Engineering Leadership Design Company, LLC

Complaint: [redacted]
I am rejecting this response because: I'm not sure what call you listened to but it wasn't just one phone call. I had three phone calls and four emails.  The fee is invalid, if it isn't waived I will have no recourse but to escalate it to the CFPB and the NJ Attorney General. We are talking about a $30 charge but it is the principle of the matter. 
Regards,
[redacted]

Good morning Mr. [redacted],I apologize for any problems that you may have encountered over the holiday break.  Smart Tuition does have many different options to pay without having to pay a credit card convenience fee.  You can make a payment from your checking or savings account with your...

routing number and your bank account number.  When I checked your payment history, you previously paid this way on 7/21/14 on our website.  On 4/1/14, you sent us a check.  Neither of these payments received a fee.  We will refund your $26.29 for this payment however if you do use a credit card going forward you will be charged a credit card convenience fee of 2.65% of the transaction amount.  Additionally, Smart Tuition does have a confirmation paid before you submit your payment online that clearly displays the convenience fee and the total payment before you continue and confirm your payment.  If you have any additional questions or comments, please contact me at ###-###-####.Best regards,[redacted]Director of Parent Experience

I apologize for any frustration you experienced with your Smart Tuition account.  I have reviewed your account and confirmed that the Track and Field fee was added after the invoice generated by the school.  I have informed the account manager for the school to advise the school of our...

best practices. We do not suggest adding fees after the invoices have been generated, unless they send a revised invoice.    We did have an open note on your account from 3/6/17 to contact the school about this issue however we did not have time to speak to them about it before you filed a complaint with the Revdex.com.  I have waived the late fee as a courtesy.  Thank you for letting us know what happened so that we can work with the schools to improve the parent experience.    Sincerely,   [redacted] Director of Parent ExperienceSmart Tuition

I apologize for any frustration you are having with Smart Tuition.  The school has already waived the late fee.  We can turn on emailed invoices to speed up invoicing for you.  This will reduce transit time for the mailed invoice.  You can also pay free of charge with your...

checking or savings account by doing a one-time payment with your routing number and bank account number.  You also have the option of setting up automatic debits to your account.  This is not a processing issue.  Payments sent to Smart Tuition by all banks online bill payment system comes to us by regular mail.  We cannot control delivery times and banks cannot guarantee delivery of mail delivery.  They give you estimated times of delivery.     We are in the process of setting up electronic online bill pay by the 2nd Quarter of next year. Until that time comes, I recommend making payments on our website or by our telephone service. If you want to continue to use your banks method of payment, please send us the payment a few days sooner.If you have any further questions about this, please let me know.   Sincerely,   [redacted] Director of Parent Experience Smart Tuition

I apologize for any confusion.  The email you were sent last night was an error.  You should not have received an email because nothing has changed with your school.  We sent out a retraction email to you an hour after the mistake was discovered.  You will be able to use your...

credit card with Smart Tuition for this school.  Sincerely, [redacted]Director of Parent ExperienceSmart Tuition

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me.

[A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response.  If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me.
Regards,
David Itzkoff

I apologize for any confusion in setting up your payments with Smart Tuition.  When parents sign up for auto debits we send out a Welcome Letter advising parents if they use a debit or credit card that a credit card convenience fee is charged.  We emailed you this Welcome Letter on...

8/1/16.  The first payment for your account was made on our website with a credit card on 7/15/16 and at that time you were advised of the credit card fee before you submitted the payment.  I’m sorry that you did not notice the convenience fee charge on the website.  The second payment made on our website using your checking account on 8/10/16 and no convenience fee was charged because you used your checking account.  You can set up an auto debit to your checking or savings account with a routing number and bank account number to avoid the fee.  We also take one time payments on our website from checking or savings accounts.  These are the best options to make payments as we cannot control the transit times for mail delivery.  We have reimbursed you the $19.27 convenience fee one time.  Going forward, if you chose to use a debit or credit card there will be a convenience fee.  We have also switched your account over to mail in so there will be no more automatic debits to your debit or credit card.  If you want to change this in the future, you can update this information by calling our call center or by using our parent website. If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact me. Sincerely, Jim L[redacted]Director of Parent ExperienceSmart Tuition

I am rejecting this response because:
I never sent any information to this business.  I do not know what a smart fee is or why I am being b**led for it.  In the state of **. anybody doing business in the state must follow its laws.  Since this company does not offer a way to communicate without being recorded, it violates that law.  I am being b**led by a company I can not communicate with for services I never requested.  I w**l forward the matter to the [redacted] attorney general for evaluati

Thank you for letting us know about this parent.  I have attempted to reach out to her to resolve her inquiry.  The parent has 2 different account numbers with 2 different schools.  The parent called from a phone number that was on one schools account but not the other school....

 Our automated phone system pulled up the only account that had the phone number on it.  It turns out that it wasn’t the account the parent wanted to make the payment on.  I have waived the late fee and tried to contact the parent to see if she wants to transfer the pending payment to the correct account.  She has already spoken to the school in question and they have adjusted her payment plan.  This issue may already be resolved but I will wait to hear from the parent. I have also sent the customer service agent’s call to the call center supervisor to review the phone call with her.  The call center rep should have been able to locate the payment when the parent stated she made the payment on our website.  The customer service rep didn’t hear the parent’s confirmation number correctly.  If they took the correct confirmation number, we could have easily pulled up the transaction to see what account the payment was on.

I am rejecting this response because they cannot provide itemized billing information, like every other reputable business I have ever encountered.

I apologize for any frustration that you have experienced with Smart Tuition.  On 9/15/15 a duplicate payment was made on our system.  We refunded one payment for $1047.03 and the other payment of $1047.03 was charged back by the parent.  I called the parent today with the bank on the...

line and confirmed what had happened.  We are going to get the payment back from Visa who was holding the payment for a charge back response.  I have waived 2 additional late fees for the parent.  I will advise the parent when the payment is credited back to the account.

I apologize for any frustration you are having with Smart Tuition.  We do our best to advise parents of the credit card convenience fees.  Not too long ago we started displaying convenience fees on the prior to debit reminders.  We also display convenience fees on our parent website when making one-time payments. Parents have the option of cancelling the transaction before the payment is processed the parent.  If they do not wish to continue, they can cancel the transaction.  Additionally, we advise parents on our welcome letters that if they sign up for automatic debits using a credit card there will be a convenience fee. Smart Tuition usually does not get a request at the end of the year to refund all credit card convenience fees for the whole year.  Due to the unusual nature of the request, there were many different parties involved internally and externally.  The multiple parties involved caused this request to take longer than the normal time taken for a standard parent request.  In the end, we refunded all of the payments made by credit card for the year, including all the credit card convenience fees on 7/19/16.  As a result of having to reverse a year’s worth of credit card payments, extra time was required to research the implications to accounting reports and school records with the school.  We had to make sure the school was aware of what was being asked and how it was going to affect them with their accounting reports.  Additionally, we wanted to also make them aware that there would be an outstanding balance due on the account due to all of the payments being refunded. If you have any further questions, please let me know and I will try and assist any way I can. Sincerely, [redacted] Director of Parent Experience Smart Tuition

Thank you for your concern.  Generally Smart Tuition recommends that invoicesare generated 20 days prior to the due date each month.  Your school, the[redacted]l has requested that we shorten the invoice generation timing asthey have many incidental fee billings each month.   We...

sincerelyapologize if you received a late fee because of the shortened invoice timingand would like to advise you that it has been waived as a courtesy to yourregular tuition payments.  We have been serving schools and parents for almost 30 years and have an A+accreditation from the Revdex.com.  We are awareof complaints on the internet, and make every attempt to contact these parentsto resolve the situation.  Additionally,our family help center is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  We are attempting to work with your school about this process and truly appreciateyour feedback.  Our hope is to find a solution in the near future.Your feedback is extremely helpful and truly appreciated. Your Smart Tuition Team

Good afternoon Mr. [redacted],   I apologize for any frustration that you have experienced with Smart Tuition.  We refunded $572.50 back to your bank account.  It should take 1-2 business days to show up on your account.   Regarding the misunderstanding with the secondary email...

address, the team lead that you spoke with did not have access to the system that shows the secondary email on the system they were using.  It’s a fairly new system and our call center does not use the system with the secondary email address.  We have put a process in place so that if they need to verify a secondary email address on file, they can.  You can also see your secondary email address on file when you log into your account with Smart Tuition under edit my profile under my email address.    On 1/3/17 we received two payments.  The first payment was at 2:59 PM EST for $517.50 confirmation number [redacted] and the second payment was made at 3:01 PM EST for $572.50. confirmation number [redacted].  They were for two different amounts and have two different confirmation numbers, this doesn’t seem to be a duplication error.  If there are over payments made on an account, we advise parents they can either keep the payment on their account for the next month or request a refund from the school directly.    Additionally, I tested our system that our confirmations for web payments were working and there were no issues.  The confirmation goes to the Primary Email address.  I just changed the email setting on your account to go to both email addresses on file. I have also emailed both email address with this response as well as a screenshot of their account.   If you have any other questions, please let me know. Sincerely, [redacted]Director of Parent ExperienceSmart Tuiton

Good afternoon,   I apologize for any frustration you are experiencing with Smart Tuition.  I have requested our Tech department remove the bank information from our parent website.  For your own security, we are prevented from logging into your Smart Tuition accounts to confirm the...

bank information has been removed.  Please confirm that the bank info has been removed.  If there are any other issues, please contact me directly to resolve.     I would just like to point out that many parents requested that we store their bank information on our website so they do not have to keep entering in the information each time.  Since we are PCI complaint, the bank information is masked and only the last for digits are showing on the account.  Parents have the option to make a one-time payment which does not store you bank information for future use.  A pop up box appears when you select one-time payment and it advises parents their bank information will not be stored on the parent website.   Kind regards,   [redacted] Director of Parent Experience [redacted]

[A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response.  If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and the business has resolved the complaint to my satisfaction. The business' explanation in their response is not completely correct, but the issue has been resolved nevertheless. 
Regards,
[redacted]

I apologize for any frustration you are experiencing with Smart Tuition.  Your account with Smart Tuition was fine with the auto debits until November.  The bank account that we had on file was closed in November.  We did send  you emails for failed bank payments and they are...

noted on your account that the emails were sent to your email address.  It's possible they could have gone to your junk folder.  If the bank account did not close there would have not been an issue.  I understand that it's easy to forget about changing your bank information after you close your bank account.  We did waive the initial failed bank fee on 12/01/15.  I will waive the other 3 failed bank fees because of this oversight with your bank account and also waive the late fee on your account for $30 as a 1 time courtesy.  In total we waived $120 in fees.  Please be aware that going forward we will not be able to waive any additional late fees.  [redacted] allows 1 courtesy late fee waiver per school year.   If you have any questions about anything in the future please call our 24 hour call center at ###-###-####. The other issue of slow mail delivery does not apply to your situation.  We cannot control how long mail takes to be delivered to Smart Tuition.  We advise our parents that mail delivery is accepted however it simply is not the fastest way to make payments.  Transit times can vary due to weather, change of delivery routes, and basic inefficiency in general.  We offer many different payment options so that you can avoid late fees.  We are not trying to hold mail to generate late fees.  Our goal is to get the payments to schools as fast as we can so the schools can function properly.If you have any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly. Best regards, [redacted]Smart Tuition

My name is [redacted] and I am the Director of Parent Experiencewith Smart Tuition.  We have absorbed your failed bank fees in the amount of $60. I have instructed the Account Manager for [redacted] School to callthe school on Monday regarding the tuition amount for...

December.  The school advises Smart Tuition what thetuition amounts are per family.  Smart Tuition does not have any factor in determining tuition amounts for theschool.  After we confirm the tuition amounts on your account, the Account Manager will reach out to you directly to adviseyou of their decision.If you have any further questions, please contact me atSincerely,[redacted]Director of Parent ExperienceSmart Tuition

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted]. It is unfortunate, as well as frustrating that I was not able to resolve this matter with Smart Tuition  customer service/ account transaction representatives when I called. Their records should show the numerous times I called and the amount of time I spent dealing with this matter which was over 3 weeks. In the future, I hope that no parent has to take such measures to have an issue resolved. On a positive note, the parent representative that I spoke to this morning was knowledgeable and interested in analyzing how the issue occurred; hopefully to prevent this from happening in the future.  He provided a solution and I find that this resolution is satisfactory to me.
Regards,