have actually received the 50% of the payment that you think they've received. In fact, in order to cope with this our nursery has introduced a policy where you have to pay in full in advance by standing order and then they refund you as soon as they actually get the cash from the childcare vouchers. It's not been the most popular policy, but having seen how much money the nursery was losing before on childcare vouchers I can quite understand it.

You should be able to speak to someone involved with the financial side about the invoices, in person if not on the phone. But I don't see anything wrong with the invoice itself coming via the nursery bag.

I get paid on or around the 21st of the month, but my childcare voucher has always been for the next month -- i.e. has been a week or more in advance, rather than three weeks behind. The very first month's fees we just had to find out of pocket.

I do tend to think that if you are consistently deliberately and knowingly paying a portion of the bill late every month it's a bit much to complain about their incompetence. But at the same time they ought to be more available to discuss the issue.

If your vouchers are not being paid in time, then you need to consider banking a month's vouchers, so you always have some available to pay your nursery fees. I know several parents who do this, so they do not incur late payment fees.

The 10% fee depends whether it states it is 10% of the invoice total, or 10% of the balance. Can you find this in your paperwork anywhere.

Invoices in the bags are quite normal, otherwise postage costs will be added on to nursery fees and people will start claiming that their invoice was lost in the post.

All that aside, you should be able to speak to someone about your invoices, although personally I would prefer a prompt email reply, because then you have it in writing and they can't deny what they said.

Sorry ... cross post.

ok so let me see if i have this correct.

at the start of february you get the invoice for march's fees. you have 14 days to pay so your DH sends his voucher but yours doesn't get sent until the 20th so it is after the 14 days.

the late payment fee is for 10% of your payment, which is the late one. but you don't think that is reasonable?

is that right?

so if i have thhis right you are being charged £24.30 every month because YOUR voucher payment of £243 is being sent AFTER the 14 day deadline.

At our nursery you would be charged a flat rate of £25 if you bill is not settled by 14th of each month so you are getting a good deal.

Agree you should ensure you are paying in advance with your vouchers or get yourself ahead so pay the extra 243 and the let the 243 voucher be credited on 20th thus putting your account in credit......this will save you money in long run as no late charges!

Agree with post that says voucher companies are rubbish. I deal with the invoices at the nursery i work at and we have just had a payment of over 3k paid into our account as the voucher company was not releasing the money to us!

Thx for your responses. I can see that I've been a little reactionary due to previous issues.

I'm going to transfer the nursery the funds so that I don't fall into the overcharge bracket again. I will also be asking for a complete statement though - I am sure that my deposit was supposed to be used for the first month's advance payment when DD started...

ProfLayton - thanks for pointing out source of voucher problems. It may explain why my original problem occurred. My employer's voucher provider didn't make payment for three months, but it took the nursery over 6 months to tell me, by which time they'd moved to a different provider. The upshot is that I've paid income tax on 3 months of fees that I shouldn't have done! Now I know why the nursery didn't identify this until so late so my angst with the nursery is dissipating :-)

Booy - re the speaking to someone... well, the nursery is a small chain and the finance staff don't work at the location of the nursery. The nursery staff have been instructed that they musn't give out contact numbers for finance and as I said, the finance staff have refused to call DH back. All very IMO.

that is a really strange set-up!!
it is in the nurseries best interests for parents to be able to contact the finance department easily. it sounds like emailing them is the only option then, and as HSMM said, you will have everything in writing that way.

i would also insist on having a contact number for them too, internet connection is not always reliable.