Deposits, cancellations and the afternoon you gave back

Why a daylight hour is paid for in halves

An afternoon that has been agreed is an afternoon nothing else can occupy. Once a therapist has said she will be at a door at half past one, that stretch of her day has gone whether the door opens or not, and so has the hour on either side of it, which is now cut too short to offer anybody. A deposit is what makes that promise run both ways. Nothing is being held in escrow and nothing is handed back at the end of the visit: what travels first is simply the front half of the fee, worked out from the figure printed in the profile of the therapist you asked for, written out in full in the thread once the hour is settled, and paid before she leaves.

Half ahead: the seven bookings that ask for it

Every profile on the roster carries the whole set of figures, for one guest and for a couple, with one therapist or with two, and half of whichever line applies is the part that goes first. It is asked for on these seven kinds of booking:

• any afternoon agreed more than twenty-four hours before it starts, which covers almost everything arranged before a trip begins;
• a block of eight hours, whatever time of day it opens;
• two therapists in the room, at any length;
• a room at Schiphol or at an airport hotel, which sits outside the ordinary window and is settled on its own once the journey time has been agreed with you;
• a peak date, by which the house means King's Day, Pride, the Amsterdam Dance Event, the run from Christmas into the new year, and a week when a large conference fills the city, each of them named plainly if you ask;
• three hours or longer, on any day of the week;
• a first booking with the house, at whatever hour and whatever length.

Halve the figures and they stop being theoretical. A block of eight hours at EUR 1,250 means EUR 625 first and EUR 625 when she arrives. The same block with two therapists is EUR 2,880, so EUR 1,440 goes ahead of it. Three hours from two in the afternoon at EUR 540 is confirmed with EUR 270. Two hours for a couple with a therapist each comes to EUR 1,440, and EUR 720 of that travels first. Ninety minutes at EUR 270, agreed today for tomorrow lunchtime, needs EUR 135.

One kind of booking sends nothing in advance at all. A guest the house has looked after before, at an address inside the city, asking for one or two hours later that same day, settles the whole figure when she gets there. Push that request onto another date, add a second therapist, run it past three hours, move it to an airport hotel, land it on a peak date or make it the first booking of all, and the half goes back in front of it.

How the two halves are settled

Card is the ordinary route for the part that goes first, with Revolut, Wise and cryptocurrency there for anyone who prefers one of them. Bank transfer and PayPal are not used here. Cash cannot stand in as a deposit, for the simple reason that a deposit is settled while she is still getting ready and cash only moves once she is in the room. The exact sum and the details for sending it are written into the booking thread after the hour is agreed, and appear in no other place. Every figure on this site is quoted in euro. The remaining half is settled at the door as she arrives, and cash in another major currency is fine for that half, with the exact amount in that currency confirmed to you in writing before she leaves. The booking page walks through the messages in the order they are sent.

What calling off an afternoon actually costs

Calling a booking off never leaves you owing the house damages. What can be kept is the slice of the fee that had already been earned by the moment your message landed, and the only thing that fixes that slice is the warning you gave:

• More than twenty-four hours ahead of the agreed time, nothing at all is kept and the deposit goes back whole.
• Inside the last twenty-four hours, with her still at her own address, half the deposit is kept as fee earned and the other half is returned.
• After she has left for your door, the deposit stays with the house in full.

Two things cut into even that last line. Where the hour you released is taken by somebody else, the deposit goes back whole, because nothing was actually lost. And if you can show that the house lost less than the sum it held on to, only the smaller of the two figures stays.

Put it against a real afternoon. Two hours at EUR 360 for half past two, confirmed with EUR 180. Called off the previous morning, all EUR 180 comes back. Called off at nine that same morning, with her day still open, EUR 90 stays and EUR 90 is returned. Called off at ten past two while she is already halfway across the canal ring, the EUR 180 remains with the house, unless the hour is taken by another guest.

A same-day hour with nothing sent ahead

The returning guest's hour or two later the same day, at a city address, carries no deposit, which leaves the scale above with nothing to work on. Dropped before she has left, that booking leaves nothing owing in either direction. Dropped once she is already crossing town in the middle of the afternoon, it costs the portion of the fee that her journey stands for, and the house asks for not a cent beyond it.

Moving an afternoon to another day

The first change of date costs nothing. Two conditions sit on it: the request has to reach the thread more than twenty-four hours before the agreed time, and the day you move to has to fall inside the following fortnight. Meet both and the deposit crosses over untouched. Ask a second time, or ask inside the final day, and the request is read exactly as a cancellation sent at that same minute would be, with whatever survives the scale carried forward to the new date.

Force majeure, and what the money becomes

Every so often something genuinely beyond either side stops an afternoon happening: transport across the city shutting down, a serious disruption in the centre, an official instruction that makes the journey impossible. Nothing is forfeited in that situation and nothing is argued over. The deposit turns into credit, sitting there against a date you are under no pressure to name straight away. A cold, a plan that changed, a meeting that ran into the afternoon, an airline moving a flight and a decision over breakfast that you would rather sleep instead all sit on your side of that line, and each of them is read as a move or a cancellation on the scale above.

When the house cannot go ahead

If the house cannot put on the session you arranged, the decision passes to you rather than staying here. Ask for the deposit back in full and it comes back; leave it as credit against another day and it waits as long as you need. Where the therapist you chose turns out to be unable to come, the house tells you the moment it knows, and from there you either look at the roster again and name somebody yourself or take the money back.

Distance bookings and the fourteen-day rule

A booking put together in writing, with the two sides never having met beforehand, is an agreement reached at a distance. Dutch law places the rules for those agreements in Book 6 of the Civil Code, at articles 6:230m through 6:230z, which is where the European consumer rules were brought into national law. Under that framework a consumer normally holds fourteen days in which to step back from a distance agreement. Article 6:230p lists the agreements the right does not reach, and services tied to leisure activities are among them where the agreement fixes a particular date or period for performance. Every booking made here names an hour on a named day, which is exactly the situation that article has in view. The fourteen-day right therefore never comes into being in the first place. Nothing in these terms asks you to surrender a right, because on this kind of booking there is no such right sitting there to surrender.

A same-day afternoon rests on a second footing as well. Before she leaves, the house asks you to put in the thread that you want the session carried out at once, and that you understand the fourteen-day right will not attach to it once it has been carried out. Everything else settled between the two sides is written down in the terms.

Ended early, by you or by her

Decide at four o'clock that you have had enough of the afternoon and close a session before the agreed time is up, and the whole fee stays payable with nothing returned. The hours were held aside for you, she made the journey, and what remains of them cannot be handed to anyone else at that point in the day.

Your therapist decides what a session includes, and she says where her limits sit before it starts; those limits hold for the length of the visit. Where her safety or her comfort is not respected, or a limit she has already named is leaned on, the visit closes at that moment. The fee for the time that was held stays due and nothing whatever is added to it.

False bookings and the note the house keeps

A booking counts as a false booking where any one of these is true:

• the name on it is not the name of the person who made it;
• it came from a number or a profile that belongs to somebody else;
• it was sent as a prank;
• a no-show came after any one of those three.

An afternoon that was simply missed meets none of those conditions. A guest who booked honestly and then failed to open the door has made an ordinary cancellation, and it is read on the notice scale like every other one.

Where a booking does answer one of the conditions, or a visit closes because a limit was leaned on, the house writes a short note for itself. It holds the date, an account of what happened, and the name and number the booking came in under, and it is kept for twelve months. Nobody outside the house reads it, and it exists to settle one question only: whether another booking under that name is taken. How to object to such a note, or ask for it to be corrected or wiped, is set out on the privacy page. Where what happened looks like a criminal offence, the house may take it to the police.

A guest who books under their own name and is in the room when she knocks has nothing in this section to think about. The everyday questions about entry, timing and what to have ready are answered in the FAQ.