I am a parent still waiting for my Allsave childcare vouchers from February to be credited to my account. I understand there have been various IT systems issues since they were taken over by Sodexo at the end of last year.
I am owed £243 in vouchers. Ten or so of my colleagues are all also affected, and from the sounds of it many other parents, too.
EG, Selly Oak, Birmingham
• I own a preschool and one of the parents wants to pay using vouchers via Sodexo. I accept vouchers from other providers and thought this would be easy. I filled in the form on its website to register my company, thinking it would only take a couple of days to hear back. This was on 9 December 2016.
After receiving no response I emailed again and also sent forms in the post to the address provided. This was at the beginning of January. Still no response despite further emails and phone calls. I am now desperate and don’t know what else to do. I have a parent who wants to pay two lots of fees and I need that set of fees to pay staff wages.
EP, Wallington, Surrey
Childcare vouchers are a useful and valuable employee benefit, but as an electronic currency they can be an administrative headache when things go wrong. The vouchers allow parents to pay for childcare from their pre-tax salaries, so they pay less tax.
After a systems upgrade by Sodexo last year, internet talkboards have been dominated by parents’ anger over account and payment-related problems, which started to surface in late November.
We asked the company to explain what went wrong. It confirmed that EP has now been able to register via the website, and EG has also received the payment. Sodexo told us: “We are aware that the migration of data to Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services’ core IT system has led to issues with payments and access for a small proportion of our customers. The migration is complete and customers with any queries should contact customercare.br.uk@sodexo.com. We apologise for any inconvenience.”
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