The Malvern School

Review: After many attempts to work with the school over the course of a full year, I withdrew my child from The Malvern School of Glen Mills in August 2013, due primarily to concerns about safety and poor quality environment at The Malvern School of Glen Mills. This environment may fail to meet the standards of the school's accrediting body, a concern on which I will follow up separately.

I paid tuition to the school monthly, at a current rate of $1025 per month. The full fee for August 2013 was paid in advance. I provided notice of withdrawal to the school on August 7, 2013. Due to the safety and environmental concerns noted above, my child's last day at the school was August 9, 2013. In an effort to be more than fair to the school, I am willing to pay tuition through two weeks beyond the date of notice of withdrawal, or through August 21, 2013, even though my child's actual last day was August 7 and the school has no written policy requiring two weeks' notice to be given.

A refund is due, therefore, of the unused portion of my tuition payment for August 22-August 31, 2013.Desired Settlement: The Malvern School has not responded to written requests for their policy on proration of tuition. It appears in fact that they have no policy. I have always been on a monthly payment plan and rate, and I paid $1025 for the month of August 2013. I am due, and expect, a refund for at least August 22-August 31.

Any reasonable and generally accepted way of prorating a monthly tuition payment would provide for a refund of about $330. For example, $1025 divided by 31 days in August is about $33.06 per day; multiplying this rate by ten unused days is about $330.65. Other standard proration methods yield about the same result. But this school, perhaps making up rules on a case by case basis to justify retaining the maximum amount of money, has provided a refund of only $185. I respectfully request Revdex.com assistance in obtaining a refund of an additional $145.65 or so, for a total of $330.65.

Once again, considering that my child only attended the school until August 9, this is more than reasonable and actually represents a considerable windfall for the school, whose unsatisfactory conditions after all led to my being required to remove my child from their environment.

Business

Response:

October 2, 2013

Dear Revdex.com:

We are in receipt of your letter regarding customer complaint #[redacted]. While we dispute in full his position that we do not have a written policy on 2 weeks notice and that our proration policy was not explained to him, we are willing to refund him the $145.65 he is seeking and will do so immediately.

Sincerely,

Consumer

Response:

[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.]

[redacted], a representative of The Malvern School, claims in a letter to the Revdex.com dated October 2, 2013, that the school has a written policy requiring two weeks' notice to be given upon withdrawal of a student. Despite written requests to furnish me with this policy, the school never provided it, so the claim is doubtful. In any case, I believed that immediate withdrawal of my child was required for reasons of safety and poor environment. I agreed at the outset, however, to pay the school for two weeks of tuition (at my current rate, not some suddenly-increased rate) even though they appeared to have no policy requiring notice, and even though the withdrawal was for cause.

Further, it is clear that the school has no written policy on the proration of tuition upon withdrawal, and their attempt to "explain" their proration of my paid-in-full tuition made no sense whatsoever other than in the context of an attempt to unreasonably retain a payment for which they had provided no service.

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and, provided that they promptly refund to me $145.65, as [redacted] has said they will do, agree that I will consider this matter settled.

Regards,