5-year-old Boy Charged 'No Show Fee' for Friend's Birthday Party

Last October, we told you about the Fargo woman who was said to be planning to give cautionary letters to trick-or-treaters she considered at risk for obesity, and wondered, Is this for real?! Now, comes a story of a five-year-old boy who received an invoice for not showing up at a friend's birthday party.

Alex Nash, 5, of Plymouth in the UK, received a birthday party invite from his friend just before Torpoint Nursery and Infant school, which the boys attend together, went on break for the winter holidays.

When he failed to show, the mother of the birthday boy served Alex's parents Derek and Tanya with an invoice for what she called a no-show fee. The invoice demanded the £15.95 she claims it had cost her for Alex to attend, which he did not.

When Alex first received the invitation, he was excited and wanted to go, Derek Nash says. When he saw the birthday boy's mom next, he confirmed that Alex would be there and "was looking forward to it."

It wasn't until later that Nash remembered that he and Alex's mom had already arranged for Alex to spend that same day with his grandparents. When they realized the double-booking, they let Alex decide which he wanted to do. He chose seeing his grandparents.

But at this point, Nash says, they had no way of letting the host mother know that the plan had changed. He and Tanya looked out for her at the school after it was back in session to apologize for the mix-up and the no-show; instead they found the bill inside Alex's backpack one day after class, passed to him through his teacher.

The school apologized, saying that this was a breach in protocol and that the teacher would receive a warning.

Derek and Tanya say they would have been more than happy to reimburse the birthday boy's mom for whatever their son's not showing up might have cost her, but that the way she went about soliciting that reimbursement was unnecessarily brisk.

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