Dear All,
We recently applied for a school in Basel, thinking that we will be moving there . But my work contract did not happen. When the intimation to pay the fees from the school came, we did not pay thinking that they will deregister automatically if we did not pay the school fee. But now they are putting a lot of questions like why the child did not join and the entire fees for a year should be paid legally. Is it right on their part to demand that we pay the entire fee, we haven't responded to them after applying, but now we have replied that we are not interested in putting our child there. Should we still pay the fee... Pls guide.

The school only know what you tell them. Why would they take your non-payment as cancellation? They clearly expected our child would attend and could well have declined other applications meanwhile.

You cannot apply for anything anywhere, change your mind and simply ignore demands for payments.

Other countries may rip up contracts. Not here. You should at least now communicate with the school and try and find a solution.

Please remember how your actions will impact on future application of other parents...

(edit: the title of this thread is deceptive too, as I understand it)

if you signed a contract with them (contract is the application in many cases) and it WILL state that you have to pay. your only grace is that you havent paid yet....they will come after you however (likely).

It is completely your error however as they had to give up one place for the same fee because YOU didnt inform them.

if I were you id be getting a lawyer. We went after several people like this and we always won. the only thing they could do was to use the money for a future semester

Thanks for your reply. What we were thinking was that a child will not get registered until we pay the fee and that cancellation will automatically happen if fee is not paid. Now they are demanding the whole year's school fee of 15000 chf, which is a big amount for us. Will there be a legal implication on us...

These schools normally budget on the basis of a full school year, so being 15K down is a big issue for them as well, so yes, you can expect that they will take action.

If you fail to get it sorted out then they could register a charge against you and this could cause you all kinds of problems when it comes to renting apartments, credit applications and so on.

Jim

OK, so, yes, you most likely have a legal obligation to pay - it depends on what it says on the forms that you've signed. Probably there is something about a cancellation clause / notice period. And they can do all kinds of nasty things to make you pay up - and if you don't then you'd be on the debt black list making a lot of things very hard.

But... it's definitely worth talking to them, grovelling, explaining, and while you do, bear in mind that they probably have a waiting list as long as your arm - so the fact that your child dropped out means that they are inconvenienced but probably not financially because they will offer the place to the next kid on the list. Make them an offer - e.g. to pay admin costs and maybe a monthly fee until such time as they find someone to fill the spot. Or pay the 15K

If you look at the small print when you registered your child for a place at the school, it would say exactly what the terms and conditions are in a situation such as this.

You may assume that you are not using up a place, but you are. The school has held a place open for you on the understanding that your child would be attending. This place cannot be given to another child as your child is registered for it with the school.

It is rather like booking a hotel room and then not bothering to turn up and expecting the hotel to be perfectly fine with it.

I would take the advice of an earlier poster and get in touch with the school as soon as possible and sort something out. At the very least I expect them to charge a terms fees.

Should not there be a proper procedure before the school reopens to have the students in place. Of course, i agree that we applied for the school using the Registration form available from their site , filled it up and sent by post. Is that considered a legal contractual binding between the school and the parents? Should not there be a deadline for payment of some amount of fee before the child gets enrolled into the school, this really sounds absurd to me. Please write to us what you think.

To get sensible answers you'll need to post the full information.

As I understand it:

1) You printed out, completed and signed an online form and posted it to the school.

2) You heard absolutely nothing more until you received a bill for CHF15,000.

3) You ignored the bill and have now received a reminder.

4) There has been no communication between you and the school other than your completed form, the bill and the reminder.

That's it??

??

A work colleague of mine cancelled a place at an international school via registered letter with 6 weeks notice - he still had to pay a cancellation fee so I imagine leaving it until after the start of term and them sending you reminder letters will probably have tipped it over the edge and you'll be liable for a lot more payment.

Yes, that was we did absolutely:

1) Printed out, completed and signed an online form and posted it to the school.

2) Heard absolutely nothing more until I received a bill for CHF7395 for first semester.

3) Ignored the bill which we got sometime in mid June thinking that it will be taken as we are not showing interest in the school now.

4) There was a communication from school on first week of August describing a welcome program for the child and parents, which was when we got a little uncomfortable.

5)The school starts on 15 Aug, but we receive mail telling that they are expecting the child on 29th August Monday and the reminder to pay the fees, which was when we tell them that we did not enroll the child, just applied.

Now the argument continues...

After explaining the situation to the school, they have come down telling that if we pay CHF 7395 ( a semster's pay), we will be out of all legal implications.

Let's turn this one round

Title: WE SENT SIGNED APPLICATION FORM, BUT SCHOOL PLACE GIVEN TO ANOTHER CHILD

We filled in the relevant forms and sent them off. When we had heard nothing at the beginning of August, we contacted the school to ask about the starting date and they said that, assuming that we had changed our minds, they had given the place to another child. They said they had sent a bill in June. Either it didn't arrive or, as my husband was abroad and things were a little confused at home, it might have been thrown out with the old newspapers.
What can we do about it? After all, we signed the contract saying that we wanted a place there.

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Longbyt

Signing up an application/registration form and sending it most probably means enrollment. It's too bad you didn't at least phone them to cancel, the waiting lists are usually a year long, hundred of kids are waiting to get in, at least in our area.

As others have said, the precise wording on the form you filled in is important. I know several private schools which have a two-stage enrolment process: first, the application, which is your expression of interest in a place for your child; second, the contract, which is printed & signed by the school, sent to you and then signed by you as a legally binding statement that your child has a place in the school and you are liable for appropriate fees (with a notice period for either side to cancel the contract).
It sounds like, in this case, the form you printed and mailed back was the contract, but you didn't get a signed copy back from the school - but the bill would have, in my mind, been confirmation that they had received my application and accepted it, meaning that my child had a place and if I did nothing further I would be liable to pay the appropriate costs.

Now, imagine that you did want the place, but the bill had gone astray, you'd been out of the country, whatever. You'd have been mightly annoyed to find out that your place had been cancelled.

I'm often surprised how people behave when they're entering into contracts. So here's some general advice:
1. If you receive a bill from a legitimate source - never ever ignore it. The time you receive the bill is the time to query it.
2. Read the contract and understand all the implications. If you sign it, you are bound.

Does signing up a registration form really mean enrollment. Should not there be a definite procedure like payment of some amount of fee for enrollment, they could have turned down on us for offering a place for our child if we hadn't paid the fee and given the place to another child. Why would we question them if we had not paid. Instead, just posing that they have a place for our child and asking for fee is not acceptable. Do you think that no other child is given a seat instead of our's. As you told, there is a long waiting list anyways.

We cannot possibly know what the form said. Do you know?

You can ask if they are able to give the place to another child but other parents whose child was perhaps turned down may well, in the meantime, have also made other committments to another school which they cannot get out of either.

What did the form say? What did the notes on the website or that came with the form say? I'm fairly sure whatever was there didn't say "If you don't pay the bill, we'll just cancel the place".

What there "should be" is irrelevant. You have to deal with what's there. It's awfully simple. They have their procedure. You want to deal with them - follow it.. It is your responsibility. You can't go through life following the procedures that you think should be in place, rather than the ones that actually are.

Face facts. You screwed up. No-one else is to blame.

Now. If you want to get out of paying the semester's fee, you'd have to show that the contract you signed allowed you to get out, simply by not paying the bill, or that they behave unreasonably, or in some way broken the contract. You might have an angle by getting legal about it, and demonstrating that the school hasn't actually lost anything, except a certain amount of administration, by you hogging a child's place.

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Down with racism. Long live miscegenation!

If it's the school I think it is (there's only two schools I know about in Basel that start on the 15th August, and only one that doesn't have an enrollment fee), the terms and conditions are on page 7 of the registration form. Here are the relevant parts.

All very clear.