Deposits, cancellations and moved dates across a long stay

A deposit is part of the fee, never an extra

When a booking is agreed, a therapist gives up a block of her day for it, and usually the hours on either side as well, because a gap of an hour or two between bookings is hard to fill. The deposit is what makes that commitment run both ways. It is half of the fee itself, worked out from the figure in the profile of the therapist agreed in the thread, written down in that thread once the hour is fixed, and paid before she sets out. It is not held aside and returned after the visit, and it is not added to the fee. The balance at the door is simply the other half.

The seven bookings that carry half ahead

The full table of rates, for one guest or a couple and with one therapist or two, is printed in every profile on the roster. Half of whichever figure applies goes ahead on each of the following:

• the first booking a guest makes with the house, whatever its length and however soon it starts;
• any booking arranged more than twenty-four hours before it begins, which on a long stay means every evening planned in advance;
• any session of three hours or more;
• an overnight of eight hours;
• any booking with two therapists at once;
• a booking at Schiphol or one of the airport hotels, which is arranged on its own terms with the journey time agreed with you before anything is settled;
• any booking on a peak date: King's Day, Pride, the Amsterdam Dance Event, the weeks from Christmas to New Year and large conference weeks, which the house will name when asked.

In figures, for a guest living here for a season: a planned hour at EUR 180 goes ahead with EUR 90. A planned ninety minutes at EUR 270 goes ahead with EUR 135. Three hours at EUR 540 carries EUR 270 in advance. An overnight at EUR 1,250 carries EUR 625. Ninety minutes with two therapists costs EUR 540, and EUR 270 of it goes ahead. A couple with a therapist each for two hours pays EUR 1,440, of which EUR 720 is paid first.

Exactly one kind of booking carries nothing in advance: a guest the house has looked after before, asking for one or two hours later the same day, at an address in the city. For that one booking the whole fee changes hands at the door. Plan the same request for tomorrow, lengthen it to three hours, add a second therapist, move it to an airport hotel, place it on a peak date or make it your first booking with the house, and half goes ahead once more.

Paying the deposit and the balance

Card is the usual route for a deposit, and Revolut, Wise and cryptocurrency are accepted for guests who prefer them. PayPal is not used and neither is bank transfer. Cash cannot act as a deposit, because a deposit is settled before she leaves and cash changes hands only once she has arrived. The amount and the payment details are written in the booking thread after the hour is agreed, and appear nowhere else. All figures the house publishes are in euros. The balance is paid at the door, and a guest who would rather pay it in cash in another major currency may do so, once the exact sum in that currency has been confirmed in writing before she sets out. The booking page shows the order in which the messages run.

Cancelling a booking that has a deposit

A cancellation never makes a guest liable to the house for damages. What the house may keep is the share of the fee already earned at the moment the message arrives, and the only thing that decides that share is how much notice was given:

• more than twenty-four hours before the booked time, nothing is kept and the deposit is repaid in full;
• inside the final twenty-four hours, while she has not yet set out, half the deposit is kept as fee already earned and the other half is repaid;
• once she has set out for your address, the deposit is kept in its entirety as fee already earned.

Two things can reduce what is kept. If another guest takes the hour you gave up, the deposit is repaid in full, because the time was not lost. And if you can show that the house lost less than the share it kept, it keeps only that smaller sum.

An example from a long stay. Two hours on a Saturday at eight, EUR 360, planned on the Tuesday and confirmed with EUR 180. Cancelled on the Thursday, the full EUR 180 is repaid. Cancelled at noon on the Saturday, before she has left, EUR 90 is kept and EUR 90 is repaid. Cancelled at half past seven that evening, with her already travelling, the EUR 180 stays with the house, unless the two hours are taken by someone else.

Cancelling a booking without a deposit

A returning guest's same-day hour or two at a city address has no deposit, so the scale above has nothing to work on. Cancelled before she has set out for your door, it costs nothing at all. Cancelled after she has set out, it costs the share of the fee that her journey represents, and the house asks for nothing more than that.

Moving a booking to another date

Long stays are full of plans that shift, and each booking may change its date once without cost. Two conditions apply: the request arrives in the thread over twenty-four hours ahead of the booked time, and the date you move to lies no more than fourteen days away. When both are met, the whole deposit moves across to the new date. A second change of date, or a change requested inside the final twenty-four hours, is read on the notice scale exactly as a cancellation sent at that moment would be, and whatever the scale does not keep goes forward to the new date.

Force majeure, and credit

Now and then a booking is stopped by something neither side controls: a shutdown of transport, a serious disruption in the city, an official instruction that makes the journey impossible. In that case no part of the deposit is lost and nothing needs arguing over. The deposit becomes credit, held against a date you may choose whenever you are ready. A cold, a new plan, a meeting that ran over, a flight changed by an airline, a sudden call back to head office and a late decision to stay in all sit on the guest's side of that line, and each is read as a move or a cancellation on the scale above.

If the house cannot keep a booking

When the house is unable to perform a booking it has confirmed, the guest makes the choice. The deposit can be repaid in full, or held as credit for as long as you need to settle on another date. If the therapist agreed in the thread cannot come, the house tells you as soon as it knows, and you either choose from whoever is free or take the deposit back.

Distance agreements and the fourteen-day right

A booking agreed in writing, without the two sides meeting first, is a service contracted at a distance. Book 6 of the Dutch Civil Code governs such agreements at articles 6:230m to 6:230z, which carry the European consumer rules into Dutch law. Those articles normally give a consumer fourteen days to withdraw from a distance contract. Article 6:230p lists the contracts to which that right does not extend, and one of them is a service connected with leisure activities where the contract fixes a specific date or period of performance. Each booking with this house fixes an hour on a named day, which is the situation that article describes, so the fourteen-day right does not arise. These terms ask you to give up nothing, because there is no such right to give up.

A session on the same day rests on a second footing as well. Before she sets out, you are asked to write in the thread that you want the session performed straight away, and that you understand the fourteen-day right will not apply to it once performed. Everything else the two sides agree is set out in the terms.

A session that ends early

If you choose to end a session before the booked time is over, the full fee remains due and nothing is repaid. The time was held for you, she made the journey, and what is left of it cannot be offered to anyone else at that point.

The therapist decides what each session includes, and she states her limits before it begins. They hold for the whole visit. If her safety or comfort is not respected, or a limit she has stated is pressed, the visit ends there. The fee for the time reserved stays due, and nothing whatever is added to it.

False bookings, and the note kept about them

The house treats a booking as false when any one of these applies:

• it was made under a name that is not the guest's own;
• it came from a phone number or a profile that belongs to someone else;
• it was made as a joke;
• a no-show followed any of the three above.

A missed appointment on its own does not meet any of these. A guest who booked honestly and was not at the door when she arrived has made an ordinary cancellation, read on the notice scale like any other.

Where a booking does meet one of the criteria, or a visit is ended because a limit was pressed, the house keeps a short internal note with the date, what happened, and the name and number the booking came from. It is kept for twelve months, is seen by nobody outside the house, and decides one thing only: whether another booking from that name is accepted. How to object to a note or ask for it to be corrected or erased is explained on the privacy page. If what happened looks like a criminal offence, the house may take the matter to the police.

For a guest who books in their own name and is at the address when she knocks, none of this section ever comes up. The practical questions about entry, timing and what to have ready are answered in the questions page.