Childcare Centre Won’t Refund Your Bond or Keeps Charging After You Left? Here’s How to Get It Back

You paid a $1,000 or $2,000 “enrolment bond” when your child started. You gave the notice the centre asked for. Your child’s last day has come and gone. And the bond is “being processed”, or has been quietly swallowed by “outstanding fees” that appeared from nowhere, or the direct debits are still going and the office says the system “can’t be changed until the end of the term”.

Childcare centres are businesses, many of them owned by large operators, and their fee disputes are governed by the same consumer law as anyone else. Here’s how to get the money back quickly.

Your rights

• The contract governs the bond, and the ACL governs the contract. The enrolment agreement will say when the bond is refundable (usually on giving the required notice and settling the final account). If you did that, the bond is a debt owed to you. Terms that let the centre keep a bond for any reason, or apply unstated deductions, are open to challenge as unfair contract terms (ss 23–28 ACL).
• Notice periods must be reasonable and clearly disclosed. A two- or four-week notice period is normal. Charging fees for a term after your child has left, or requiring notice you were never told about, is not.
• You can’t be charged for care not provided after the end date. And the centre can’t claim Child Care Subsidy for days after your child’s last physical attendance; the government’s rules on absences stop CCS after the last attended day. A centre still charging you “full fee” for those days is charging you for nothing.
• Misleading or deceptive conduct (s 18 ACL) if you were told the bond was “fully refundable” at enrolment and now it isn’t.
• Direct debits are your authority. You can cancel a direct debit arrangement at your bank at any time. The centre can’t tell you otherwise.

What to do right now

1. Find the enrolment agreement and your notice. The bond clause, the notice clause, and your email or form giving notice with its date. If you gave notice verbally, send a written confirmation now referring to the date you gave it.
2. Ask for a final statement, in writing. Every charge since the notice date, itemised, and the bond shown as a credit. Query anything you don’t recognise: “late fees”, “re-enrolment fees”, “levies”.
3. Cancel the direct debit at your bank if debits are continuing past the last day, and email the centre that you’ve done so and why.
4. Demand the refund in writing with a date. “My child’s last day was [date]. Notice was given on [date] in accordance with clause [X]. The bond of $[amount] is refundable. I require payment to [account] within 14 days.” Copy the centre’s head office if it’s part of a group (Goodstart, G8, Busy Bees, Affinity, etc.); head offices resolve these faster than centre directors.
5. Send a Letter of Demand. A formal letter citing the agreement, the ACL, the amount, and a deadline before fair trading and tribunal. The letter will (1) confirm the cancellation of enrolment in writing, (2) require any direct debits to stop, and (3) demand the refund of the bond and any post-departure fees. That covers everything the centre is dragging its feet on, in one document.
6. Escalate. Fair trading for conciliation; tribunal for the money.

The common deductions, and whether they hold up

• “Fees for the notice period.” Legitimate if your child was enrolled during it and the period was disclosed. Not legitimate beyond the period.
• “Late pick-up fees” appearing for the first time on the final statement. Ask for the sign-out records that support each one.
• “CCS reconciliation” charges. If the government adjusted the subsidy, the centre may have a genuine claim for the gap, but it must show you the Centrelink statement. If the “gap” relates to absences after your child left, it’s not your debt.
• “Administration fee for processing the refund.” Not unless it was in the agreement, and even then it’s challengeable.
• “Public holiday and closure fees.” Standard in the industry while enrolled; not chargeable after you’ve left.

If the centre says “we’ve applied the bond to fees”: demand the statement showing which fees, for which dates. A bond applied to fees for the notice period, where the notice period was disclosed and your child was enrolled during it, is a legitimate set-off. A bond applied to fees after the last day, to a term you didn’t attend, or to charges that appeared for the first time on the final statement, is not, and the difference is refundable. Ask for it in writing and give them a date.

Timing: most agreements say the bond is refunded within 14 to 30 days of the final account being settled. Once that’s passed, every further week is a delay you can point to in the letter. Interest at the tribunal rate is claimable from the date the refund fell due, which won’t be much, but stating it signals you know the process.

Who to complain to

Your state fair trading body for the fee dispute (NSW Fair Trading, Consumer Affairs Victoria, Queensland OFT, and equivalents). Your state education regulator (the Early Childhood Regulatory Authority in each state) for conduct issues, though not fee disputes. Services Australia if you suspect the centre claimed CCS for days your child didn’t attend. Your state’s civil tribunal (in WA, SA and Tasmania, the Magistrates Court) for the refund.

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