It turns out stealing lunch or lunch money from school kids is still a thing these days, only the bullies just got bigger and more systemic. Because one wary parent from Massachusetts kept wondering why their child’s lunch money account went into a negative balance, only to find out that the company responsible for the meal payment might have been deducting money without their knowledge. Apparently, other schoolkids’ lunch money is disappearing inexplicably as well.
The query and complaint came from a Reddit user and parent who set up their kid’s MySchoolBucks account. This account handles the children’s lunch money, and all parents have to do is keep topping it up. On July 14, however, the Reddit user received an email from MySchoolBucks stating that their child’s account is at a negative $8.50 balance. The problem was, their child wasn’t even buying lunch at school; they’ve been bringing packed lunch from home for two months before MySchoolBucks notified them of the negative balance.
The Reddit user then asked other parents around, and surprisingly, they were also notified that their MySchoolBucks accounts were cleared or depleted. One parent even stated that her child didn’t even attend school for that school year. That isn’t to say the parents didn’t call MySchoolBucks’ customer support — they did. In fact, MySchoolBucks told them that it must’ve been their kid who was lying about not spending lunch money. Hence, the Reddit user became prepared to escalate matters legally.
“I’m tempted to start a new class action lawsuit, but I’m not sure who to contact or if this is even the next appropriate step,” says the angry Reddit user
Meanwhile, tons of legal advice poured in, and some even suggested contacting a law firm that recently won a similar lawsuit against a similar payment system.
People Online Also Brought Up Similar Woes
The angry Reddit users didn’t fall on deaf ears. One of the top comments on their thread did point out the obvious, which is to have a dialogue with the school first before holding MySchoolBucks accountable, as it’s not clear yet whether it’s the meal payment company or the school at fault. Meanwhile, the angry Redditor is adamant that their child is not lying about not spending lunch money.
“Have you spoken to the school ? I’d contact the school secretary and ask to be put in touch with food service department administrator or business office. It sounds like this is an error on the school district as they closed out their books at the end of the school year. mySchoolBucks is only giving you an answer for what they can see- the district had to reconcile the accounts before they closed their books and prepare for an annual audit,” suggested another Reddit user
“Contact the same law firm and let them know what is going on. They might be very interested or they may not be.”
Turns out discrepancies about payment systems involving lunch money are also quite common. Some Reddit users also recalled a similar incident, while others claimed that schools tend to collect lots of money from parents who didn’t want to believe their children about not spending extra lunch money.
“I had this happen (different software being used, I’m in a different state) and I asked them to show me the details of when these purchases were made so I could cross reference it with the cafeteria cameras because my kids always bring home lunch and they swore they weren’t sneakily buying food. I sent an email to the kitchen manager for the school and suddenly they fixed my kids accounts. They never called me back or explained anything, just set the account balance to zero and it never happened again.”
“I cannot IMAGINE how much money our school collected off of students whose parents didn’t believe their kids that they weren’t charging lunches.”
“So sketchy. Those bastards.”
