Parents Still Waiting for Refunds Promised When Magellan Academy Abruptly Closed

More than a dozen area parents whose children were enrolled at the now defunct Magellan Academy in Urbandale are still waiting for refunds since the child-care center abruptly closed its doors in June.

Getting the refunds they were promised may be difficult, Des Moines Register investigative reporter Lee Rood reported in her Readers Watchdog column.

“The first advice we always give is that if one paid via a credit card, challenge the charge with the card issuer,” Bill Brauch, director of the Consumer Protection Division of the Iowa Attorney General’s Office told the newspaper. “But, in (Magellan’s closing), it is my guess most folks paid via personal check or electronic debit from their checking accounts. If that is the case, there is little they can do but wait and hope that, indeed, the company pays as it has represented, even if via installment payments.”

Rood tracked down Magellan owner Thomas Blitch, who told her that he planned to make the refunds over time.  “If I file bankruptcy, nobody gets paid,” Blitch reportedly said. “I always, always pay my bills.”

Rood wrote that absent consumer fraud, "the best you can hope for is to sue in small-claims court, line up behind other creditors in bankruptcy court, or hope an owner will eventually do the honorable thing and pay up."

The Magellan Academy was open less than a year. Blitch previously blamed the closing on a “low quality of work force in Iowa” in an interview with WHO-TV in June

It’s “been like the Twilight Zone, how bad it is up there,” he reportedly said.