Piplings nursery

[crushedmango]

Hello, does anyone have any experience of Piplings nursery? We are planning to send our child there and are about to accept a place but a quick search of this forum brings up a bit of a mix of positive and negative reviews which worries me a little... Would be very keen to hear from any parents who currently have children at the nursery (private message me if you prefer). Thank you in advance!

[peckhamese]

We paid ?1,750 deposit (!) for a spot. We had to cancel 3 months before the start date and they returned ?0 (!!!). The worst part is that they are within their right because it says so on their T&Cs. So 2 pieces of advice for newbie, sleep-deprived parents like us:

1. Read the T&Cs. Do not rely on email clarifications from the nursery, read the document.

2. Look for another nursery. Who wants to deal with the kind of people that keep ?1,750 they did not earn just because they can?

The whole story is long including an email sent at 9PM on a Friday where the nursery offered to return 50% only if we accepted on the spot: ?That offer requires acceptance tonight, after which we will no longer engage in dialogue on this matter and your full deposit will be retained in line with our terms and conditions?. When we asked for a full refund they took the offer off the table. Does this sound like what you?d expect from where you drop off your kids every day?

A couple of notes on this:

Feel free to send me PMs with any questions you have, I have received some already.

Also, if you've had problem with the nursery I encourage you to leave a Google review, other ED parents should know!

[motorbird83]

Their T&Cs are what raised alarm bells for me on a number of points. We ran a mile after getting them and don't regret from what we've heard.

[tgb]

We had a terrible time with them. I would NOT recommend this nursery.

[peckhamese]

Good thing you did motrobird83!

[newtose22]

Ditto the above, would definitely not recommend.

[ginpop]

I would not recommend this nursery.

We did not experience significant problems (rather constant minor irritations), but we know many people that have had a very difficult time, for a variety of different reasons.

The nursery has the potential to be amazing, but when we were there, it wasn?t worth the money.

[CLAU]

Definitely avoid Piplings!

Our child attended for a while and although there were constant issues with bad nappy rashes (they only routinely change nappies twice a day!), high staff turnover with no notification to parents of who was leaving / joining and lots of errors in the daily reports which made them redundant as weren?t accurate, the main issue was to accidentally discover that they didn?t have an ?onsite chef cooking organic food? (as we were told in the site visit in summer 2018) but were using pre-ready meals.

We complained about that and asked for an explanation and instead of an apology or any other form of reassurance, we received an email giving us notice of termination of a few weeks. This was highly devastating for us as a family as our child had built friends there and I was 8 months pregnant, which of course they knew about.

The ?management? which you will never see or speak to (everything is by email) is very defensive and rude and every response you?ll see is dismissive and just to protect themselves.

[Pugwash]

can you complain to OFSTEAD or whatever body now does these visits/scrutinises?