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The ethics of paying for daycare while it is shut down due to Covid-19 (1 Viewer)

H

huthut

Footballguy
So it looks like daycare is charging us full price for 3+ weeks minimum of no class. Seems like it is a paid service not being provided. We cannot leave without penalty due to requiring 30 days notice (and even if we wanted to, everything has massive wait-lists here so we would not be able to find anything assuming they can go back mid April). I would have no problem paying something so the teachers have money to live off of, but paying full price feels wrong, like the owner would be making more profit for them to be shut down since they are not going through consumables and using utilities and such. I feel like there should be some shared sacrifice between the ownership and parents, and not solely the parents paying for a service they are not receiving so the owner can continue to pull in profits. Am I being unreasonable here? What happens if the shutdown is longer than 3 weeks? It is fairly expensive so it is a real amount of money we are spending on nothing.

 
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huthut said:
So it looks like daycare is charging us full price for 3+ weeks minimum of no class. Seems like it is a paid service not being provided. We cannot leave without penalty due to requiring 30 days notice (and even if we wanted to, everything has massive wait-lists here so we would not be able to find anything assuming they can go back mid April). I would have no problem paying something so the teachers have money to live off of, but paying full price feels wrong, like the owner would be making more profit for them to be shut down since they are not going through consumables and using utilities and such. I feel like there should be some shared sacrifice between the ownership and parents, and not solely the parents paying for a service they are not receiving so the owner can continue to pull in profits. Am I being unreasonable here? What happens if the shutdown is longer than 3 weeks? It is fairly expensive so it is a real amount of money we are spending on nothing.
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If it is in your contract, sucks.  If not, reasonable to refuse/negotiate.

 
this is craziness.  

and yeah, at a minimum, there should be less than full price with some kind of shared sacrifice.  

is this one of those places that people are on a waiting list to get in?  

 
I'd be pretty pissed. That's real money . Either you find another caregiver or stay at home. and if your at home with the kids you're not working, possibly not being paid. Most of the teachers at our daycare have already been asked/agreed to watch individual families if the daycare closes, so most of them will be getting paid anyway, so they better not charger us if/when they all get closed. 

Our place requires 4 weeks notice. I wouldn't want to leave it daycare for similar reasons as you mentioned. but if I did, I'd consider calling the bank to see if I could prevent them from withdrawing money from our account. 

 
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Binky The Doormat said:
this is craziness.  

and yeah, at a minimum, there should be less than full price with some kind of shared sacrifice.  

is this one of those places that people are on a waiting list to get in?  
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It is not some exotic private school or anything, just a regular daycare. Every daycare here has massive wait-lists, so I am assuming this one does as well. We have no leverage, since if we do leave they will not lose any money since they will just grab the next family on the wait-list. I am pretty sure the owners are well aware of this fact, seeing as how they nickle and dime on everything and raise prices every 6 months or so. It is a fairly big daycare, the owners have 3 locations and I would guess 150 or so kids between the 3. 

matuski said:
If it is in your contract, sucks.  If not, reasonable to refuse/negotiate.
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The contract mentions stuff about paying when you go on vacation and such, it does not specifically mention the daycare closing for large blocks of time due to a virus.

 
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huthut said:
It is not some exotic private school or anything, just a regular daycare. Every daycare here has massive wait-lists, so I am assuming this one does as well. We have no leverage, since if we do leave they will not lose any money since they will just grab the next family on the wait-list. I am pretty sure the owners are well aware of this fact, seeing as how they nickle and dime on everything and raise prices every 6 months or so. It is a fairly big daycare, the owners have 3 locations and I would guess 150 or so kids between the 3. 
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what are they charging you per month?

 
huthut said:
The contract mentions stuff about paying when you go on vacation and such, it does not specifically mention the daycare closing for large blocks of time due to a virus.
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Have you challenged the charge?  What do they say?

 
If you look at the overall situation and the best course of action is to pay and stay then I suggest either

1 You are in the wrong line of work and need to get into daycare

2. You are in the right line of work because you can afford this

 
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The Ref said:
If you look at the overall situation and the best course of action is to pay and stay then I suggest you are in the wrong line of work.
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I feel like there are multiple ways to parse this, so I am not sure if I am answering the question correctly. I know both high earning couples who decide on one kid due to the cost, or lower earning spouses who just become stay at home parents due to the cost. Alternatively I can shove a bunch of infants in my garage and make $10000 a month calling it a daycare.

 
Binky The Doormat said:
Taking care of 150 kids for 12 hours or less a day ...at that monthly rate is just over $4M/yr gross.  

We're all in the wrong business.  
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Presumably they are paying for facilities and staffing, though I have no idea how much the teachers make. I hope they make a decent amount and the owners are not pocketing everything they can, but this is America...

Most of the daycares here charge to get put on the wait-list, including this one. Seems like the most profitable daycare would just be setting up a wait-list and never taking anyone. 

matuski said:
Have you challenged the charge?  What do they say?
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We have not challenged the charge, assuming that will get us kicked out but who knows. They said they need the money to keep paying teachers, and completely ignored the part having no problem paying partial.

 
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Yea that sucks.. we got both our kids on the wait list pretty much the day they were born.

Worth every penny.. but we never got shutdown.

Lot of money.

 
The same is going to go for a lot of things....

In my case 2 kids in college.  One on campus, one off.  School is going to online classes next week, so at least I feel like my tuition $ is still useful.  But I've already paid room and board for one of them, and off campus housing for the other.  Technically the off campus kid could go back so I guess I can't ##### about that (even though they told them to stay home).  But the on-campus kid, it's at least a month of not using his meal card and what works out to be about $1K for a month of his dorm room.  It's not something I'll lose a wink of sleep over, but still.  It's money for nothing.  Luckily they did't choose Ivy League schools.  That would have been more painful.

 
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Brunell4MVP said:
The same is going to go for a lot of things....

In my case 2 kids in college.  One on campus, one off.  School is going to online classes next week, so at least I feel like my tuition $ is still useful.  But I've already paid room and board for one of them, and off campus housing for the other.  Technically the off campus kid could go back so I guess I can't ##### about that (even though they told them to stay home).  But the on-campus kid, it's at least a month of not using his meal card and what works out to be about $1K for a month of his dorm room.  It's not something I'll lose a wink of sleep over, but still.  It's money for nothing.  Luckily they did't choose Ivy League schools.  That would have been more painful.
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I’m in this situation as well . I’m not paying Williams so my daughter can go to youtube university 

 
HellToupee said:
Try contacting local pols , City/town hall . Might  fall under price gouging or maybe they could guide you in a direction 
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Yea, was just discussing this with my wife. I guess I can see what is happening at other places too talking to coworkers, seeing if taking all of the money is the norm or not.

Right now we would be out ~ $3000 figuring about $1000 a week. I am just wondering how likely it is the shut down is extended? I would not be surprised if it is, and then it is just losing more and more money with potentially no end in sight. Could be June or July for all we know.

 
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I mean I had Hamilton tickets, they refunded me the money, presumably the actors and crew and staff still have to get paid.  It's expensive adult care for 2 hours.  

I don't really get how we can pick and choose what we feel is right to pay for and what isn't.

My gym is allowing us to suspend our membership for free.  Are they paying the staff?  Dunno.

Who is supposed to pay what and what for is going to be a huge ethical question down the road.

 
culdeus said:
I mean I had Hamilton tickets, they refunded me the money, presumably the actors and crew and staff still have to get paid.  It's expensive adult care for 2 hours.  

I don't really get how we can pick and choose what we feel is right to pay for and what isn't.

My gym is allowing us to suspend our membership for free.  Are they paying the staff?  Dunno.

Who is supposed to pay what and what for is going to be a huge ethical question down the road.
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That is kind of why I mentioned that they know they have a captive audience. Between wait-lists and wait-list fees and having to find a daycare that is 20 minutes away vs 2 minutes away and forcing your 4 year old to lose the friends they have had the last 3 years they know they have your reproductive doodads in a vice and they can do whatever they want.

 
I would imagine since they aren't providing the contracted service that they are going to face some small court claims before it is over. You can probably wait and see how the first few go and then decide your best course of action.

 
If they are good enough that they can support a waiting list, than I guess they have earned it. It would be nice if there could be an agreement to 2/3 or something but they might have leverage here. 

 
Im glad you posted this cause I wondered how this would work. I fully expect our daycare to try and charge for missed time as well.

 
Ilov80s said:
If they are good enough that they can support a waiting list, than I guess they have earned it. It would be nice if there could be an agreement to 2/3 or something but they might have leverage here. 
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They are not good enough that they can support a wait-list, there are just more kids than daycare centers so EVERY daycare has a wait-list.

 
Good God that cost is just insane. The math is staggering when you figure how much you have to make before taxes just to cover it. 

 
I own several small local businesses. Personal training/nutrition. It’s a tough scenario. We want to stay open (we are b/c it’s not a large group health club at all - 2-3 people at most at any time). We want to keep paying our trainers. But if clients quit it’s hard. 
 

FYI - disputing a charge should be a last resort. Try to work it out w/the biz. If you deny a charge there’s the refund AND and extra fee passed onto the business. It sucks. 

 
Expect the responses to vary as we get further.  Many people think tipping 20% for counter service is normal.   Their logic here will be, well do you want the people to be there when life is normal again? 

There will be enormous guilt laid at the feet of the work from home crowd drawing a salary while those that cant, don't.  There are no winners here. 

 
I don't think you should pay $0 (I don't think you do either)

I don't think you should pay $4500.

I would hope a discussion could be had for a "reasonable" amount in the middle so that they aren't losing money. But they shouldn't be making money either (getting paid while not providing any service).

 
I hope you are both pulling in $100k each, otherwise one of you should stay home.  I am sure legally you could sue them and win.  But if you want to keep your jobs, you probably just need to pay it.  

 
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I had the same thought when I knew my daughter's day care would be closing. Of course I want the teachers to have some form of income but full freight seems too much. For the record, I'm paying about the same rate per kid just outside of NYC as our hero above. 

My wife and I were talking and we landed on getting a credit towards the camp program would be a good compromise. Doesn't take any cash out of pockets right now and would conceivably just cut into the camp profits which I'm sure are huge. 

We get invoiced every month, about a week out, so it'll be interesting to see how it works soon. 

 
huthut said:
So it looks like daycare is charging us full price for 3+ weeks minimum of no class. Seems like it is a paid service not being provided. We cannot leave without penalty due to requiring 30 days notice (and even if we wanted to, everything has massive wait-lists here so we would not be able to find anything assuming they can go back mid April). I would have no problem paying something so the teachers have money to live off of, but paying full price feels wrong, like the owner would be making more profit for them to be shut down since they are not going through consumables and using utilities and such. I feel like there should be some shared sacrifice between the ownership and parents, and not solely the parents paying for a service they are not receiving so the owner can continue to pull in profits. Am I being unreasonable here? What happens if the shutdown is longer than 3 weeks? It is fairly expensive so it is a real amount of money we are spending on nothing.
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So I own a daycare in ct but we are still open with no plans to close at this point.  My daughter, who runs it, has been fielding questions from parents and staff regarding closure.  FYI -  most employees at daycares are hourly so they technically will not be paid during closure unless owners want to be nice.  Regarding parents, we told situation is fluid and couldn’t comment on closing or reimbursement.  We obviously can’t pay employees and offer reimbursements too.  I have a nephew who lives in sf and pays $4000 a month for a private Chinese run daycare, he is American but wants his daughter to know Chinese.  

 
Sorry to the folks going through this. What’s the plan for childcare while the daycare is closed?

 
Hopefully there’s compromises met where nobody is NOT totally screwed. Spread the loss out slowly to owners, employees and parents. 

 
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D_House said:
Sorry to the folks going through this. What’s the plan for childcare while the daycare is closed?
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Not going to be easy. I'll be working from home and my wife will be home as well so my daughter will be taken care of. But we have a 2 bedroom apartment and the kid is very active/strong willed so getting quiet time to work isn't easy. And once I close a bedroom door to get more done, that shrinks the available space a lot. But we'll make it work. 

Besides that, a lot of coloring, slime, play doh, etc. We have a courtyard in our building that should be safe but we'll see if we keep feeling comfortable with that. Go for some short walks, etc. My wife is going to try and build some kind of schedule to keep her on. 

 
huthut said:
So it looks like daycare is charging us full price for 3+ weeks minimum of no class. Seems like it is a paid service not being provided. We cannot leave without penalty due to requiring 30 days notice (and even if we wanted to, everything has massive wait-lists here so we would not be able to find anything assuming they can go back mid April). I would have no problem paying something so the teachers have money to live off of, but paying full price feels wrong, like the owner would be making more profit for them to be shut down since they are not going through consumables and using utilities and such. I feel like there should be some shared sacrifice between the ownership and parents, and not solely the parents paying for a service they are not receiving so the owner can continue to pull in profits. Am I being unreasonable here? What happens if the shutdown is longer than 3 weeks? It is fairly expensive so it is a real amount of money we are spending on nothing.
Click to expand...
Not unreasonable.   Owner should share the burden at least a little.  Right now they are cleaning up so to speak.

 
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