Am I entitled to get my deposit back for a nursery

[MrMajeika]

We registered our child with a nursery last year for a June 2024 start date. This was before how the new 15 hours free childcare was going to work. At the time my wife paid a £50 deposit. A few weeks ago they sent out an email about how the new funding was going to work. The nurseries can use it as they wish and they said if the child wants to come for one full day we still have to pay £50 and we can't use all the hours for one day. They also drastically increased their day rate. As a result of this we were looking elsewhere and have found a much cheaper nursery so we are changing. 

The original nursery now said you only get the deposit back if she starts because it comes out of the first month of fees. I don't think we filled any any form or anything so there were no terms and conditions. Are we entitled to get the deposit back or is it our fault for not asking what the terms were when we paid. 

[lolerz]

How did you pay the deposit?

[MrMajeika]

Bank Transfer 

[BankFodder]

If they changed the terms and conditions of the original agreement in respect of which you paid the deposit then yes you can certainly recover it. 

Have you tried and have they refused?

[MrMajeika]

My wife has just found the registration form. It does actually say the registration fee is non refundable. However it also says that the registration fee is not applicable for funded only sessions. Obviously didn't see that when sending money as we would have challenged them why we are paying when it says we don't have to. can we dispute it on the fact we possibly didn't have to pay in the first place? 

Yes they emailed back but I don't know if the nursery manager is getting confused as she mentioned about the deposit being returned out of the first month's fees. This is a registration fee though, we didn't pay a deposit 

[BankFodder]

I'm sorry but the whole story is getting rather garbled and I don't fully understand.

The situation is this:

If you pay a registration fee for a particular service and an you decided not to take up the service then the registration fee is probably lost.

On the other hand, if you paid registration fee for a particular service and they then change the service to something other than for which you registered, then you can recover it.