UCT Accounts needs and overall

It is impossible to get through on land line to the Accounts Department at UCT Online High School.

Email seems to be the only means of communication with the Accounts Department.

Starting Oct 2022 I notice I kept asking n getting emails with invoices to pay school fees. In my mind my school fees were paid up by then as per the 2022 fees hand book indicating that school fees for 2022 was R23405 or 11 payments of R2095.

Yet the invoices kept coming and final demands that I’d I don’t pay my child’s account will be suspended. Obviously I kept on replying and no one really took ownership. It went from pillar to post with no real resolution. Needless to say I made a 12th payment only to get a warning that if I don’t pay the outstanding balance of +R4000.00 my child’s account will be suspended.

Come 2023 I realise that I overpaid and decided to only pay R100.00 for the month of January 2023 as the school fees then went up to R2195.00. So in my mind the R2095 over payment plus the R100.00 I paid in January 2023 would make up the R2195.00 for January 2023.

It is now April 2023, my issues from Oct 2023 to now has not been resolved. Countless emails and no credible feedback. I have managed to start communicating with Olivia Gwebu - Head of Finance and still it seems that even the accounts department cannot tell me for sure what the school fees were for 2022. They insist that parents had to pay 12 payments and that the placement fee of R2095 which was due in Nov / Dec 2021 does not form part of the 11 payments toward the school fees. Yet in the acceptance letter which I received for my child in Nov 2021 stated clearly that the placement fee served as the first months school fees for 2022. If the school fees for 2022 was R23405 only 11 payments of R2095 would be required to settle the school fees.

The accounts department at UCT disputes that and insists differently. In 2023 the school fee handbook excludes the placement fee from the school fees. It seems that the account a department are mixing up there years.

Olivia has stated in an email to me in contrast to the school fee hand book of 2022 and the acceptance letter I received in 2022 that 12 payments of R2095 were required for 2022 and not 11. And that the placement fee is not part of the first months installment.

I’m have asked to speak to her directly. She said I could call her. I asked for a number to call her on, her reply was that she does not have a direct number.

I do not know how to resolve this. They have blocked my child who is now in grade 12 from having access to the platform.

Is this right.

Who is in charge of UCT Online high school.

I am not the only parent having these issues.