Deposits, moved dates and the evening you gave up

Why an evening arranged in advance is paid for in halves

Agreeing an hour takes it out of circulation. When a therapist has said she will be at a door at half past nine on a Friday in April, that stretch of her evening is committed whether or not anyone opens the door, and so in practice are the hours on either side of it, which are now too broken up to offer to anybody else. The half paid in advance is what makes the commitment run in both directions. It is not money parked somewhere and returned at the end; it is the first half of the fee itself, worked out from the figure printed in the profile of the woman the two of you chose, written into the booking thread by name once the hour is agreed, and settled before she leaves.

The seven bookings that carry half ahead, in euro

Every profile on the roster carries the whole matrix: one guest or a couple, one therapist or two. Half of whichever figure applies to your arrangement is what goes ahead, and it is asked for on these seven kinds of booking:

• anything agreed more than twenty-four hours before it starts, which is every evening arranged before a trip begins;
• an eight hour block, whatever time it starts;
• a booking with a therapist each, at any length, which is why two therapist evenings always carry it;
• a shared room at Schiphol or at an airport hotel, arranged separately with the journey time agreed with you beforehand;
• a peak date, by which is meant King's Day, Pride, the Amsterdam Dance Event, the run from Christmas to New Year, or a large conference week, each named by the house when asked;
• a session of three hours or longer, on any date;
• a client's first booking with the house, at any hour and any length.

Halved, the figures stop being abstract. Ninety minutes for the two of you with one therapist is EUR 540, so EUR 270 goes ahead. The same ninety minutes with a therapist each is EUR 1,080, confirmed with EUR 540. Two hours for a couple with one therapist is EUR 720, half of it EUR 360; with two therapists it is EUR 1,440, half of it EUR 720. An eight hour block for the pair of you with one therapist is EUR 2,500, so EUR 1,250 is settled before she sets out. If whichever of you lands first books an hour alone in the afternoon, that is EUR 180 and EUR 90 confirms it.

One arrangement asks for nothing in advance, and it will not be the first thing a visiting couple books. A client the house has looked after before, at an address inside the city, wanting an hour or two later the same day, settles the whole figure when she arrives. Shift that request to another date, put a second therapist in the room, stretch it past three hours, move it to an airport hotel, land it on a peak date or make it a first booking, and half goes ahead again.

How the two halves are settled

Card first for the half in advance, with Revolut, Wise or cryptocurrency for anyone who would rather use one of those. A bank transfer is not one of the routes here, and nor is PayPal. Cash cannot serve as the advance half, for the mechanical reason that it is settled before she leaves while cash only changes hands in the room. The exact amount and where to send it appear in the booking thread once the hour is agreed, and on no page of this site. Every figure quoted here is a euro figure. The balance is handed over at the door when she arrives, and a balance paid in cash in another major currency is welcome, with the exact sum in that currency confirmed to you in writing before she sets out. On a booking made by two people living in two countries, the two halves often come from two different cards, and that is nobody's business but yours. The order the messages run in is laid out on the booking page.

What calling it off actually costs

Cancelling never leaves you liable to the house for damages. What may be kept is the share of the fee already earned at the moment your message lands, and the notice you gave is the only thing that decides that share:

• More than twenty-four hours before the booked time: nothing is kept and the whole deposit returns to you.
• Inside the final twenty-four hours, while she has not yet left: half of the deposit is kept as fee already earned and the other half is repaid.
• Once she is on her way: all of the half already paid is kept, as fee that has by then been earned.

Even that last step is softened by two things. Where the hour you released is taken by another client, the deposit comes back in full, because the time was not lost after all. And where you can show that the loss to the house was smaller than the part it kept, it keeps only that smaller figure.

Take ninety minutes for the two of you with one therapist at EUR 540, confirmed with EUR 270. Called off two days earlier, the whole EUR 270 comes back. Called off at six in the evening on the night, before she has left, EUR 135 is kept and EUR 135 is repaid. Called off at ten past nine with her already crossing the city, the EUR 270 stays with the house, unless the hour is taken by somebody else.

A booking with nothing behind it

The returning client's same-day hour or two at a city address carries no advance half, so the scale above has nothing to work on. Called off before she has set out for your door, that booking leaves nothing owed at all. Called off once she is already on her way across the city, it costs the part of the fee her journey represents, and the house asks for nothing beyond that.

Moving the evening to another night

This is the part that matters most to two people whose trip rests on two flights. One change of date is free. Your request has to land in the thread more than twenty-four hours ahead of the booked time, and the replacement date has to sit inside fourteen days. With both of those satisfied the deposit travels across whole and nothing is kept. A second move, or a move asked for inside the final day, is read on the notice scale exactly as a cancellation sent at that moment would be, and whatever the scale does not keep goes on to the new date.

Write as soon as you know something has changed, even when you do not yet know what it has changed to. The scale is read from the moment your message landed rather than from the moment an airline finally published a new departure, so a vague line sent at four in the afternoon is worth more than a precise one sent at eight.

Force majeure, and what it turns into

Something genuinely beyond either side's control can stop an evening: a transport shutdown, a serious disruption across the city, an official instruction that makes the journey impossible. Nothing is forfeited in that case and nothing is argued over. The deposit becomes credit, held against a date you are not asked to choose straight away. An airline rebooking your seat, a missed connection, a cold, a change of heart and a decision at midnight that you would rather sleep all sit on your side of that line, and each is read as a move or a cancellation at the moment you wrote.

When the house cannot deliver

Where the house is unable to perform the session you booked, the choice is yours rather than the house's. You may take the deposit back in full, or leave it standing as credit towards a new date for however long the two of you need to agree on one. If the therapist the two of you chose cannot come, the house says so as soon as it knows, and you either take someone else from the roster or take the deposit back.

Distance bookings and the fourteen-day rule

A booking arranged in writing, with the two sides never having met beforehand, is a service agreed at a distance. The rules for agreements of that kind sit in Book 6 of the Dutch Civil Code, at articles 6:230m to 6:230z, which carry the European consumer rules into Dutch law. Under them a consumer normally has fourteen days in which to withdraw from a distance agreement. Article 6:230p lists the agreements that right does not extend to, and among them are services connected with leisure activities where the agreement names a specific date or period for performance. Every booking made with this house names an hour on a named day, which is exactly the situation that article describes, so the fourteen-day right does not arise here. No clause here asks you to waive anything, since no right of that kind arises in the first place.

A same-day session has a second footing as well. Before she sets out, the house asks you to write in the thread that you want the session performed at once, and that you understand the fourteen-day right will not apply once it has been performed. The rest of what the two sides agree to is written out in the terms.

Ended early, by you or by her

If the two of you decide halfway through that you have had enough of the evening and end a session before the booked time is up, the whole fee remains payable and nothing is refunded. The hours were held for you, she travelled out to reach you, and what is left of them cannot be offered to anyone else at that point in the evening. If you know before she sets out that you would rather book ninety minutes than two hours, say so in the thread and the booking simply becomes the shorter one at the shorter figure.

Your therapist decides what a session includes and says where her limits are before it starts, and those limits hold for the whole visit with one guest present or with two. Where two therapists are booked, each sets her own and neither speaks for the other. If her safety or her comfort is disregarded, or a limit she named is pushed at, the visit stops there and then. The fee for the reserved time stays due, and beyond it nothing at all is added.

False bookings and the note the house keeps

A booking is a false booking where any one of the following is true:

• it was placed under a name that does not belong to the client;
• it came from a phone number or a profile owned by somebody else;
• it was sent as a joke;
• a no-show followed one of the three above.

A missed appointment on its own satisfies none of those. A couple who booked honestly and then did not answer the door have made an ordinary cancellation, handled 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 at, the house writes a short internal note. Written into it are the date, what took place, and the name and number behind the booking, and it is held for twelve months. Nobody outside the house sees it, and it decides a single question: whether a further booking from that name is taken. How to object to a note, or to ask for it to be corrected or removed, is explained on the privacy page. Where the facts suggest a criminal offence, the matter may be put to the police.

Two people who book in their own names and are in the room when she knocks have nothing in this section to think about. The practical questions about entry, timing and what to have ready are answered in the FAQ, and the vocabulary used throughout is collected in the glossary.