$9,000 special needs summer camp sent kids home after one day, won’t provide refund
Location: camp is in North Carolina, I am a Tennessee resident
I have two children aged 11 and 9 on the autism spectrum. I signed them up for a two week summer camp for children with autism at $4,500 each so our children could get a fun and beneficial experience over the summer and we could get a break. We are a middle class family and this expense was astronomical to us.
The parent handbook says they do not send children home for anything other than extreme safety concerns that cannot be mitigated in any other way and outlines their policies for dealing with things like behavior outbursts and homesickness.
The morning of the second day of camp, they called me and said I needed to get both my children immediately, because my eleven-year-old (who has echolalia— something they had been informed about) had repeated a sexually inappropriate phrase three times, and because my nine-year-old was homesick. They made it clear that I did not have a choice and had to get both children. I drove to get them and by the time I got there, my nine-year-old was having a good time and my 11-year-old was calm and behaving.
They said they do not issue refunds and reiterated that they had a right to send my 11-year-old home because his presence was a “safety concern.” They did not give me a good reason for the fact that they were sending my 9-year-old home but I do have in my text messages that they said it wasn’t an option.
I also found out that my younger child had been relentlessly bullied by another child there, something I was not told about.
I sent them an email after I got home explaining that I feel we paid for services that were not rendered. They said that I had agreed to the terms of camp and that they would call their lawyers if I contacted them again. They insinuated that they are the ones who were wronged and that they intend to take legal action against *me* if I press them for a refund.
I filed a dispute with my credit card company (Discover) with all the documentation including their own terms, but am not optimistic. I am willing to go through small claims court but I have no idea where to start. I don’t know which state to file in or how. Do I have a case?