Changed my mind about a nursery before starting - do I owe any fees?

[ElbiTut]

We looked into nurseries quite early in advance and reserved (payed deposit/reservation fee) a spot in one of the popular ones in our area. Tbh at the time I was not even sure what I am looking for but I felt pressure from everyone at work - omg you need to book a nursery asap, there aren't many places available etc...

Turns out 2 months before we need to start many nurseries in our area still have free spaces and after checking few other nurseries I found one I like more than the one we reserved.

My question is - will the first nursery ask for a one month fee (their notice period is 3 months).
My husband says I am crazy and we should just ghost them 😅
But I am thinking they must have some mechanism to defer people from reserving multiple nurseries.

Any experiences with changing your mind last minute and having to pay?

What do their t&c say?

Don’t ghost them, just be up front with them. You don’t want them pursuing you for fees, and it’s not fair for them to keep open a space for you that could go to someone else who wants.

Tell them asap that you won’t be taking up the place. But if their notice period is three months and you are only giving two, you might find they do charge you for a month.

Highly likely given your not giving them 3 month notice that yes you will have to pay first month - check whatever you signed!

Looks like it will be fine, the notice period is relevant only after actually starting the nursery and signing their contract. All we did was fill out a registration form and payed deposit to reserve the spot. Looks like all nurseries have their own rules about this...
I now feel a bit silly I asked here instead of reading info on their website in more detail...:)) That just shows how superficial our nursery selection process was. But yeah... I was told that people reserve nurseries even before their child is born so we were really panicking and thought we are already late when our baby was born (and I had whole year ahead of us before him starting a nursery).