Sometimes it happens..
Based on our experience, most of the parents / students will pay tuition fees to tutors. But in some rare cases, tutors have difficulty in claiming back the tuition fees and met with situations like clients delay payment for a long period of time and tutors find it almost impossible to claim back the tuition fees. Well, when this happens, there is a legal and easy way to claim back your tuition fees. You can bring the case to small claim court.
Before tutor takes legal action
1) Always record the attendance. Also keep record of the name, address and phone number of client.
2) Always remind for payment in a professional way.
3) Give clients a bit of time to settle the fees, maybe 1-4 weeks.
4) If the deadline has passed and you want to take further action, please send a simple and formal letter to client’s house. In the letter, please state that you wish to claim back your tuition fees and give client a period of time to settle the fees. If not, you will bring this case to court. (Only take this action when you decided to quit the tuition and take note that relationship might turn bad between you and client)
5) If nothing works, you can proceed to do small claim. And it is easier than you think.
6) Please do keep copy of evidence to make the small claim.
Things to take note when making small claim
1) Small claims cases not exceeding RM5,000
2) No lawyer is allowed to represent either the claimant or defendant, unless it is a registered company
3) Process is very easy, but it takes abit of time, it might be 1-3 months depending on whether the client is willing to go to court as soon as possible or not
4) Fee you have to pay is minimal, it might be less than RM100, and if you win the case, client has to pay you back the fees too.
How to do small claim?
1) Go to the nearest Magistrates’ Court. See the registrar or clerk in charge and ask for Form 198 (Order 93, rule 3(1)).
2) Fill in the form, with all the necessary details (Order 93, rule 3(2)), in four copies (Order 93, rule 5(1)).
3) State when, how and why the claim has arisen. Keep them SHORT and straight to the point.
4) Give the form to the registry of that Magistrates’ Court and pay RM10 (Order 93, rule 5(1)) as a filing fee.
5) The court will inform you and the defendant of the hearing date.
If the defendant fails to file his defence within the required period or fails to attend the hearing, the court may give the judgement to you.
If the defendant offers to settle out of court before the hearing, you can accept by:
writing an acceptance letter to the defendant
and
sending a copy of your letter to the court.
Your case is then considered withdrawn.
What happens in court?
Both sides present arguments and evidences to support their case.
The magistrate will pass judgement after hearing from both sides.
If you win the case, the magistrate will award you either the whole claim or part of it. You can also claim for costs not exceeding RM100 (Order 93, rule 15).
Reference :
https://asklegal.my/p/how-do-you-start-a-small-claims-procedure-in-malaysia
About this article
Please take note Tuition Hero does not guarantee 100% accuracy of this article and effectiveness of our advise. We are merely giving good suggestion the best we can.
All this while when tutors complained to us that they cant get their tuition fees, we find ways to help them and we suggest them to bring this issue to court if everything we tried dont work. However, the idea of going to court might be scary to tutors and they decided to let go of the issues.
One of our tutors have shared stories that she successfully claimed back her tuition fees and she told us its very easy. So we are thinking to share this article with you. We believe tutors deserve for compensation for tuition fees and tutoring can be safe and fair. We hope this article is useful for you. Happy tutoring.