Everything is Awesome if you give us a $4K deposit
Among the many things we need to figure out with respect to having twins this fall — that we are hopelessly, hilariously behind schedule on — is finding day care. Good Day Care Centers are hard enough to get in with one child and when you have two, it naturally decreases the odds. This is one of the many things we were supposed to start on much early than we have. Apparently some people get on Day Care Wait Lists before they are even pregnant!
So my wife did some research and found a well rated place not too far from our home. I work in the suburbs and my wife Nightingale works downtown at Northwestern Hospital. This Day Care would work for both of us because either one of us could drop the brats off at day care on the way to work and whichever one of us had the better chance of getting through rush hour traffic could pick the little germy projectile-barfing poopsacks up after work.
We contacted them and asked if they had any openings and if they had a sibling discount. They replied that they did have openings and asked if we wanted a tour, ignoring the question about sibling discounts (Yellow Flag #1). In all fairness, they did include copy of their deposit policy which may or may not cover sibling discounts but obviously explained the best way to pay them.
We agreed to a tour and they offered last Friday but unfortunately we were going out of town so we asked if we could do it the next week. Of course, that is no problem, how about Tuesday? Tour scheduled.
Alas we received the following email roughly 24 hours before our scheduled tour.
Hi Nightingale!
Unfortunately, we filled one of the infants spots last night, and now currently only have one spot open for the time you need care.
If another spot opens, I will contact you right away to schedule a tour.
I’m sorry for the inconvenience!
Thank you,
Norma Jean
http://www.awesomechildcare.com
Naturally we are slightly second guessing ourselves just a tad. Like what if if we somehow managed to delay our trip to Michigan to toured them Friday morning and put down the $4K required deposit to hold the spot for our future germy projectile-barfing poopsacks?
the point of this post isn’t to shame a day care center (hence my not identifying them by name). Just want to make everyone aware that this is a potential issue that could crop up.
I guess this is more pragmatic then having us come for the tour and then tell us that they don’t have a spot, or waste the time on a tour on parents who most likely will end up somewhere else. Still, maybe the Pollyanna in me feels like they could have been less harsh by offering us the option to tour the place anyway, on the off chance a spot opens up. I’m guessing that people in this business run into this particular scenario all the time and it’s just the cost of doing business to them. As long as the number of people needing Day Care is higher than the number of slots available, they can afford to turn customers away.
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