Hello, I am new to this forum and would like to hear people's opinion on my recent experience with the day home we are sending our daughter to:

Last Friday, we were notified that the pickup time would be changing to 30 min. earlier than as per the contract. Besides that, on the Sunday evening following, we were notified that the drop-off time would also be changing: to 2 hours later. The new times are now from 9am to 4.30pm, and effective immediately, instead of the agreed 7am to 5pm. We would never use this full time, but we did like this flexibility.

Since these new times interfere with our working schedules, we quickly (within 1 day!) found another day care, and since we were at the end of the month, we gave our 1 month's notice in time (as per contract), so in a month from now, our daughter will start at a new day care.

I really did not like the way how this went and the way it was communicated. The dayhome owner did not seem to think it was a problem and that we were the only parents that had an issue with it. Additionally, when we gave our notice, she said that we will not be getting back our initial 1 month deposit, so we are going to lose a full month (because we already paid for the last month before we heard about the hours change), and since we have already signed up with the new daycare, we will just lose this money.

I don't find this fair; is this a normal way of changing opening hours? Can this just be done overnight? Has anyone else had experience with this, or with not having a deposit being returned after contract termination? We don't really know how to handle it, as we do not want to compromise the care that is being giving to our daughter, but we also want a fair solution to this. Thanks for any input!