My husband and I were really impressed when we toured the Winter Springs Center because the facility looks very clean and the director seemed very organized and on top of things. Then we met Heather, who mans the front desk and who for whatever reason has made it clear that our business is not wanted there. We paid the enrollment fee to hold a spot for our child and afterwards I asked Heather for an information packet / parents handbook (something similar to what ALL of the other daycare facilities had readily handed us when we toured other centers). She told me that they were out and that more were on the way from the printers, but that she would send me a copy once they were in. I found that odd, but waited a week and then e-mailed her asking for status. She again told me that for some reason they were still "held up at the printers." I let another couple of weeks pass and sent her yet another e-mail, asking this time if she could just send me the information I had been requesting as a PDF file that I could just print out myself. She ignored the e-mail, so I finally called to find out what the problem was. She told me she had sent me the e-mail already. I checked my e-mail and saw nothing at all from her. Keep in mind, I know she has my correct e-mail address since I had been e-mailing her and she had responded. So I called her back and, giving her the benefit of the doubt, asked her if she could send the e-mail again since, for "some odd reason," I never got the one she had allegedly already sent. She said she would and of course, never did. So after having been blatantly lied to several times in a row by Heather, I couldn't help but wonder what else she would be willing to lie to us about. Naturally, I have told her to throw out our enrollment application and so we are out $75. I was totally astounded that she would just lie to us so nonchalantly, without any apparent qualms or remorse. Instead of apologizing or explaining that she hadn't gotten around to addressing our request because she had been busy, etc., she simply insisted that she had sent me an e-mail that she had obiviously never sent. It was like something out of the Casey Anthony trials. Obviously I'd have to be a fool to drop my daughter off at a center that is co-run by someone who reminds me of a woman currently on trial for murder 1. I thought at first it was the weirdest thing ever that she would do such a horrible job of handling such a simple request, almost as if she WANTED us to take our $10k per year elsewhere. I figure the only thing that makes sense is that they never did have a spot open for my child and just didn't bother to tell me, so that they could pocket the non-refundable enrollment fee, and then figured they would "correct" the problem by pissing me off to the point of telling them to withdraw my application. Well it worked. So my advice to you is to make sure you get a good vibe from ALL of the people there and that you have all of the written information you need to make an informed decision about the place before giving them your money. Though since these are people that profit from ripping off parents to be for their hard-earned money, I would advise not to enroll your child there at all.
