Quote Originally Posted by diamondmine View Post
My take is either of these:

1) She has never done daycare or had a child in daycare. It sounded easy and fun to stay at home with her kid instead of going back to work and having daycare kids would bring in income. She doesn't know that a kid isn't going to land on her doorstep and feel like home within a couple of days.

2) Her plan to stay at home was screwed up when the other two kids cancelled and she realized she wasn't going to have enough incoming money with just one kid but thought she would go ahead with it and see if she could get more kids. When she didn't get more kids, she decided to go back to work but had signed a contract with us and wasn't going back for a few weeks so went ahead with it, asked for two weeks deposit the night before he started (after repeatedly saying she didn't want a deposit) and provided care for one week, then let us know she was going back to work.

We feel we have paid $600.00 for 5 days of care because it is just too disruptive to wait out the two weeks at her house and change things up again at a new place after being with her for a total of three weeks. I feel it is better to just find a new place asap and start him to kind of lessen the disruptiveness of the situation. But, then we are out two weeks. On top of that, of course we will have to pay a new daycare provider a deposit plus pay for his care at the new place while we are still paying for the old place.

My question: What do you think? Am I at all allowed to feel somewhat scammed?
And your take on things would be bang on.

Every daycare provider started out at some point being a "new provider". And obviously anyone who has been at this job a few years wasn't like the provider you speak of in your case. BUT, there is a HUGE risk taken when you sign on with a newbie provider for exactly the reasons you list above. Daycare is HARD from a mental and emotional standpoint (for the provider) and when you combine that with the fluctuations in income and the entire affair of having to run a BUSINESS it can be way more than a lot of newbies signed on for. And this is why statistically most "providers" don't last more than a few months. I find that around late July or August of each year a whole new crop of providers show up on Kijiji or daycarebear advertising. This happens because they realize, after a nice, long summer, that they would rather stay home than go back to work. They decide to become daycare providers. September is THE biggest daycare entry month for children. But something I have personally seen over the years is that around late October, early November I start getting inquiries for immediate care. I get those inquiries because some of those newbie providers up and quit because they couldn't make it work. In my ten years in this business I have had probably six children start immediately due to their provider closing up.

What she did was wrong. I understand that she "tried" to make it work and probably wasn't maliciously trying to screw you over But the fact still remains that she put you in a very tough position. It was unprofessional. My guess is that she put absolutely no thought into becoming a daycare provider and didn't do any research before she started advertising and luring in clients.

If I was you, I would ask her for your deposit back. Did you sign anything that said it was non-refundable? Did she have a contract? Most providers have a probationary period on their contracts where either party can walk away with in the first few weeks. But, as I said, being a newbie, she probably didn't do her homework and those things I just mentioned are non-existent.

I hate reading about issues like this because it gives all home daycare a bad name.

I hope you find a great daycare out there somewhere.