Hyderabad: The management of St Andrews School here has informed parents that it will not accept cheques, credit or debit cards as payment options for the school fee. Parents alleged that now almost everyone would have to pay cash.
The online payment or payment through school app is not working. Parents said they had to stand in long queues to pay the fee, in cash.
The school management had sent a message to the parents on April 12 alerting parents to the problem with online payments. It said: “Dear Parent, Due to the software upgrade, school fee will not be collected, both online and at the fee counters from 16th April to 31st May, 2018. Kindly note, late fine will be waived off for those paying the school fees for May and June, on or before 15th June 2018 (sic)”.
Another message from the school later said debit and credit cards and cheques would not be accepted, forcing parents to pay cash. A parent said after six weeks the problem had still not been resolved.
Mr Eshwar Reddy, a parent, said, “I was trying to pay the fee for 15 days online using both the mobile app and the school website but I was not able to do so. It is difficult to visit the school for paying fee in cash. The parents shouldn’t me made to suffer for paying the fee.”
He said parents were facing problems in withdrawing cash.
Another parent said that the school was charging 2 per cent on online fee payment. “There is no option left for parents and they have to pay in cash which is completely unfair. When we checked with the school about online payment, they said they were upgrading their software.”
The parent said June 15 was the last date to make the payments.
Mr K. Venkat, another parent, said, “Almost every parent has to pay by cash as the school has clearly communicated that it won’t accept debit cards, credit cards and cheques.”
He said the queues at the school would be long, which might affect the parents’ work schedule.
An official from St Andrews School said, “We are in the process of migrating to a new ERP software and parents were informed about the changes. Whatever the parents said is not correct because it is only for few days until the software upgrade.”
