Complaints

• Initial Complaint

  10/30/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  We had 2 children attend this daycare facility (Guidepost Montessori at Spring Mill) from February 2024-August 2024. When we enrolled at the facility we were told guides (teachers) at the school would be Montessori trained and educated and would hold a degree in education. We signed a contract that indicated the operating hours of the facility were 6:30am to 6:30pm Monday - Friday. Within one month of attending these hours were changed to 7:30am - 5:30pm without an amendment to our contract. Most morning we would drop off our kids around 8:00am and there would be one staff member in the room to 12+ kids ranging from 2-6 years old. During our time our children had several teachers hired, fired, quit and none of them were Montessori trained. We ended our time at this facility on August 17, 2024 via an email. The facility refused to reimburse us the $2400 deposit despite not withholding their terms within the contract. On August 22, 2024 monthly tuition of $2537 was pulled from our bank account for September 2024 tuition even though they were informed we would not be attending. We were told the money would be reimbursed within 6 weeks and contacted them indicating that was not an appropriate timeline to withhold our funds that they should never have pulled. It has been ******************************************************** communication about our refund on tuition. The facility is refusing to reimburse our deposit. On top of these financial issues we have also been informed by past teachers about several issues that occurred ranging from classrooms not being in ratio for teacher to child. It was communicated that a teacher passed out during the school day and did not receive assistance for an unknown amount of time while they had let children play outside unattended and was helping a child in the restroom. We witnessed the spouse of the head of school in the building on over 5 occasions where he was unsupervised and behind the desk of the head of school.

  Business response

  11/20/2024

  In accordance with our policies, when parents disenroll, they must give us a full calendar's month notice. Once done, their deposit is applied to the last month of their children's attendance. This family did give notice in the middle of August and were charged for the next month's tuition prior to their deposit being applied.  The deposit was applied and a refund was issued on September 13th in the amount of $2400 for the deposits but not for the month of September as they did not give notice the month prior for August to be their last month.  These are all according to our policies.  The parents were unhappy saying they should have received their deposits for their two children and also not charged for September since they were not in attendance.  This was discussed to them previously.  Parents should have received their deposit long before this complaint was made to the Better Business Bureau as we did let the family know that we would ask for the refund to be expedited when the regional team spoke with them via phone on September 11th and the request was put in that same day.  When looking back at the attached, it does say the refund was processed on September 13th, 2 days after we promised we would do so.

  The parents indicated that they were promised that the teachers would be fully Montessori trained. That promise was never made. The promise was made that our teachers are in training for their Montessori certification and we did hold true to that statement. Further, at no point did we indicate that the school hours are from 6:30am to 6:30pm. Our normal operating hours for all of our schools are from 7am to 6pm. At this campus we did adjust the hours when the school first opened to 7:30am to 5:30pm - simply because that was the needs of the parent community at the time. There was never a time when a teacher passed out in the building and was left without assistance. Nor did we ever leave children unattended. 

  The parents are requesting $22,000 in return - which would have been the full amount of tuition that they paid for their children to attend. We did owe them $2400 - the amount of their deposits and this money has been refunded. 
  
  Thank you for giving us the opportunity to respond. 

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