Child’s absence at birthday bash nets $29 invoice
The parents of a British child are still reeling from the discovery of an invoice for just under $29 Cdn in their five-year-old son Alex’s backpack. Their crime? Not informing the parents of his classmate that their son would not be attending a birthday party in December.
“It was a proper invoice,” Derek Nash, the boy’s father, told the BBC. The serious-looking document included an invoice number, the sender’s banking details and even a space for the U.K. version of sales tax. The offence itself was listed as a “no-show fee.”
Julie Lawrence, the birthday boy’s mother, has defended the “fee” as necessary to recoup the costs associated with a no-show. She said Alex told her son he would attend the party and took that as proper confirmation. She said the cost covers one ticket to the “child’s party at the ski slope including snow tubing and tobogganing and lunch.”
Lawrence has also threatened to take the Nash family to small claims court if they don’t pay up.
Nash has said he understood the financial concerns and said it was the way Lawrence went about it that offended. They have also taken the issue up with the school, because it allowed Lawrence to place the brown envelope in Alex’s backpack, which is against school policy.
So where was Alex? Out with his grandparents, whom he chose over the party when his parents realized he was double booked for the day and it was the only chance he would have to see them before Christmas.
Alex’s mom, Tanya Nash, explained this to Lawrence in a Facebook exchange printed by the Plymouth Herald, the local paper that first broke the story. The ensuing Facebook debate between the two mothers now has parents around the world chiming in.
If Lawrence’s side of the story seems reasonable — she did have to pay for Alex when he didn’t show up after all — the Facebook conversation takes quite the turn. The moms fight about whether or not they had each other’s number and who was ruder in how they approached the other parent.
“The amicable way round this I believe would be to pay me the money and let a lesson be learned, I hope this is agreeable,” Lawrence writes.
Nash pushes back against Lawrence’s tone: “Exactly what lesson would I be learning? I am not a child, so please do not speak to me like I am one. So, to answer your question, unfortunately no. This is not agreeable.”