Terms and conditions (T&Cs) are a legal agreement that outlines the rights and responsibilities of a service provider and its users. They are also known as business terms, terms of sale, or terms of service. This includes both you and your pupil.
That much is clear but for whose benefit are they. Are they to allow you to take legal action against a pupil or are they to protect you from legal action from a pupil.
So the first question might be if your pupil did not turn up or cancelled a two hour lesson inside your notice period for whatever reason could you use your T&C’s to enforce payment.
You might say that your T&C’s require 24 or 48 hours notice and it is your living and you would be absolutely correct. The pupil might then turn and say “I’ve never cancelled before, I’ve spent over £1 000 with you and work called me on that day for an emergency, what else could I do”.
Now there are a number of different ways of handling that situation. Some instructors will insist on payment regardless. If the pupil has paid money up front they will be able to take it and quite possibly still keep the pupil.
The pupil could react very badly to that and give you a very bad review and bad mouth you everywhere.
An alternative way to deal with that is just to rebook the pupil for another time with a gentle reminder that it is your living and if you are not working you are not being paid. Most of us choose this way and if the pupil is a serial canceller, just get rid of them. A two or three strikes and you’re out sort of policy, but make sure you don’t tell them that they get a couple of free cancels or they will probably use them.
A general rule of thumb is that the stricter you are with charging for cancellations the greater your turnover of pupils will be. The more easy going you are with cancellations the more you will have. Choose a way that is comfortable for you.
Now let us look at what happens if we try to enforce payment. Quite often this will lead to you being ghosted by the pupil. You could try phoning and pestering but all they will do is block your calls. You could go round and ask but you would have to be very careful and I would strongly advise against that for all sorts of reasons.
Possibly you are thinking of claiming through the courts, after all your terms and conditions say that your lesson was chargeable if they did not give the required notice.
To do this you would have to go through the court and you could do this online, click here to learn more. Anything under £300 will cost £35 plus all your time in doing this. For these sums of money it is not worthwhile.
What might be worthwhile is the threat of doing this. This threat of taking someone to court will probably only work if they have never been through the process before and are worried what a CCJ might do to their future credit ratings.
A CCJ is a County Court Judgement meaning that the court has said that you owe someone money. This can create problems for people if they are trying to rent or obtain credit or a mobile phone for example. To learn more follow this link.
Remember at all times that your claimable costs are controlled so the threat of a small claim but large costs in making it will not work. Some people will do anything to make sure there is no black mark against their name and others will not care.
If someone has one CCJ against them it does not matter if they get another apart from how long it sticks to their name. Some people actually take pride in not paying ”King of the bump” or the like. If you decided to pursue the legal route you now come up against two responses.
They do nothing and you get judgement by default which is quite common but then you still have the problem of getting your original lesson fee plus your costs (£35) back. And you are in effect back to square one. You might have come across the “King of the Bump” here.
The second response will cause you even greater problems and this is that they decide to contest it.
They will submit a response denying your claim. Remember that they could be saying all sorts of things and possibly counter claiming. What would you do if they counter-claimed for all the lessons that they had plus loss of earning and then questioned your timekeeping and professional standards?
Now they have contested it, you and they will now both have to complete a Direct Questionnaire limited to 120 lines for stating your case which will be shared with both the court and each other. It will drag out for a long time as the courts are very busy and if you have not reached a settlement before the court date you will have to pay another fee to get your case heard.
If you got to the stage of going to court any documentation either side relies on would be shared with both the court and the other side. This can be your T&C’s and whatever records you might have.
If they are counter-claiming you could find yourself and your teaching and business practices being examined by a judge. The bottom line is don’t go to court. You never know how it could end up and you could find yourself badly out of pocket.
Now the second question is can T&C’s protect you against a pupil and the answer to this one is yes.
For the most part these will be about keeping to agreed lesson dates and times your car and its none availability for Driving Tests due to mechanical breakdown or your professional opinion about the pupils’ suitability for the test.
For all the reasons mentioned above it is very difficult for anyone to sue you. If the amount is under £3 000 (lesson fees and loss of earnings) the courts fee for starting the process is £115 and so long as you are contesting the claim it will cost them another £181 to get you into court.
At all times if anyone should try to take you to the County Court for money it’s called Money Claim Online you should respond appropriately or judgement against you will be by default.
Your protection is going to be your T&C’s, any learning agreement you might have with the learner and your training records. Learner agreements are different to T&C’s and we will cover that later in another blog.
© Liam Greaney
driving-pro.com
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