Prospective student meetings/phone calls
Has anyone else noticed that parents who want to call and talk about their children with you before ever scheduling or paying for a lesson are always the biggest headaches?
Last year, I had a mother request a phone call about her child's needs because of neurodivergence. I have a lot of neurodivergent students, and I didn't know better yet, so I said sure, why not. I assured her for about 15 minutes that I was comfortable teaching her child, she spent about 45 minutes telling me why it was so complex (it wasn't), and the call ended with an hour of my time spent for free. She scheduled a lesson, but ended up cancelling and never rescheduled. So I was never compensated for the time spent.
A few months ago, a grandparent wanted to talk in person about her prospective student. She assured me she would pay me for the time, and that it would only be 30 minutes. Lo and behold, it ended up being nearly an hour and a half, and she never reached out again to schedule or pay me for that time, even though she seemed to like me and enjoy spending an hour and a half in my studio.
This isn't to say that I don't bear some responsibility for allowing these chats to occur without prepayment.
So, this week a prospective parent was scheduled for their kids to attend intro lessons tomorrow. They reached out saying they can't tomorrow, and would like to talk on the phone about it because they're getting a divorce (another massive red flag for student behavior).
I really, really don't want to talk on the phone about this. I have a million things going on this week. I currently have 35-40 students on my schedule per week, and I don't need to give any time away for free at this point. I don't need these students. My mistake was offering them a recently vacated slot at all, because at this point I need to just stop accepting students. I know this.
My question is this:
How do I gracefully get out of this phone call? Tell them the slot is no longer available? Tell them I have a no phone call policy for incoming students? Does that sound bad? I just absolutely can't with problematic, time-sucking families any more, and I know this is ultimately my fault, but what would you do?
Thanks in advance, sorry it's so long