Tom,
Yesterday, you arrived at our site and were politely reminded that there was a £20 outstanding balance from a previous session for late fees. You were extended the courtesy of a polite reminder after being rude, confrontational, and hostile towards a young, female member of our staff multiple times. If your children did not enjoy the club so much, you would have already been banned for that alone.
Throughout this summer, your children have been booked onto our HAF programme, meaning that you receive the places at club for free and a lunch is also provided. There have been multiple times where one of your children has not been booked on to our HAF programme (due to a capped number of spaces). On these occasions, we had to ask you to book the additional space at normal price. However, we still agreed to feed your child for free. This was something which we didn't have to do and was at our own expense (an offer which you gladly took us up on).
The first time that one of your children were not booked on to HAF and needed to pay the normal price, we allowed you to bring them in anyway and asked you to pay during the day. You did not make that payment for six days. You also made a late collection payment here too, so you were fully aware of the rate.
The next time you arrived at site and only one of your children was booked on to HAF, the coach on site was told to ask you to book the additional space before she let you in. This was because it had taken so long to collect your first payment (after we did you the courtesy of allowing you to bring the additional child in for your convenience) and because the late payment fees that are the subject of this complaint had not been paid from the week before. You complained about this and were not particularly pleasant to the member of staff.
The late payment fees in question were mentioned politely by the on-site staff to three different members of your family. On the last occasion, you told our coach that you wanted a phone number for her manager. She pointed you in the correct direction and you said that you would call. You never did.
Yesterday, I had to come to site as our coach felt uncomfortable reminding you again about the payment. When I came to the door, I welcomed in your child and sent them down to our sports hall. I then reminded you that there was a payment due. You cut me off mid-sentence and said, "what's the manager's name?", to which I replied, "it's me". You then began to stumble through a number of phrases like "she was only 15 minutes late", "how do you justify £10", and "I had [sibling's name] booked on earlier in the summer and [they] never came - you would have got paid for that [by the council]". Not only are these points not relevant, they were not made during the multiple reminders that you had about the fee, nor were they articulated in a respectful way.
The HAF programme is funded between 9:15am and 1:15pm. We extend the hours for free, at our own expense, until 3pm. If adults drop off or collect outside of these hours, they pay a £10 fee per child (which allows drop off from 8am and collection until 6pm). Where adults are a few minutes late, we normally let this go once or twice (depending on how long). In your case, your partner was well past 3pm and you had already had a range of accommodations made in the previous weeks, as outlined above.
Your hand was not forced into paying the £20. I told you that you could choose not to pay, but we would cancel your remaining places. Your hand feels forced because your children enjoy our clubs and we are a good provider.
We have been extremely generous, especially allowing you to access the free meals for children not on HAF at our own cost. You were spoken to in a calm, professional, but assertive tone yesterday morning. This was necessary given how intimidated our female staff felt by your behaviour. The only reason I have not cancelled your place is because I've seen how much your children enjoy our club.