What happens to a deposit when you cancel

Plans shift more easily at night than by daylight. A dinner runs on, a flight moves, a mood fades around one in the morning. Cancelling is always open to you and never costs you damages. What it can cost is the part of the fee the house has already earned by the moment your message lands.

The notice scale

• more than twenty-four hours before the booked time: nothing has been earned yet, and the whole deposit is repaid;
• inside the final twenty-four hours, while she has not left: half the deposit counts as fee already earned, and the other half is repaid;
• after she has set out towards you: the whole deposit counts as fee already earned.

If another client takes the hour you released, your deposit comes back in full. If you can show that the house lost less than the part it kept, it keeps only the smaller sum.

When the house cannot perform

Sometimes the failure sits on this side: the woman you booked cannot come, or the house cannot keep the hour. You hear about it as soon as the house does. The deposit can be repaid in full, or it can wait for a new date for as long as you need to pick one, and that choice is yours. A change of heart is a cancellation instead.

Moving instead of cancelling

A booking can be moved once without charge, to a date within fourteen days, if you ask more than twenty-four hours ahead; the whole deposit goes with it. A second move, or one asked for inside the final day, is weighed on the scale like a cancellation written at that moment, and whatever stays unkept travels on to the new date.

Without a deposit, and ending early

A returning client's same-day hour or two carries no deposit. Cancel it before she has left and nothing is owed; cancel once she has set out and the house asks only for the part of the fee her journey represents. End a session before its time and the time reserved stays payable, because those minutes cannot go to anyone else.

About the fourteen days

A booking made by message is a contract at a distance. Book 6 of the Dutch Civil Code, articles 6:230m to 6:230z, usually allows fourteen days to withdraw from one. Article 6:230p lifts certain contracts out of that right, including services related to leisure activities where the contract fixes a specific date or period. Every booking here names an hour on a named night, so the fourteen-day right does not arise. The cancellation policy gives the full position.