I recently had the lovely experience of a tution check bouncing.  This is the first time I’ve had this experience, and I was surprised to see that my bank also charged me a $7.00 “paper processing” fee.  (I’m naive, I guess!). 

I knew I would have to confront the parent who bounced the check, but I desperately hate these kinds of confrontations.  It’s times like these when I wish I had a secretary to handle this kind of stuff.  (Wouldn’t that be nice?  Instead of saying that you can’t give a makeup lesson because Susie wanted to play with her neighbor, you could just turn the phone call over to your cold hearted secretary to enforce your rules).

However, since I lack that coveted secretary, I turned to the Faber Piano Teaching Forum, a fantastic place to get wonderful advice from great teachers.  One teacher suggested I send an email to the parent and even gave me a great script.  I tweaked it just a little, and here it is.

Just a quick note to let you know that I just received your check for April’s tuition back from my bank.  Will you please bring cash to (Child’s Name) next lesson, including the bank fee of $____ that I was charged.”

There was no awkward confrontation, and the situation was taken care of perfectly.  Now I just need to figure out how to word a bounced check fee in my policy…