Camp Australia review: service and charges 64

Dear CA Coordinator.
What a load of crap. The people running the program at my kids school (Chandler Park Primary) are the same people that used to privately run the after school care before Camp Australia took over.
The Fees more than doubled, the cancellation policy is disgusting and the overdue late fees are a scam. Not to mention the direct debit policy. Not to mention the childish act of banning me from your website services due to overdue bills.
Your people on the phones are very heartless and unhelpful.
I'm on the school Board and I will be pushing to have your company removed from the school. If I cant do this then I plan to move my kids to a school that does not use your terrible services.
I will also put my complaint to the ombudsman.

Hi All
Just wanted to say that I currently work for Camp Australia as an casual assistant. And long story short, the Camp Australia management treat us like complete crap. It doesn't surprise me that I hear that parents also find this difficult. I have been working at a service for almost 2 years. Ever since the staffing management was outsourced to the Philippines, a lot of my shifts at this service (that I have worked for so long) are being cut. This is despite the coordinator and regional manager wanting me to come in. Instead I am being replaced by an immigrant on a working 417 visa who is able to work every day. I am only able to work half a week because I am at uni. However, I feel that it is more the monetary side of hiring a 417 visa worker that CA wanted to approach...

If it wasn't for the strong relationship that I have with the school, kids and the parents I would have left ages ago. Hopefully I can hold out to the end of my degree but the management is literally killing this job. I'm sorry to all parents also going through this horrible CA communication...

i also currently work for camp aus and have done so for a few years. same as the poster above the company is becoming more and more of a nightmare to deal with. They shift around staff so much its hard to get good staff to stay at one service and for children to build relationships with them. They are constantly messing up staff to child ratios and now arent allowing extra funded staff for special needs children (again making it harder for staff to interact with other children). I would not recommend working for them, the only reason im there is because of the relationship i have developed with the school community.

I have experienced stress and frustration with this organisation and have already decided to close my account after only three weeks as i am not in a position to risk their errors and though i don't have much choice will be exploring other after school care options.
I am currently disputing that I requested before school care for my daughter at a local Primary School, she is coming from a feeder school which contributed to earlier problems of communication.
From the beginning my communication with Camp Australia was not very good; I was trying to register my daughter through the website, and I could not, because the website would not let me to select my primary school to register, the link kept redirecting me to another school. I then phoned camp Australia and was informed the primary school my daughter was attending, was not on their system and did not offer after school care. I also sent an email and received a response, their staff informed me they didn’t have my primary school on the system and they sent me a registration pack for another random school nowhere near me.
After calling back my primary school office, confirming indeed it was Camp Australia who were running the after school program associated with my school, I again called camp Australia and spoke to a different person who informed me I needed to register through a certain local primary. After registering, i called to book in days of attendance. I have to say the person i spoke to didn't have the best English and was difficult to understand.
I was then able to check the web portal, though none of my bookings were showing up, i have a screen shot of this and have showed the Camp Australia representative i am dealing with but again they are saying i still have to pay the before school fees.
The second day my daughter was supposed to be booked there, the school rang me to inform me my daughter was still there and when was she being picked up. I was shocked as I had expected her to be in afterschool care for that afternoon. I was fortunate to have a friend at the school who could take her home, that is not a very common occurrence though.
I then rang Camp Australia in a highly stressed state and asked what happened and spoke to the same lady with the heavy accent and she changed the booking to include afterschool care Thursday. I did not request before school care during this phone call.
Apparently after my first phone call to camp Australia they reviewed the phone call, only the second phone call, and determined that i had requested before school, something I vehemently deny. They refused to give me a call transcript, rather they gave me a summary of the call which they purport to be against what i am stating. I suggest recording any calls you make to them for your own validation.
I find it unbelievable that despite all my protestations that i never requested the care and of course i never dropped my child off before school, they are still insisting i did request it and are trying to charge me for it, and it is just three mornings we are in conflict over!
On principle I am following this up because it feels like i am being bullied and it sounds ridiculous that i will need to seek legal representation on such a small issue and amount of money.
I have to say the child care staff are wonderful and my daughter was very happy there.

I have experienced stress and frustration with this organisation and have already decided to close my account after only three weeks as i am not in a position to risk their errors and though i don't have much choice will be exploring other after school care options.
I am currently disputing that I requested before school care for my daughter at a local Primary School, she is coming from a feeder school which contributed to earlier problems of communication.
From the beginning my communication with Camp Australia was not very good; I was trying to register my daughter through the website, and I could not, because the website would not let me to select my primary school to register, the link kept redirecting me to another school. I then phoned camp Australia and was informed the primary school my daughter was attending, was not on their system and did not offer after school care. I also sent an email and received a response, their staff informed me they didn’t have my primary school on the system and they sent me a registration pack for another random school nowhere near me.
After calling back my primary school office, confirming indeed it was Camp Australia who were running the after school program associated with my school, I again called camp Australia and spoke to a different person who informed me I needed to register through a local primary. After registering, i called to book in days of attendance. I have to say the person i spoke to didn't have the best english and she was difficult to understand.

Despite having completed my registration process, the web portal was not allowing me to log in and make a booking. I called Camp Australia on the 22 May and verbally requested a booking twice a week, Wednesday and Thursday for after school care starting from Wednesday 25 May. The woman I spoke to, spoke with a heavy accent and was difficult to understand.
I was then able to check the web portal, and none of my bookings were showing up.

The second day my daughter was supposed to be booked there, the school rang me to inform me my daughter was still there and when was she being picked up. I was shocked as I had expected her to be in afterschool care. I was fortunate to have a friend at the school who could take her home, that is not a very common occurrence though. I rang Camp Australia in a highly stressed state and asked what happened and spoke to the same lady with the heavy accent and she changed the booking to include afterschool care Thursday. I did not request before school care during this phone call.
Apparently after my first phone call to camp Australia they reviewed the phone call, only the second phone call, and determined that i had requested before school, something I vehemently deny. They refused to give me a call transcript, rather a summary of the call which they purport to be against what i am stating.
I find it unbelievable that despite all my protestations that i never requested the care and of course i never dropped my child off before school, they are still insisting i did request it and are trying to charge me for it.
On principle I am following this up because it feels like i am being bullied and it sounds ridiculous that i will need to seek legal representation on such a small issue and amount of money.

Extremely disappointed, not only the facilities are terrible and the lack of hygiene in the premises and food handling scares me. As many parents mentioned above they are only about taking your money. I have called as having problems with their booking system, cancelled my bookings and still got charged. They said they have review the call and it was in their favour. However I am not allow to hear the call, only them. After many phone calls they simply sent me that on a really rude email. If I want to hear the call I will need to go to court... well, if I had time for this I would not have my kids in care, let a alone on their care which my daughter really dislike. There is no competition or alternative, so parents are stuck with that. I will have to find an alternative as no way I am sending my girl to them again.

My Daughter attends camp Australia and they are the worst company I have ever dealt with, overdue fees what a joke and not being able to pay monthly is and even bigger joke! Constant late fees and crap service. I am going to ombudsman as I can no longer deal with these ###s!

I worked with Camp Australia for 5 years as a coordinator and as an assistant, and I can confirm that it is the crappiest company I know. I agree with every single complaint made in this forum and having previously worked with them, I can say that in addition to these complaints it doesn't get any better for their staff. Your job is constantly being threatened. Staff are always being moved to different centres last minute, all centres I have worked for have always been understaffed, we never had enough resources for the children, or we would be provided with an abundance of useless resources. I always put in 100% in my job, I would alway go and buy resources for the children because the company wouldn't provide us with them, I would more to a number of different centres in ONE afternoon, I would sometimes spent half of my income on parking, the way you select holiday club shifts is unfair, the complaints I have for this company are endless. This company's main goal is to make money, that's more important than anything else. With all of the programming and documentation they make us do revolving around the Early Years Learning Framework (2009), how do they expect us to achieve these standards and outcomes when staff is inconsistent. I would never recommend this company to anyone and encourage current staff to leave, there are plenty of other OOSH centres out there.

Camp Australia are a bunch of Bullies.
These people are basically Debt collectors pretending to run an after school program.
They Prank call me now everyday because of an overdue bill. Which has had the usual huge $20 overdue fee added.
I'm over it. seems people have complained for 7 or 8 years about the same issues and nothing has changed.

I am a parent of a child with special needs. I engaged Camp Australia 5 months ago and took 3 months off work to, amongst other things, allow Camp Australia the time to have everything in place to make my son's transition to their services as smooth as possible. I contacted the worker on site regularly for updates on how things were processing and was told that the regional manager was still looking at it all. The worker assured me that it would be done well in advance to me needing to return to work. Two weeks out and still getting the same line I started calling the service centre. They were no help whatsoever and the night before my son was due to start I got a vague email advising me that the regional manager was still reviewing the support plan and they apologies for the delay, but my son could not access their services until everything was approved. Other than this email no one has contacted us in the 5 months since we first engaged Camp Australia. This company is disorganized and just don't care.

I would never use this service again if it were the only child minding service in Australia. First of all the out of pocket expenses on the website are downright misleading. I am entitled to the highest rate of CCB and CCR, but like all the people they rip off, I was charged the highest rate of out of pocket expenses. No one I can find, no matter how low their income, pays the lower rate.
When I signed on, I was put on a payment plan that was supposed to cover the fees for the entire year. It was a lie, it was only covering a small part of my costs, and I was accruing a huge debt. I could not get anyone at Camp Australia to discuss the fees with me, or explain why the amount I owed increased every week when I was on a payment plan that was supposed to cover all costs. When I suggested that it all seemed shonky, I was told that a supervisor would call me back and I was locked out of my online Camp Australia account so I could not check my details. No supervisor called, although they prank called my mobile 2 or 3 times a day until the bill was paid.
I pulled the children out of their care, but still could not get them to discuss my fees, all they would say is I owe..., not how they justify the price increasing every week. Finally I got DPC involved and their financial officer was able to find out what Camp Australia claims happened.
According to Camp Australia, their employee made a mistake with the payment plan she put me on, and they apologise. They will not reduce the amount remaining, nor explain why it took for me to get the DPC involved for them to be willing to discuss the matter or to admit there had been a mistake. Had I continued to keep the children at their OSH I would have been in $7000+ debt by the end of the school year. As it was, I'd only had the kids in care for one month, and had been paying $200 a week, but the bill I had at the end of the month was for another $1200.
Oh yeah, they're still charging Centrelink the CCB and CCR even though the kids I pulled the kids out and cancelled all future bookings and the kids haven't attended since last month.
There's shonky stuff going on at Camp Australia. I seriously recommend looking around for other child care services.

I absolutely hate dealing with the call centre at Camp Australia. The last time I called to ask them to cancel a booking that I had just made accidentally (moments earlier), the person I spoke to (in the Philippines?) gave me this really sassy "hmm hmmmm?" sound and would not confirm whether I could have the fee waived. It was a mistake made on their horribly inconvenient website. I have tried to make bookings in the past that wouldn't save properly, that duplicated, that disappeared, it has simply failed show up on Safari or Firefox sometimes. I can't easily block out my dates and review them before saving, instead I have to go into days individually for each child and press before school care, then after school care. It's tedious and easy to make mistakes. Anyway, back to the most recently delightful experience I had with them, they happily charged me that day's charge, even though they knew it was just a slip of the fingers on their awful website that I have continually complained to them about. They recently charged me a $2 statement fee, never sent me a statement for that period by email, and I certainly never received one by mail. I queried the charge, as I happened to log in to go and look for the missing statement. They reversed the charge, but never acknowledged my request. I still don't know what happened there. The other local school charges $33 per day for before and after school care (before rebates etc). The school my children go to (a local public primary) charges $56 per day. $20 per day difference, over 5 days, is $100 per week, per child difference. I have two children, so it adds up considerably. I'm about to begin working casually and am dreading having to keep an eye on this. I am strongly considering removing my children from this school and going to the other school because I dislike Camp Australia's administration so much. There's nothing I can do about it, this is who our school has chosen to use.

My account was sent to debt collection with no warning. After I was forced to agree to pay $50 on the 31st of may even though I explained I get paid monthly on the 15th.

They said I need to pay the debt collectors not sure how I do that without being able to work?