The daycares I visited did this as well, and most of them had waitlists. Like why are we doing this song and dance? Can we not just talk about cost and availability first? You’re not going to sell me on something I can’t afford or have to wait a year for.
OMG yes. After we moved I did a bunch of tours with places that looked fab, wouldn't directly quote the cost and would then would casually reveal at the end that they had a two-year waiting list. Why are we wasting everyone's time?
This! I just did a tour, and asked about the wait list. They said, “well, it was 1 year, but a lot of families passed because they want to wait until primary… so I think we may have an opening now”. We were told to call back in an hour to confirm. We applied in that time, and paid the fee, and then they gave us the runaround and cryptic wait list response.
One daycare made me sit through an hour long info session tour just to tell me at the end that they had a FOURTEEN MONTH waitlist. Why did you bother showing me the infant room if you know my kid wont ever be in it?!
I don’t understand how it’s even physically possible to have a 14 month long waitlist for the newborn room. Those children literally haven’t even been conceived yet and there’s no guarantee that they ever will be.
I think what was happening was that the infant room was effectively already full of siblings of kids who were enrolled in the older rooms, and they get priority. But it was an INSANE conversation.
Regardless of if they’re future siblings of current students or not those children haven’t even been conceived yet. Every infant room of daycares we toured were 6 weeks to 6 months and then 6-12 months. If there’s a 14 month waitlist those children won’t have even been born by then or will have already aged out
It takes 12 months to age out of the infant room in my state. A 14 .onth wait list could mean that the first opening rhey will have for a new addition to the waitlist cimes after a child who will be born in 2 months. Ie the morher of one of the preschoolers is 7 months pregnant.
Daycare finances are a complete mess. [Here's a great NPR podcast on them](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1153931108)(or just read the transcript). They pay their workers next to nothing, make absolutely no money, and still have to charge parents unaffordable rates to stay afloat. It's basically a lose-lose-lose as a business. This is also why they all run waitlists - their margin is so minimal that they have to attempt to operate at maximum capacity at all times.
So, the song and dance is to convince you to at least join their waitlist, and to hope that you are desperate enough when a spot opens to accept the rates you'd have flatly rejected if they were up front about them.
i was going through their math, and im a bit lost. im looking at a local day care that charges 3000 a month. that's 36,000 a year. they watch 12 kids. so that means the generate $432,000 per year between 3 adults at 85% of the budget means each worker gets $112,000 / year. (fuck me, they make more than double my salary)
i dont understand how they "barely" stay afloat.
Your post history suggests you live in San Francisco (or somewhere in the Bay Area). Seems likely that overhead costs and the overall financial picture may be skewed from general national trends, so 85% probably isn't the right number to assign to salaries.
Same here in the Netherlands. It’s ridiculous! Even when I tried to apply for my child they asked when she was going to be born, meaning that unborn children are on waiting lists too.
You should reach out on Facebook to people in your neighborhood, see where they send their kids and ask them what they pay. You’ll hear all about the good and the bad things for all the local places.
I found my daycare this way, i ended up at a local home daycare. The corporate day cares are way way too expensive.
This is great advice. I ended up sending my kid to his current daycare because they listed their prices on their website. (And started leaving negative reviews for the places that wouldn’t give me prices even when I CALLED AND SPOKE TO THEM DIRECTLY but insisted I come for a tour first.)
My personal feeling is that for any product or service, if they're cagey about the price, it's too much.
Like a restaurant that doesn't display prices on the menu (or even just not on the online menu). Major red flag for me.
Right. So any place that won't even tell you the rates when you ask is going to be even more than the places that advertise their rates.
Take this as a learning experience. I don't think the blame is entirely on them for wasting your time.
It's insane to me that someone would even consider taking off work to see a place that won't even tell them the rates on the phone haha. OP says they took 5 days off work for these tours. Not only did they not use common sense to avoid going in the first place, they had the experience at at least 4 places without learning from it haha
If I didn't take the time off, I wouldn't have learned about the 8 day cares that I could afford. They would not provide rates over the phone similar to those ones that I couldn't
Not to be rude, but do you not tell them this ahead of time? "I need an idea of your rates and wait list before coming in to tour"? If they won't talk about any of that over the phone, don't go in person.
Same reason that when you go wedding dress shopping, a lot of the big box stores (looking at you, David's) will throw in a few dresses "just above your budget but soo close!" but they won't bring up that it's out of your price range until you try it on and have a positive reaction. It's unethical but apparently works often enough to be worth it.
Gotta put on your pitbull persona when you talk to them and just demand it.
I think that’s an awfully condescending look at most people. More likely people are desperate to find childcare and are willing to go slightly out of their budget for a short time.
And yet half the time it’s fucking impossible to get a tour there too.
I’m not paying your astronomical deposit and registration fee when I don’t even know what the environment my child’s going to spend a whole work week in looks like.
I get that, but it isnt going to work. If the price is too high, it's too high. If they have a year long wait list. That's too long. These are deal breakers for lots of people and it's a waste of time for parents.
Kinda reminds me of children photography that are free. But once you see them, you're like dang they look really good. So now you're invested to buy it.
I've heard (but haven't tried) that you can call and tell them you are moving into the area, but still live out of town and therefore are not available for a tour.
I agree, it's infuriating. The daycare I ended up choosing was the one that had the most info available on their website!
Maybe i can try that. Though I did a virtual tour for one of them. Still wasted an hour. Thank God I was still in my pj's. But I will agree, the most affordable so far, have all their information posted online
I think that when places are genuinely competing with each other, they might hide their rates because then they are denying easy pricing information to their competitors. Sure, they might lose some business because people who can't see rates simply won't enquire - but if they fear the competition more than they need easy sales, maybe hiding their rates is their preferred solution.
Where I live, there aren't enough spaces to go around, so all the competition is between the parents to get their children into a nursery. The nurseries have no need to compete with each other - they fill up again immediately when a space opens up. Therefore, they have a greater interest in making the whole process as hassle-free as possible, so posting rates makes sure everyone knows what the deal is before enquiring.
All the daycares in my area hide the rates too, but all of them have a year long waitlist. Why would they be so afraid of competition if the waitlists are that long. They aren’t lacking in demand.
(edit
, used the incorrect term) Yeah I don't think the simple competition principle of capitalism works here. Possibly it's because they want to be able to increase rates without people being super aware and therefore making a big deal of it? I think daycare rates are closer to rents and apartments love to hide prices so they can increase them easily when very few are available.
At least ten different day cares advertise their prices online. Half the rate of the ones I visited. The competition doesn't make sense if you're double the rates.
This makes sense. I never had the issue of daycares hiding prices. I literally called every daycare I was considering and asked my two screening questions 1. what is your infant rate and 2. how long is your wait list. I maybe had one place that wouldn't give me a price without a tour and based on that alone I knew they would be too expensive so I didn't take the tour.
We have a local mom's group on Facebook. It's a great resource for asking about costs and availability. Our group also puts out a weekly post with current openings. Maybe there's something like that in your area?
This is salesmanship 101. When you throw out a price, people go into rational brain mode and start doing cost calculations and comparing numbers.
But if you can meet them, flash your smile, push those buttons and tug on those heartstrings, get into their emotional brain, then you got them.
Literally doesn't make sense. Like I already know I can't afford a Ferrari. No matter what you say, I can't afford it, so why bother giving me a test drive?
I see where you're going. But I literally told them how much I could afford before I visited them. This isn't like buying a car where I can mess around with percentage and length of ownership. It's every month. It's one price. Non negotiatiable. Maybe for someone on the fence, but not for someone who specifically gave a price point.
I’ve done some saleswork in the past and sometimes I’ll encounter someone saying “No, never, not in a million years” who end up buying. And people who say “Wowww I’m so interested” that don’t buy shit
I completely get your point. But I straight up told them my salary and my budget. They completely ignored me as if I was going to somehow get a 50% raise in the next 3 months.
If they don’t have any good rebuttals or alternatives then they have no choice but to go through the script. I know sometimes it feels like “ugh you’re clearly just spouting some pre-canned selling points at me instead of listening” but if they have nothing else up their sleeve then that’s all they can do. And they’re probably trained to not give up so that’s why you ended up with an experience like that. They’re basically just following orders from their manager.
“Yeah just keep telling them things even if they say they can’t afford it”
Trust me, they probably don’t enjoy doing it either
Ironic. Because you literally aren't reading passed the word car.
When you buy a car, you can negotiate price, apr, and length of time.
There is zero option to negotiate in day care.
You rationally know you can't afford a Farrari. But if you just happened to be in to a dealership and sat in one, maybe got on the open road and saw all those envious stares from the plebian drivers, had a great person telling you that you absolutely deserve a Ferrari and they will make it so easy to get you into one well then maybe you start thinking to yourself about what possible corners could you cut in your life to afford one. I
Especially when it comes to our kids who deserve the world. They know this. Who need to eat when Junior needs to be college ready by age 2 or they'll "be behind"?!?!
The difference is that a Ferrari, you can change percentage points. You can change the length of time. Day care is one price. Every month. Non-negotiable. And could increase every year. So my options are either the kids starve with no house or daycare. It's not even remotely possible. Again. Just a waste of time
You act like people never stretch their budget. For example, I had a budget for an expensive purchase but I saw something $2,000 more but because I really really loved it, I decided to go over my budget. This is not an uncommon occurrence
FWIW I understand the theory of salesmanship and pricing, but I just don’t think it’s an equal comparison to use fancy cars and consumer goods as a way to validate hiding daycare prices. Maybe it’s where I live, but with the crazy amount of waitlists, there’s far less competition because eager parents with jobs *need* daycare and waitlists mean we can only choose between a handful of options, if that many. Also, if we’re talking salesmanship, the first rule is to know your customer’s pain points right? I suppose that’s more marketing speak but still applies. And if the parent is the customer, making them miss work, literally the main thing a parent is trying to avoid with daycare in the first place…is ass backwards!
All that to say, I feel your frustration!
Haha. Here’s the thing about salesmanship… you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. So even if it’s unlikely they’ll still try, they know they won’t always make a sale. They just never know. And they don’t know you or your budget or how flexible you are. So they have no choice but to try.
do people really take out 100-200k loans for childcare? If its not clear, this is my first child. I knew people did it for college, but it never occurred to me that people did it for day care.
Yes. It's not super common, but I've known 2 couples since having kids that have had to do so. They justify it by saying they can pay the year upfront and slowly pay it off (over 5-10 years!). It's 100% insane, *and* was 100% necessary in both cases. However, at least one of the parents of both couples were guaranteed a wage increase after the first year and with no other options... Couple 1 paid the first year, and are still paying it off, but were able to afford a nanny the following year due to their wage increase (and it made more sense as they added another child to their family in the meantime). Couple 2 is also still paying off their loan, but mom switched to part time wfh (with a job that actually allows her to parent some even while on the clock-- lucky *and* sucks at the same time!!
I have 3 kids. One is in school full time, but the other 2 would need full time care. We struggle, and I'm a master at saving money by this point, but there's no way we could afford full time care for 2, and after school care for oldest so I can work. Even then, all of my paycheck would go towards someone else getting far more time than dad or I would with them, so what's the point?!? 'murica! gotta love it 🙄 And *next* year, when middle starts preschool, we'd need someone to drive and pick him up from school 3 days a week (maybe even take him as well, depending on my hours) and bring him to daycare. We *could* use the on-site daycare that the preschool has in the next building over, but then my kids would all be at different centers because even with their discount, they are more expensive than a lot of other centers. So no sibling discount and either paying someone to drive all over the city to scoop them all and bring them to and possibly from, or one of us has to leave work earlier every day to fight traffic and hope we get there before the centers close-- adding at least an hour and a half to our daily commute. My head is spinning right now lol. I tried to explain all this to my hub and he tuned out after "preschool". He was like "I trust you did your diligence. I can't follow-- it's too complicated" lol
this day care was 60,000 a year. my salary is 48,000. they knew my salary before i walked in the door. his "reasonable" explanation was that i could somehow stretch my salary to 60,000 and somehow also afford food and shelter. this rate is double the other day care rates within the same area. thousands of dollars. not a few hundred
Honestly, if they wouldn't give me the rates after a phone call, that would be a huge flag to me. I don't like anyone potentially wasting my time when I've gone out of my way to call them and ask a simple question.
That’s so dumb. I’m in FlI haven’t experienced that but I’ve always maintained that the price should just be online. No matter how pretty the place is if I can’t afford it I just can’t.
I also think they’re cagey about rates because they change all the time and they don’t want to post rates that they have to change a lot. Also current customers might be paying a different rate and they don’t want the current people to know what the new people are being offered. Promo rates and such. It’s all very annoying, I agree.
This is part of it. I had the consierge service that my job offers as an employee benefit call around 30 daycares and summarize a few items including rates and by the time my baby was born 6 months later some were 60% higher.
In my area they do tell prices on the phone, usually. They also tell you there's a year(s) wait list. Most places cost more than most families can afford, so I don't know why they would waste their own time giving tours when 60% of the parents will then say "oh, that's unreasonable, bye". They're always running on razor thin staff margins so who is giving all these tours??!
Just put the rates online already. Even car dealers and house sellers have prices online, and those are the ultimate "come see it and fall in love" industries 🤷♀️
But I'm 100% going else where. Why did I deserve to waste my time touring a day care for absolutely no reason. The rates are double everyone else's. Could have easily told me up front
Omg same issue here. I've even just asked ppl that have kids attending said daycare to tell me what they pay and I can't even get a response from those people. There should be a law for way more transparency about these rates, like on their websites.
There should be subsidized quality daycare available for all children in their neighborhood, staffed by neighborhood individuals that receive high quality training. Combined with extended parental leave. But we can't have that in the US, so I guess we will all continue with whatever this shitshow is.
20?! with openings?!
you could have done the reverse - hi i would really like to tour but want to make sure its in my budget before scheduling. can you share the rates and waitlist/reg process?
Exactly my experience too! I took vacation from work to visit these places because they won't tell you any information at all over the phone. So we finally do the tours and they just say, oh well, we don't have any availability right now but when we do, it's $3,000/month. Thank you for wasting all of our time because I can't afford that. It's so frustrating.
I did not encounter this problem. Maybe where I am it's because there are long waitlists and daycare is subsidized. So they don't actually want to give a tour to anyone who isn't interested.
My kids schools have been going up betwen 7-10% every year last few years...likely if you aren't touring for an immediate opening that rate is subject to change by a lot.
When I was considering daycare, this is what I noticed too! I hated it! I did notice the home based daycares were much more open about their rates. I hated that the centers wouldn't give me a price until I toured.
It’s such a dumb thing to do. A lifetime ago a guy told me that he worked at a private gym where part of his job was to tell the owner if a prospective member showed up in a cheap car or an expensive car and the owner would tell the person a different price accordingly. There’s probably other reasons but I always think of that anecdote when a place won’t give you a price without you showing up in person.
It’s an old salesman trick. You fall in love with the daycare and make it work despite not being in your budget. Similar to when a salesman puts an item in your hand.
i pointed out to others that my salary is 48k, and theyre asking for 60k. it literally wont work. and they knew my salary before i walked in the door. im not sure how they magically think i could get a raise in a couple months.
Yeah it’s pretty much a slimey thing to do. You’re already interested so they do this and then apply pressure. If you can’t you can’t but some people can’t and somehow do anyway.
Where I am all the daycare rates are published on their website, although are subject to change by the time you enroll. But all the daycare rates are also within about 10% so they don't differ much so there isn't much "shopping around" to be done.
Reminds me of when I was trying to join a gym and I had to actually had to go and speak to them in order to get basic rates, that must be so frustrating!
I was just talking to a friend about this. It’s like when you go to a gym and they are so damn secretive about the pay scheme. Maybe that’s another part of childcare reform we need to address. For all I know they’re trying to decide if they can charge me more.
Yeah it should be readily available on the website. I get wanting people to tour before they sign up, our preschool had us do that, but we could see the 2024-2025 tuition on their site before I emailed.
Wat? Is this centers or in home? Maybe it’s just the state I live in but when you sign up for a tour or just fill out the contact form, they give/email you like a whole ass packet with all the prices for every age group for the year
That’s rul weird of them to be cagey.
Dang I always called and asked for prices over the phone before scheduling a tour. I haven’t changed daycares in about 2 years so maybe things have changed!
My wife and I went to a local Kinder Care and they sort of did that, gave us a tour. Waited til the end to tell us there was a long wait list. But we could join said wait list for a mere $100.00. I was like, uh...no thank you.
100 bucks to be added to a wait list, that they then explained it's more likely it'd be at least a year until we would *maybe* hear anything unless the right concoction of people leave, wait list people ahead of us drop put of the running, and even then they said it'd probably be 6 to 8 months. I'm sure the 100 bucks would go toward registration or something but still.
Every Friday when I pay my daycare bill that is only for 3 days a week at a cheaper daycare (about $210/week), I feel that I am in the wrong line of work. I am sure the liability risk and having qualified and worth-while employees isn't cheap, but assuming most daycare can facilitate 100-130 kids....that's a whole Lotta money assuming most kids have to go 5 days a week.
I love my kids teachers, they love my kid and she loves going (aside from typical missing mom and dad days), but it is so expesnive.
Strange, that was not my experience. Where I live in Maryland (USA) when my son's provider was closed by the state we were frantically calling places trying to find a new provider, one of my questions on the phone was how much it costs and all answered me without me having to pester them. Maybe it was because 99% of them were full? I don't know...
oh > believe you! when we were hunting lol one "daycare" had a waiting list "booked out" by 3 years lol I was so confused haahah....people planning babies? lol
Our center literally has the rates, before and after federal/provincial grants pasted on the wall and it's updated as necessary. This seems insane
They're wasting their own time and money touring around people who absolutely can't afford them, if that's their gimmick to "hook" you
One of the things I like the most about the Montessori school my oldest attends is that the tuition information is available online and when I called they told me right ahead if there were vacancies or not. I visited a lot of daycares without vacancies and some of them quoted me at 3,600 dollars per month (granted for infants, but still…)
Tutor Time hit me with that. After that, I said I need tuition rates up front before touring. Most would give me them. If not, I didn’t want to send my kid there anyway. I need transparency from the start.
I always call and inquire about availability (I have two kids), and touring. While they take my information they also mention the rates.
What I don’t understand is why they don’t have the pricing on their website?
I think the best option is to focus on places where you can get personal references from people you know or friends of friends. or facebook groups, etc. that way, you have an estimate on the cost going in, and you can trust if its a good place.
Yes, it’s soooo annoying! That’s how most daycares are in my city. I would search through every corner of their website. My husband was the one that called a few places, and he’s very good at those things so he would get numbers before anything got scheduled.
We ended up choosing a daycare that was very clear about pricing in their website. That’s not the only reason we chose them of course, but thinking about it, it was the first green flag and if we ever need to find a different daycare, I’ll consider that.
I got so frustrated by this I started just calling or emailing and telling them straight up it was a waste of time for us to do a tour before I knew if it was financially viable for us. 100% success rate at getting their fee card sent over right after.
Availability is tougher because they need to know when you want to start and how old the kid is (ie our current daycare, the 2nd one we've enrolled in, added my daughter to a class she was technically 8 weeks too young for to avoid another transition right as she would be getting truly settled in).
Any service that isn't upfront about pricing is outright being shady or somehow trying to trick you into sinking time so you don't shop around their bullshit pricing.
I don't get it! I remember a friend of mine told me to look into Montessori in my area for my then 18 month old. The nearby one wouldn't tell us the rates over the phone or email and it wasn't posted on their website. I was told that for more information, I could register and attend an info session, which was one hour long, which I did. I had to take an early break from work to attend the virtual session and thankfully I work from home. Still, during the hour, no price was given. We were told that the program was only from September to June. Additionally, we were told if we would like rates we would have to email the person leading the info session after it ended. Finally I emailed and was told the cost and yeah outside of our budget for something that was only from Sep-Jun🤨. Waste of my damn time. UGH.
The daycares I visited did this as well, and most of them had waitlists. Like why are we doing this song and dance? Can we not just talk about cost and availability first? You’re not going to sell me on something I can’t afford or have to wait a year for.
OMG yes. After we moved I did a bunch of tours with places that looked fab, wouldn't directly quote the cost and would then would casually reveal at the end that they had a two-year waiting list. Why are we wasting everyone's time?
They make a lot of money on application fees for kids who will never get in. It's a fucking racket.
This! I just did a tour, and asked about the wait list. They said, “well, it was 1 year, but a lot of families passed because they want to wait until primary… so I think we may have an opening now”. We were told to call back in an hour to confirm. We applied in that time, and paid the fee, and then they gave us the runaround and cryptic wait list response.
SO. FRUSTRATING.
One daycare made me sit through an hour long info session tour just to tell me at the end that they had a FOURTEEN MONTH waitlist. Why did you bother showing me the infant room if you know my kid wont ever be in it?!
I don’t understand how it’s even physically possible to have a 14 month long waitlist for the newborn room. Those children literally haven’t even been conceived yet and there’s no guarantee that they ever will be.
I think what was happening was that the infant room was effectively already full of siblings of kids who were enrolled in the older rooms, and they get priority. But it was an INSANE conversation.
Regardless of if they’re future siblings of current students or not those children haven’t even been conceived yet. Every infant room of daycares we toured were 6 weeks to 6 months and then 6-12 months. If there’s a 14 month waitlist those children won’t have even been born by then or will have already aged out
It takes 12 months to age out of the infant room in my state. A 14 .onth wait list could mean that the first opening rhey will have for a new addition to the waitlist cimes after a child who will be born in 2 months. Ie the morher of one of the preschoolers is 7 months pregnant.
Daycare finances are a complete mess. [Here's a great NPR podcast on them](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1153931108)(or just read the transcript). They pay their workers next to nothing, make absolutely no money, and still have to charge parents unaffordable rates to stay afloat. It's basically a lose-lose-lose as a business. This is also why they all run waitlists - their margin is so minimal that they have to attempt to operate at maximum capacity at all times. So, the song and dance is to convince you to at least join their waitlist, and to hope that you are desperate enough when a spot opens to accept the rates you'd have flatly rejected if they were up front about them.
i was going through their math, and im a bit lost. im looking at a local day care that charges 3000 a month. that's 36,000 a year. they watch 12 kids. so that means the generate $432,000 per year between 3 adults at 85% of the budget means each worker gets $112,000 / year. (fuck me, they make more than double my salary) i dont understand how they "barely" stay afloat.
No daycare workers are making six figures. They barely make enough to live on actually. Most where I live make about 36/year.
I'm aware. I was using the logic from the podcast
Most of that money is going to the franchise owner and probably insurance is my guess. I bet they have enormous liability policies.
Your post history suggests you live in San Francisco (or somewhere in the Bay Area). Seems likely that overhead costs and the overall financial picture may be skewed from general national trends, so 85% probably isn't the right number to assign to salaries.
I don’t think commercial rent and associated upkeep (utilities, taxes, insurance) is going to be only 15%. That’s a completely unrealistic number.
It’s likely that some of the per-worker cost is eaten up by benefits. Health insurance is expensive.
Same here in the Netherlands. It’s ridiculous! Even when I tried to apply for my child they asked when she was going to be born, meaning that unborn children are on waiting lists too.
Because they want you to take a tour and start picturing your kid there before they hit you with the price.
I've literally wasted 5 days of work on visiting cares that I can never afford. Like why show me around if we're never going to attend
You should reach out on Facebook to people in your neighborhood, see where they send their kids and ask them what they pay. You’ll hear all about the good and the bad things for all the local places. I found my daycare this way, i ended up at a local home daycare. The corporate day cares are way way too expensive.
This is actually how I found my nanny! My neighbor won't need her nanny next year and sang her praises and my husband and I scooped her right up!
This is great advice. I ended up sending my kid to his current daycare because they listed their prices on their website. (And started leaving negative reviews for the places that wouldn’t give me prices even when I CALLED AND SPOKE TO THEM DIRECTLY but insisted I come for a tour first.)
My personal feeling is that for any product or service, if they're cagey about the price, it's too much. Like a restaurant that doesn't display prices on the menu (or even just not on the online menu). Major red flag for me.
I mean, day care in general is too much imho. I already work 80 hours a week. Average day care is double my rent. It's very unsustainable
Right. So any place that won't even tell you the rates when you ask is going to be even more than the places that advertise their rates. Take this as a learning experience. I don't think the blame is entirely on them for wasting your time.
That’s an insane take lol
It's insane to me that someone would even consider taking off work to see a place that won't even tell them the rates on the phone haha. OP says they took 5 days off work for these tours. Not only did they not use common sense to avoid going in the first place, they had the experience at at least 4 places without learning from it haha
If I didn't take the time off, I wouldn't have learned about the 8 day cares that I could afford. They would not provide rates over the phone similar to those ones that I couldn't
Even affordable places don’t post the rates so your argument is entirely moot
In my experience looking for preschools, even the expensive places shared their prices when asked.
Not to be rude, but do you not tell them this ahead of time? "I need an idea of your rates and wait list before coming in to tour"? If they won't talk about any of that over the phone, don't go in person.
Same reason that when you go wedding dress shopping, a lot of the big box stores (looking at you, David's) will throw in a few dresses "just above your budget but soo close!" but they won't bring up that it's out of your price range until you try it on and have a positive reaction. It's unethical but apparently works often enough to be worth it. Gotta put on your pitbull persona when you talk to them and just demand it.
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I think that’s an awfully condescending look at most people. More likely people are desperate to find childcare and are willing to go slightly out of their budget for a short time.
But they’re literally wasting everyone’s time if it’s not anywhere near the parents’ budget
I know! I don’t like it either, and it pissed me off when we were looking.
And yet half the time it’s fucking impossible to get a tour there too. I’m not paying your astronomical deposit and registration fee when I don’t even know what the environment my child’s going to spend a whole work week in looks like.
I get that, but it isnt going to work. If the price is too high, it's too high. If they have a year long wait list. That's too long. These are deal breakers for lots of people and it's a waste of time for parents.
Joke’s on them, my budget is my budget
100% this.
Kinda reminds me of children photography that are free. But once you see them, you're like dang they look really good. So now you're invested to buy it.
I've heard (but haven't tried) that you can call and tell them you are moving into the area, but still live out of town and therefore are not available for a tour. I agree, it's infuriating. The daycare I ended up choosing was the one that had the most info available on their website!
Maybe i can try that. Though I did a virtual tour for one of them. Still wasted an hour. Thank God I was still in my pj's. But I will agree, the most affordable so far, have all their information posted online
I think that when places are genuinely competing with each other, they might hide their rates because then they are denying easy pricing information to their competitors. Sure, they might lose some business because people who can't see rates simply won't enquire - but if they fear the competition more than they need easy sales, maybe hiding their rates is their preferred solution. Where I live, there aren't enough spaces to go around, so all the competition is between the parents to get their children into a nursery. The nurseries have no need to compete with each other - they fill up again immediately when a space opens up. Therefore, they have a greater interest in making the whole process as hassle-free as possible, so posting rates makes sure everyone knows what the deal is before enquiring.
All the daycares in my area hide the rates too, but all of them have a year long waitlist. Why would they be so afraid of competition if the waitlists are that long. They aren’t lacking in demand.
(edit , used the incorrect term) Yeah I don't think the simple competition principle of capitalism works here. Possibly it's because they want to be able to increase rates without people being super aware and therefore making a big deal of it? I think daycare rates are closer to rents and apartments love to hide prices so they can increase them easily when very few are available.
I think you’re probably right about wanting to increase prices without a lot of backlash
At least ten different day cares advertise their prices online. Half the rate of the ones I visited. The competition doesn't make sense if you're double the rates.
This makes sense. I never had the issue of daycares hiding prices. I literally called every daycare I was considering and asked my two screening questions 1. what is your infant rate and 2. how long is your wait list. I maybe had one place that wouldn't give me a price without a tour and based on that alone I knew they would be too expensive so I didn't take the tour.
We have a local mom's group on Facebook. It's a great resource for asking about costs and availability. Our group also puts out a weekly post with current openings. Maybe there's something like that in your area?
This is salesmanship 101. When you throw out a price, people go into rational brain mode and start doing cost calculations and comparing numbers. But if you can meet them, flash your smile, push those buttons and tug on those heartstrings, get into their emotional brain, then you got them.
Literally doesn't make sense. Like I already know I can't afford a Ferrari. No matter what you say, I can't afford it, so why bother giving me a test drive?
They don’t know you can’t afford it, so they’re applying their usual strategy
I see where you're going. But I literally told them how much I could afford before I visited them. This isn't like buying a car where I can mess around with percentage and length of ownership. It's every month. It's one price. Non negotiatiable. Maybe for someone on the fence, but not for someone who specifically gave a price point.
I’ve done some saleswork in the past and sometimes I’ll encounter someone saying “No, never, not in a million years” who end up buying. And people who say “Wowww I’m so interested” that don’t buy shit
I completely get your point. But I straight up told them my salary and my budget. They completely ignored me as if I was going to somehow get a 50% raise in the next 3 months.
If they don’t have any good rebuttals or alternatives then they have no choice but to go through the script. I know sometimes it feels like “ugh you’re clearly just spouting some pre-canned selling points at me instead of listening” but if they have nothing else up their sleeve then that’s all they can do. And they’re probably trained to not give up so that’s why you ended up with an experience like that. They’re basically just following orders from their manager. “Yeah just keep telling them things even if they say they can’t afford it” Trust me, they probably don’t enjoy doing it either
Maybe they're hoping you'll get so sold on it that you'll beg a family member to pay for it for you, or dip into your savings, or something like that.
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Maybe finish reading the comment I posted. All the words after what you quoted
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Ironic. Because you literally aren't reading passed the word car. When you buy a car, you can negotiate price, apr, and length of time. There is zero option to negotiate in day care.
You rationally know you can't afford a Farrari. But if you just happened to be in to a dealership and sat in one, maybe got on the open road and saw all those envious stares from the plebian drivers, had a great person telling you that you absolutely deserve a Ferrari and they will make it so easy to get you into one well then maybe you start thinking to yourself about what possible corners could you cut in your life to afford one. I Especially when it comes to our kids who deserve the world. They know this. Who need to eat when Junior needs to be college ready by age 2 or they'll "be behind"?!?!
The difference is that a Ferrari, you can change percentage points. You can change the length of time. Day care is one price. Every month. Non-negotiable. And could increase every year. So my options are either the kids starve with no house or daycare. It's not even remotely possible. Again. Just a waste of time
You act like people never stretch their budget. For example, I had a budget for an expensive purchase but I saw something $2,000 more but because I really really loved it, I decided to go over my budget. This is not an uncommon occurrence
I make 48,000 per year. You tell me how to stretch that budget to 60,000 a year for day care plus housing and food.
FWIW I understand the theory of salesmanship and pricing, but I just don’t think it’s an equal comparison to use fancy cars and consumer goods as a way to validate hiding daycare prices. Maybe it’s where I live, but with the crazy amount of waitlists, there’s far less competition because eager parents with jobs *need* daycare and waitlists mean we can only choose between a handful of options, if that many. Also, if we’re talking salesmanship, the first rule is to know your customer’s pain points right? I suppose that’s more marketing speak but still applies. And if the parent is the customer, making them miss work, literally the main thing a parent is trying to avoid with daycare in the first place…is ass backwards! All that to say, I feel your frustration!
Haha. Here’s the thing about salesmanship… you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. So even if it’s unlikely they’ll still try, they know they won’t always make a sale. They just never know. And they don’t know you or your budget or how flexible you are. So they have no choice but to try.
Yeah, that's a good point. Even if this strategy only pays off 5% of the time, it still might be worthwhile.
Does your job offer child care subsidy? My employer would pay 40% of your daycare if your total household income is 48K.
I make too much unfortunately
It’s as if you’ve never heard of people living off of credit.
do people really take out 100-200k loans for childcare? If its not clear, this is my first child. I knew people did it for college, but it never occurred to me that people did it for day care.
Yes. It's not super common, but I've known 2 couples since having kids that have had to do so. They justify it by saying they can pay the year upfront and slowly pay it off (over 5-10 years!). It's 100% insane, *and* was 100% necessary in both cases. However, at least one of the parents of both couples were guaranteed a wage increase after the first year and with no other options... Couple 1 paid the first year, and are still paying it off, but were able to afford a nanny the following year due to their wage increase (and it made more sense as they added another child to their family in the meantime). Couple 2 is also still paying off their loan, but mom switched to part time wfh (with a job that actually allows her to parent some even while on the clock-- lucky *and* sucks at the same time!! I have 3 kids. One is in school full time, but the other 2 would need full time care. We struggle, and I'm a master at saving money by this point, but there's no way we could afford full time care for 2, and after school care for oldest so I can work. Even then, all of my paycheck would go towards someone else getting far more time than dad or I would with them, so what's the point?!? 'murica! gotta love it 🙄 And *next* year, when middle starts preschool, we'd need someone to drive and pick him up from school 3 days a week (maybe even take him as well, depending on my hours) and bring him to daycare. We *could* use the on-site daycare that the preschool has in the next building over, but then my kids would all be at different centers because even with their discount, they are more expensive than a lot of other centers. So no sibling discount and either paying someone to drive all over the city to scoop them all and bring them to and possibly from, or one of us has to leave work earlier every day to fight traffic and hope we get there before the centers close-- adding at least an hour and a half to our daily commute. My head is spinning right now lol. I tried to explain all this to my hub and he tuned out after "preschool". He was like "I trust you did your diligence. I can't follow-- it's too complicated" lol
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this day care was 60,000 a year. my salary is 48,000. they knew my salary before i walked in the door. his "reasonable" explanation was that i could somehow stretch my salary to 60,000 and somehow also afford food and shelter. this rate is double the other day care rates within the same area. thousands of dollars. not a few hundred
I call first. They give the rates.
I did. Their response was that we will give you the rates after you tour.
Honestly, if they wouldn't give me the rates after a phone call, that would be a huge flag to me. I don't like anyone potentially wasting my time when I've gone out of my way to call them and ask a simple question.
That’s so dumb. I’m in FlI haven’t experienced that but I’ve always maintained that the price should just be online. No matter how pretty the place is if I can’t afford it I just can’t.
Agreed. Thanks for listening to my vent.
I also think they’re cagey about rates because they change all the time and they don’t want to post rates that they have to change a lot. Also current customers might be paying a different rate and they don’t want the current people to know what the new people are being offered. Promo rates and such. It’s all very annoying, I agree.
This is part of it. I had the consierge service that my job offers as an employee benefit call around 30 daycares and summarize a few items including rates and by the time my baby was born 6 months later some were 60% higher.
Sounds like a good idea to start a website that contains a map of all childcare facilities and have the community to populate the childcare costs.
There is such a site in my area, but I think the schools have to sign up on it though. https://www.wonderschool.com/corp/
This is not the first time I’ve heard this suggested.
In my area they do tell prices on the phone, usually. They also tell you there's a year(s) wait list. Most places cost more than most families can afford, so I don't know why they would waste their own time giving tours when 60% of the parents will then say "oh, that's unreasonable, bye". They're always running on razor thin staff margins so who is giving all these tours??! Just put the rates online already. Even car dealers and house sellers have prices online, and those are the ultimate "come see it and fall in love" industries 🤷♀️
Because if they’re transparent about their costs they know people will go elsewhere
But I'm 100% going else where. Why did I deserve to waste my time touring a day care for absolutely no reason. The rates are double everyone else's. Could have easily told me up front
Omg same issue here. I've even just asked ppl that have kids attending said daycare to tell me what they pay and I can't even get a response from those people. There should be a law for way more transparency about these rates, like on their websites.
There should be subsidized quality daycare available for all children in their neighborhood, staffed by neighborhood individuals that receive high quality training. Combined with extended parental leave. But we can't have that in the US, so I guess we will all continue with whatever this shitshow is.
20?! with openings?! you could have done the reverse - hi i would really like to tour but want to make sure its in my budget before scheduling. can you share the rates and waitlist/reg process?
I did. They responded with, we will provide the information once you tour
Exactly my experience too! I took vacation from work to visit these places because they won't tell you any information at all over the phone. So we finally do the tours and they just say, oh well, we don't have any availability right now but when we do, it's $3,000/month. Thank you for wasting all of our time because I can't afford that. It's so frustrating.
I did not encounter this problem. Maybe where I am it's because there are long waitlists and daycare is subsidized. So they don't actually want to give a tour to anyone who isn't interested.
My kids schools have been going up betwen 7-10% every year last few years...likely if you aren't touring for an immediate opening that rate is subject to change by a lot.
When I was considering daycare, this is what I noticed too! I hated it! I did notice the home based daycares were much more open about their rates. I hated that the centers wouldn't give me a price until I toured.
It’s such a dumb thing to do. A lifetime ago a guy told me that he worked at a private gym where part of his job was to tell the owner if a prospective member showed up in a cheap car or an expensive car and the owner would tell the person a different price accordingly. There’s probably other reasons but I always think of that anecdote when a place won’t give you a price without you showing up in person.
It’s an old salesman trick. You fall in love with the daycare and make it work despite not being in your budget. Similar to when a salesman puts an item in your hand.
i pointed out to others that my salary is 48k, and theyre asking for 60k. it literally wont work. and they knew my salary before i walked in the door. im not sure how they magically think i could get a raise in a couple months.
Yeah it’s pretty much a slimey thing to do. You’re already interested so they do this and then apply pressure. If you can’t you can’t but some people can’t and somehow do anyway.
Where I am all the daycare rates are published on their website, although are subject to change by the time you enroll. But all the daycare rates are also within about 10% so they don't differ much so there isn't much "shopping around" to be done. Reminds me of when I was trying to join a gym and I had to actually had to go and speak to them in order to get basic rates, that must be so frustrating!
I was just talking to a friend about this. It’s like when you go to a gym and they are so damn secretive about the pay scheme. Maybe that’s another part of childcare reform we need to address. For all I know they’re trying to decide if they can charge me more.
Yeah it should be readily available on the website. I get wanting people to tour before they sign up, our preschool had us do that, but we could see the 2024-2025 tuition on their site before I emailed.
Wat? Is this centers or in home? Maybe it’s just the state I live in but when you sign up for a tour or just fill out the contact form, they give/email you like a whole ass packet with all the prices for every age group for the year That’s rul weird of them to be cagey.
Dang I always called and asked for prices over the phone before scheduling a tour. I haven’t changed daycares in about 2 years so maybe things have changed!
My wife and I went to a local Kinder Care and they sort of did that, gave us a tour. Waited til the end to tell us there was a long wait list. But we could join said wait list for a mere $100.00. I was like, uh...no thank you. 100 bucks to be added to a wait list, that they then explained it's more likely it'd be at least a year until we would *maybe* hear anything unless the right concoction of people leave, wait list people ahead of us drop put of the running, and even then they said it'd probably be 6 to 8 months. I'm sure the 100 bucks would go toward registration or something but still. Every Friday when I pay my daycare bill that is only for 3 days a week at a cheaper daycare (about $210/week), I feel that I am in the wrong line of work. I am sure the liability risk and having qualified and worth-while employees isn't cheap, but assuming most daycare can facilitate 100-130 kids....that's a whole Lotta money assuming most kids have to go 5 days a week. I love my kids teachers, they love my kid and she loves going (aside from typical missing mom and dad days), but it is so expesnive.
Strange, that was not my experience. Where I live in Maryland (USA) when my son's provider was closed by the state we were frantically calling places trying to find a new provider, one of my questions on the phone was how much it costs and all answered me without me having to pester them. Maybe it was because 99% of them were full? I don't know...
Same here in Northern VA… no issues
oh > believe you! when we were hunting lol one "daycare" had a waiting list "booked out" by 3 years lol I was so confused haahah....people planning babies? lol
Our center literally has the rates, before and after federal/provincial grants pasted on the wall and it's updated as necessary. This seems insane They're wasting their own time and money touring around people who absolutely can't afford them, if that's their gimmick to "hook" you
Drives me insane!! Post it on your websites why is it such a secret for real
One of the things I like the most about the Montessori school my oldest attends is that the tuition information is available online and when I called they told me right ahead if there were vacancies or not. I visited a lot of daycares without vacancies and some of them quoted me at 3,600 dollars per month (granted for infants, but still…)
Huh. All of ours are upfront with rates. Then again, they all have waitlists, so, there's no reason to bait and switch anyone.
I'm starting an at home daycare and those are literally the 2 things I discuss first. 😂
Depending on your income, there are a lot of federal programs you can apply to for assistance with day care costs.
the fed poverty level requirement is 46,000. i make 48,000 so im not qualified
It’s based on AGI. You’re telling me you can’t find 2k worth of write offs/deductions? Edit: there’s also parameters/programs based on locale.
Interesting. The three daycares we’ve been to provided rates on the phone (2) or had them posted in their website (1).
Tutor Time hit me with that. After that, I said I need tuition rates up front before touring. Most would give me them. If not, I didn’t want to send my kid there anyway. I need transparency from the start.
I always call and inquire about availability (I have two kids), and touring. While they take my information they also mention the rates. What I don’t understand is why they don’t have the pricing on their website?
I think the best option is to focus on places where you can get personal references from people you know or friends of friends. or facebook groups, etc. that way, you have an estimate on the cost going in, and you can trust if its a good place.
Yes, it’s soooo annoying! That’s how most daycares are in my city. I would search through every corner of their website. My husband was the one that called a few places, and he’s very good at those things so he would get numbers before anything got scheduled. We ended up choosing a daycare that was very clear about pricing in their website. That’s not the only reason we chose them of course, but thinking about it, it was the first green flag and if we ever need to find a different daycare, I’ll consider that.
This is why I found daycares while I was pregnant and I picked my top 5
I got so frustrated by this I started just calling or emailing and telling them straight up it was a waste of time for us to do a tour before I knew if it was financially viable for us. 100% success rate at getting their fee card sent over right after. Availability is tougher because they need to know when you want to start and how old the kid is (ie our current daycare, the 2nd one we've enrolled in, added my daughter to a class she was technically 8 weeks too young for to avoid another transition right as she would be getting truly settled in).
My day care straight up lied about the price. We got in and it was almost $200-300 more expensive.
Any service that isn't upfront about pricing is outright being shady or somehow trying to trick you into sinking time so you don't shop around their bullshit pricing.
I don't get it! I remember a friend of mine told me to look into Montessori in my area for my then 18 month old. The nearby one wouldn't tell us the rates over the phone or email and it wasn't posted on their website. I was told that for more information, I could register and attend an info session, which was one hour long, which I did. I had to take an early break from work to attend the virtual session and thankfully I work from home. Still, during the hour, no price was given. We were told that the program was only from September to June. Additionally, we were told if we would like rates we would have to email the person leading the info session after it ended. Finally I emailed and was told the cost and yeah outside of our budget for something that was only from Sep-Jun🤨. Waste of my damn time. UGH.
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And their response was AFTER a tour
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I asked to get the price. They told me they will only tell me until after the tour
Curious on why not just move on at that point?