Reply to "Holding fee" normal for in-home daycare spot?

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Reply to ""Holding fee" normal for in-home daycare spot?"

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, in my situation, I would easily pay $600 to have the spot held for a known return to work day.  We have no alternative backup care since our family all lives more than 1000 miles away.  We have babysitters, but most of our sitters have day jobs and cannot watch our kids for a day.  Our only alternative is White House Nannies which is a $250 annual fee, $16-20 per hour for the nanny plus a $35 fee to WHN.  Even discounting the annual fee, a typical 9 hour day is $162 in wages to the nanny and $35/day to WHN for $197.  That means that the $600 fee is about 3 days of service from them.  If I were to take a non-guaranteed spot at 3 agencies ($50 each or $150), and at the last minute, I could not get a spot the week I needed to start work, I would either have to delay my start (effectively losing my salary for the time it took me to find support and possibly risking my job and starting the job on a really bad note) or pay for WHN to come out.  This plus the added stress of having to make arrangements the week before I returned to work, is not worth it.  Not only that, but then I would be taking any spot in any daycare and would not be able to pick and choose a service that I really liked.  I think $600 is high, but not unreasonable to guarantee me a spot in a facility that I liked when I wanted it.

When our twins were young, we were in a center.  And there was a nonrefundable $100 per child application fee and there was no holding fees.  We either paid the full tuition (for infants, the rate at the time was $1395 per month which is $350/week) or we lost the spot.  When a spot was available, we had to confirm our start date within about 2 weeks, so we could "hold" the spot at most about 4 weeks, certainly not 6 months.[/quote]

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