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Thursday, March 08, 2012

One of the good things about Amelie attending nursery is that it gives her the chance to learn basic maths. And when she's done so, she can teach it to the admin staff, because frankly they don't have a clue.

Amelie does 12 hours a week at nursery, of which 9 are funded by the government in some sort of benevolent, philanthropic act of kindness. So we pay for 3 hours a week.

The hourly rate is £3.80, so that's £11.40 a week.

The first term is 12 weeks long, so that's £11.40 x 12, which comes to £136.80.

We'd already paid a deposit of £50, so that left a balance of £86.80 to pay for the first term.

Are you following this? Good. Because they clearly aren't.

We were given a document in January stating that the payment of £86.80 would be taken from my salary in two instalments: £43.40 in February, and the same again in March. So imagine my delight when I picked up our invoice for February four weeks ago, and found that it listed a total charge of £207.48.

Naturally I queried it with them, and was told (quite casually) that it was a printing error. They corrected it, printed out a new invoice, and charged me £43.40. So that was all fine. If a little annoying.

That was February. Now we're into March, and frankly nothing's changed. I picked up this month's invoice yesterday lunchtime, and instead of the £43.40 we were expecting, the figure they've plucked out of the air this month is £93.40.

So I spoke to the deputy manager. She told me that because of their error last month, she'd instructed the nursery manager to double-check this invoice before printing it out. Which is worrying on so many levels.

As a result, she was confident it was correct. She then suggested that the reason it was £50 more this month was because they'd knocked off our deposit last month. I explained that this wasn't the case, and then went through a simple maths lesson with her: 3 hours a week at £3.80 an hour can't possibly add up to £93.40 a month. She looked back at me blankly and said she didn't know.

Apparently the only person who does know is the manager. She alone deals with all the figures and payments. Which is scary, as she's got it wrong both months, even after double-checking it. Unfortunately she'd gone home early yesterday (possibly to watch Numberjacks on Cbeebies), so I couldn't speak to her. Lisa's going in to see her at 1pm today.

I'm writing this twenty miles away, during my lunch break at Uckfield Hospital, so I don't know what the outcome is. This one's a cliffhanger for me too...

4 comments:

Phil's Mum said...

We're all on the edge of that cliff........

Beckie said...

You're not alone (not that is comforting), Arthur's nursery sent us a letter home saying we owed them £80 and after investigation they owed us £30.
Beckie

Phil said...

Anyone would think they're letting the children prepare the invoices.

Peter Chapman said...

I blame your new cat.