Deposits, cancellations and the hour you let go

Why half of the figure goes ahead

Time is the whole of what a booking buys. When a therapist agrees to stand at a door at nine in the evening, that part of her evening is committed, and so in practice is the hour on either side of it, which has become too short to offer anybody else. Sending half of the figure is how that commitment stops being one-sided. It is not a bond parked somewhere and handed back at the end. It is the first half of the fee, worked out from the figures printed in the profile of the woman you asked for, written out in the thread once the hour is fixed, and paid before she leaves for your address.

The seven bookings that carry it

Every profile on the roster prints the whole set of figures, for one guest and for a couple, with one therapist and with two, and half of whichever line applies to you is the sum asked for. It is asked for on seven kinds of booking:

• anything fixed more than twenty-four hours before it starts, which is most of what people arrange before they fly;
• the eight hour block, whatever time of day it opens;
• any booking with two therapists in it, at any length;
• a room at Schiphol or at one of the airport hotels, arranged on its own, with the driving time each way put in writing and accepted before anything is fixed;
• a peak date, by which the house means King's Day, Pride, the Amsterdam Dance Event, the run of days between Christmas and the new year, or a week when a large conference fills the city, each of them named plainly if you ask;
• three hours or longer, on any date in the calendar;
• the first booking a guest makes here, whatever the hour and whatever the length.

Reading the halves

Halved, the figures stop being an abstraction. On a single hour, half the hourly figure goes ahead. Ninety minutes confirms with three quarters of one hour's worth. Two hours sends one hour's worth before and pays one hour's worth at the door. Three hours sends an hour and a half's worth first. The eight hour block sends half of its own line, and so does the block with two therapists or with a couple taking one each. None of those halves move for the day of the week, and none of them carries anything for her journey inside the city.

The booking that carries nothing ahead

One case sits outside all of the above. A guest the house has already looked after, at an address inside the city, asking for one or two hours later on the same day, pays everything on arrival and sends nothing first. Change any one thing about that request and the deposit comes back into play: push it to another date, put a second therapist in it, stretch it past three hours, move it to an airport hotel, land it on a peak date, or make it the first booking of an acquaintance.

How the two halves are paid

Card comes first for the half that goes ahead, with Revolut, Wise or cryptocurrency there for anyone who prefers one of them. PayPal is not used here and neither is a bank transfer. Cash cannot cover the first half for a reason that is purely practical: the first half is settled while she is still at home, and cash only moves once she is in the room. The sum and where to send it appear inside the confirmed thread, and in no other place. Every figure written anywhere on this site is in euro. The second half is handed over at the door, and if you would rather pay that half in cash in another major currency, that is fine, with the exact amount in that currency confirmed to you in writing before she sets out. The sequence the messages follow is written out on the booking page.

What calling off actually costs

No cancellation makes a guest liable to the house for damages, and none ever will. What may stay behind is the part of the fee the house has already earned by the time your message lands, and the notice in that message is the only thing that decides the size of it:

• Written more than twenty-four hours ahead of the booked time: nothing is kept and the whole of the first half comes back to you.
• Written inside the final day, while she is still where she started: half of that first half stays as earned fee and the rest is repaid.
• Written once she has already left for your address: the first half stays with the house.

Two things soften even the last line. Where the hour you gave up is taken by someone else, the money is returned in full, because nothing was lost in the end. Where you can show that the actual loss was smaller than the sum kept, only the smaller sum is kept.

Take a two hour booking confirmed with half its figure, which is one hour's worth. Called off a clear two days before, all of it is returned. Called off four hours ahead of the booked time, with her still at home, half an hour's worth stays and the same goes back. Called off while she is crossing the city, the whole hour's worth stays, unless the hour finds another guest.

A same-day hour with nothing behind it

The returning guest's same-day hour or two at a city address has no first half attached, so there is no scale for the notice to act on. Cancelled before she leaves, it costs nothing whatever. Cancelled once she is already on the road, it costs the share of the fee that her journey stands for, and the house asks for nothing beyond that share.

Moving a booking to another day

The first change of date is free of charge. Two conditions apply to it: the request has to reach the thread more than twenty-four hours before the booked time, and the new day has to sit inside the following fortnight. Meet both and the money already sent travels across whole. Ask for a second move, or ask for the first one inside the final day, and the request is read on the notice scale exactly as a cancellation written at that same minute would be, with whatever the scale leaves untouched carried on to the new day.

Force majeure, and where the money goes afterwards

Some things stop a booking that neither side could have done anything about: transport across the city halted, a serious disruption somewhere in it, an official instruction that makes the journey impossible. Nothing is forfeited in that situation and nothing is disputed. What was sent becomes credit, held for a date you are free to choose later. A head cold, a change of heart, a meeting that ran long, an airline moving a flight and a decision at midnight that sleep sounds better all sit on your side of the line, and each of them is read as a move or a cancellation under the scale above.

When the house cannot go ahead

If the session you booked cannot be performed by the house, the decision about the money is yours rather than anybody else's. Ask for it back in full and it comes back in full, or leave it standing as credit for as long as you need before naming a new date. Where the particular therapist you asked for turns out not to be able to come, you are told as soon as the house knows, and you may either name another woman from the roster yourself or take the money back.

Distance bookings and the fourteen-day question

A booking agreed entirely in writing, with no meeting beforehand, is a service agreed at a distance. Dutch law puts such agreements in Book 6 of the Civil Code, at articles 6:230m to 6:230z, which is where the European consumer rules were brought into national law. A consumer normally has fourteen days to withdraw from an agreement of that kind. Article 6:230p lists the agreements the right does not reach, and services connected with leisure activities are among them where the agreement names a specific date or period for performance. A booking here always names an hour on a named day, which is exactly the case that article describes, and so the fourteen-day right never comes into existence in the first place. Nothing on this page asks you to surrender a right, because no right of that shape arises.

There is a second footing under a session performed on the day it is booked. Before she leaves, the house asks you to write in the thread that you want the session carried out straight away, and that you know the fourteen-day right will not attach to it once it has been carried out. Everything else agreed between the two sides is written out in the terms.

Ending a session early

If an hour into a two hour booking you decide you have had enough, the fee for the booked time stands and nothing comes back. The time was held for you, she made the journey to reach you, and what is left of it cannot be handed to anyone else at that point in the evening. Where you know beforehand that an hour is what you want, say so in the thread while the hour is still being fixed and the booking simply becomes an hour.

Your therapist is the one who decides what a session includes, she says where her limits are before anything begins, and those limits hold for the whole of the visit. Where her safety or her comfort is not respected, or where a limit she has named is pushed at, the visit ends at that moment and she leaves. The fee for the reserved time remains due and not one euro is added to it.

Bookings that were never real, and the line the house writes down

A booking earns that description as soon as any single one of the following holds:

• the name attached to it belongs to somebody other than the person who sent it;
• the number or the profile it arrived from is not the sender’s own;
• it was written as a prank;
• nobody answered the door, and one of the three above was also true.

An appointment simply missed meets none of those tests. Somebody who booked in his own name and then did not open the door has cancelled in the ordinary way, and the notice scale reads it as such.

Where a booking does answer one of the tests, or where a visit ended because a limit was pressed, a short note goes into an internal record. It holds the date, an account of what happened, and the name and number the booking arrived under, and it is kept for twelve months. Nobody outside the house reads it, and it answers one question only: whether a later booking under that name is taken. How to object to such a note, or ask for it to be put right or removed, is set out on the privacy page. Where what happened looks like a criminal offence, the house may take the matter to the police.

A guest who books under his own name and is in the room when she knocks has nothing in this section to think about at all. Questions about the door, the timing and what to have waiting are dealt with in the FAQ.