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I'm one of the parents affected and have paid 2 months of school bus fares. Really inconsiderate of the Sindoz owner to make the statement that parents should go to schools for refund instead of him. Guess another Volks Auto saga is in the making. School bus contracts sour, leaving parents in a pickle PUBLISHED ON JAN 3, 2015 1:00 AM PARENTS of pupils from two schools were left fretting over their children's transport arrangements, after the schools' contracts with a bus operator soured. Red Swastika School in Bedok and Coral Primary in Pasir Ris had hired bus company Sindoz Group for the new school year, but terminated their contracts at the last minute after finding the firm's service unsatisfactory. It is not known how many children were affected. At Red Swastika, parents paid two months' worth of bus fees to Sindoz in November but did not hear from it thereafter. A mother who wanted to be known only as Madam How, 42, said she did not hear from Sindoz owner Andy Lee after making a $160 deposit payment. "I tried to call Andy but there was no response," she said. A day before the school year began, parents received a message from Red Swastika principal Jenny Leong, informing them the school had ended its contract with Sindoz. Mrs Leong assured parents that the school would look into refunding those who have paid Sindoz. When asked, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said Red Swastika had appointed Sindoz as its school bus operator last August. But up to Wednesday, Sindoz could not confirm its arrangements with parents. The school decided then to terminate the contract with Sindoz and work with its former bus operator Goh Transport, said a spokesman. Mr Goh Bock Sin, who runs Goh Transport, said he received a call from Red Swastika only on Wednesday. "I worked with the school last year and we have a good relationship. So when they asked me for help, I agreed," said Mr Goh. Still, the last-minute appointment meant some parents had to take their children to school yesterday. At Coral Primary, some children ended up waiting for the school bus provided by Sindoz for an hour yesterday and were late for school. Others were not picked up. This led to the school ending its contract with the firm, the MOE spokesman said. The school had to make its own arrangements to send children home after lessons ended. "The school has made arrangements with the alternative transport operator to continue to ferry the students from next week," added the spokesman. When contacted, Mr Lee claimed the schools had unreasonably terminated his contracts. "It is unfair to terminate my contract even before the service commenced," he said, referring to Red Swastika School. Mr Lee, who declined to give his age, said he has been in the chartered bus industry for more than 10 years. Asked about the money from parents, he said an operations executive from his firm had "absconded with the money" and that he had made a police report. But parents should go to the schools, not him, for refunds, he said. "The schools are the ones that terminated the contracts suddenly, so they should bear the costs." For Madam How, it is not about the refund but whether her daughter has a bus to take her to school. "If we don't get a school bus, we really have to ask around and get non-working friends to help us out."

Good Evening Bros i have a friend who is enrolled in a certain Music "School" in United Square. However, there have been quite a few issues. First of all the school policy dictates thats if you're absent no matter what, there will be no refund unless you give them 1 day's notice in advance. However, my friend fell extremely sick on the day itself and there is no way to predict falling sick. Yet despite this the school refuses to budge on this policy. Furthermore my friend is taking VOICE lessons not any musical instrument lessons. However, a more pressing issue is that the teacher assigned is unprofessional and more perturbingly, insulting. He shot my friend, who is a female, with terms such as childish and naive with a bad attitude despite not having anything done to him at all. Furthermore my friend only heard this from other people who told her personally when the teacher started spouting nonsense behind her back. As expected, my friend felt exceedingly offended and chose to terminate the lessons with 1 weeks notice due to the above reason. However, due to another of their policies, the teacher has the right to determine if they should issue a refund and since he doesnt like my friend much, he has decided to not refund the rest of the lessons. I am not quite acquainted with the music teaching industry so I cannot say for certain but what are your views on this?

So many cases of lax law enforcement news reports lately.....could this be just the tip of the icebergs of the mayhams to befall in our society in the quest for the 6millions dream? My observation in reading such news reports. 1) If you want to fight or create trouble...can...no problem....just make sure you leave before the police comes. 2) The security guards are there ONLY for crowd control...they will not care about fighting or stealing/theft, as its beyond their juridiction. 3) Even the police cannot do anything if the perpertrator is no where to be found....tuff luck to the lesser mortal victim in most cases. MORE GOOD YEARS for Singapore indeed. http://news.asiaone.com/News/The%2BNew%2BP...325-130994.html 'Garang' pushcart aunty helps stop fight [NO FIGHTING, PLEASE: Pushcart stall part-time worker Madam Lily Yeo (in yellow) telling off one of the men involved in the fight.] By Amanda Yong SHE was tending to her pushcart at The Cathay. But after a fight broke out, the woman in her 50s did a bit more than mind her own business. When no one tried to stop the fight, Madam Lily Yeo decided that enough was enough and stepped in. 'I couldn't take it anymore,' she said in a mixture of Mandarin and Hokkien. 'I couldn't bear to see a poor man bleeding and lying on the ground.' She stood between the two young men, blocking the one still standing from the one lying on the ground. A Caucasian man who looked to be in his 20s helped the latter to get up. Madam Yeo also gave the young man standing in front of her a tongue lashing. 'I said to him, 'Why are you fighting? So clever to fight, is it? What if you fight till he dies? What will happen to you? What if you destroy my goods (in her pushcart)? Will you pay for it? Can you afford to?' The man told her to keep out of it. 'He told me not to interfere, but I told him that if you fight here right in front of my pushcart, it is my business,' she said. And she added: 'You want to beat up an aunty too?' She said she told him to calm down and if he really wanted to fight to do so elsewhere. The incident happened on Saturday afternoon, when the mall was filling up with shoppers. About 15 people stood around watching, but according to Madam Yeo, no one tried to help. Even the mall's security guards only stood and watched, she alleged. The security guards did ask the two men to stop fighting, Madam Yeo said, but they were ignored. When contacted, police confirmed that a fight had taken place at the mall. A police spokesman said they received a call around 3.15pm about a fight between a couple and two men. Madam Yeo, whose children are in their 30s, told The New Paper that she had been checking on stock at the back of the accessories pushcart, where she works part-time, when she heard angry shouts and punches. The shouting sounded like it had started from the corridor leading from the public restrooms. Madam Yeo's pushcart is almost directly in front of the corridor on the ground floor of the shopping mall. From what she could hear, the fight was over 'somebody bumping into somebody else', she said. She then saw two young men exchanging blows. The girlfriend of one of the men was standing nearby. Madam Yeo immediately alerted the security post, which sent two guards to the scene. But they did not physically intervene, said Madam Yeo, who had meanwhile, returned to her pushcart to continue her work. 'I thought I had done what I could, so I went back to doing my own thing,' she said. But when she saw the fight getting worse, with one of the men falling to the ground, 'blood spurting from his mouth', she decided to get involved. 'They were fighting near my pushcart. I was worried they would knock into my pushcart as they fought,' she said. 'When I saw one of the men lying on the ground and so much blood on the floor, I thought he might die from the beating.' She claimed that the security guards did nothing more than to keep saying 'stop fighting, stop fighting'. Wasn't she afraid to step in? 'No, there wasn't anything to be scared of. I didn't think he would hit an aunty.' When told that photographs of the incident had been posted on Stomp - a citizen's media website of The Straits Times - with some hailing her as a 'brave pushcart aunty', she was surprised, amused and slightly embarrassed. Did she think she did something brave? 'No, it's no big deal, I just had to do something,' she said. But to the owner of the pushcart next to Madam Yeo's, what she did was indeed brave. Miss Sharon Ng, 21, said she too heard the commotion. 'But it was very scary, so I hid behind my pushcart,' she said. After Madam Yeo's intervention, the fight petered out. The man bleeding from the mouth stayed behind with his girlfriend while the other man and a male friend left. Madam Yeo offered the injured man a drink and told his girlfriend to take him to a doctor. The police spokesman said the two men left the scene before police arrived. 'The couple were advised on their legal recourse,' added the spokesman. A Cathay Organisation spokesman said: 'When our guards noticed the commotion, they immediately tried to stop the fight but to no avail. 'The guards called for additional help while they promptly informed the police and ambulance. 'Our security guards did everything possible in handling crowd control and ensuring that patrons at the mall were not hurt...'

A friend of mine got her car crashed when she sent in her car for servicing at an authorised satelite service centre.Anyone can advise or recommend course of action to take and/or recommend a lawyer good in traffic claims/compensatiosn?