ComplaintsforSunny Day Academy

• Initial Complaint

  08/24/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  My wife and I enrolled our son into this daycare, paying the $100 reservation fee. Upon paying the charge, we were told that this amount would be applied to our first bill.

  Unfortunately, we had to withdraw our son from this facility after day one due to unsafe practices.

  This daycare promised a locked down building only allowing authorized persons to enter. To our surprise when we went to pick up our son on day one, the fingerprint reader did not work, there were no office staff at the front desk, so a random teacher, who we have never met, opened the door and stated that the fingerprint scanner never works and to just come in. No identification was requested.

  Furthermore, when we went back the the infant room, the two teachers present, who were different than the one that we left him with, assuming since it was a new person, that they must be there to pick up the new infant and handed off our son without checking identification.

  Because of this situation that we must have zero tolerance for this. The facility came up with excuses for why this occurred, and we did not feel comfortable allowing our son to stay at this daycare again, so unenrolled him. Our first bill was automatically withdrawn from our account charging for two days even though our son only attended one day.

  Despite the unsafe reasons why he was withdrawn, the company says they do not charge for attending, but charge fully on “reserving” a spot; as they said “agreed upon in the contact.” We noticed that the $100 that we put down upon application was not put towards our first bill as we “agreed upon” upon contract signing. We contacted the daycare about this. The Director stated she would mail a check out the next day and we could expect it the following week. 1.5 weeks later, we reached out about never receiving the check.

  The Director stated that her accountant says they do not return registrations and that they will apply it to our account if we ever want to return to daycare. Unacceptable.

  Business response

  10/14/2022

  Sunny Day Academy- Gahanna is deeply sorry for the experience at our facility. We are sorry that we failed to meet expectations. Our facility is a secure location that does require a fingerprint to access the building. We ask that parents schedule a time with the building administration to onboard the family to the program. This would include making sure all necessary paperwork is filled out properly, introduce the family to the teachers and place the family’s information into our system including taking the parents/guardians fingerprint to unlock our door.
  There are times that people have trouble getting into the facility using their fingerprint, so an administrator or other building staff members have to let them in.
  We apologize that the family was not ID’d by the teacher letting them in the building, as it is our policy to match ID’s to pick-up forms for people other than parents pick up their children. With that being said, the teachers that were caring for the child met the parent(s) during the walkthrough of the facility. Therefore, the teachers released the child to the parents.
  Our company policy is that a two-week written notice is given in order to terminate services from our facility. It is also company policy that registration fees are non-refundable.
  Our building administrator was extremely apologetic and generously only charged for one week of care, even though the contract that was signed clearly stated two weeks would be charged. A registration fee was never charged to the family; therefore, we were not able to issue a refund for something that was never pulled from their account.  During the time of conversation via email between the family and the building administrator, the administrator was unaware that the registration fee was never charged to the family.
  The only payment received from the family was the two-day weekly tuition rate of $196, even though they were contracted for three days per week. The total that should have been charged via the signed contract is $524. We waived $328 from the family’s balance.
  We feel as if we were very generous and understanding of the family’s concerns and did make adjustments to better suite families in the future.

  Customer response

  10/14/2022

  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I accept the business's response to resolve this complaint.
  

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