Deposits, cancellations and a flight that will not keep still

What half the fee is doing

A layover booking reserves a stretch of a therapist's day that has already been planned around your stop, including the journey out to the airport and the journey back. Once that stretch is agreed, it cannot be offered to anyone else, and neither can the awkward gaps it leaves either side of it. The deposit is how both sides commit to the same hour. It is not a sum parked somewhere and returned afterwards: it is the first half of the fee, worked out on the figure in the profile of the therapist you chose, written in the booking thread once the hour is agreed, and paid before she sets out.

The seven bookings confirmed with half

Every profile on the roster sets out the figures for one guest and for a couple, with one therapist or two, and half of the figure that applies is paid ahead on any of these seven kinds of booking:

• a booking arranged more than twenty-four hours before it starts, which covers any layover planned before the trip;
• an overnight of eight hours, whenever it begins;
• a booking with two therapists, of any length;
• a room at Schiphol or at any airport hotel, arranged separately, with the journey time agreed with you before anything is fixed;
• a peak date: King's Day, Pride, the Amsterdam Dance Event, the days from Christmas to New Year, or a large conference week, any of which the house will name on request;
• a session lasting three hours or more;
• a client's first booking with the house, at whatever hour and length.

Put into euro, a layover looks like this. An hour at EUR 180 is confirmed with EUR 90, and ninety minutes at EUR 270 with EUR 135. Two hours for one guest is EUR 360, so EUR 180 goes ahead. A couple sharing one therapist for two hours pays EUR 720, and EUR 360 of it goes ahead. A night stop with one therapist is EUR 1,250, half of it EUR 625; with two therapists the night is EUR 2,880 and EUR 1,440 is paid first.

One booking alone goes without a deposit. It belongs to a client the house already knows who asks, on the day, for one or two hours at an address inside the city, and the whole fee is then paid when she arrives. Take that request to an airport hotel, move it to another date, add a second therapist, extend it past three hours, place it on a peak date or make it a first booking, and half is paid ahead once more. A layover at the airport therefore always carries a deposit.

How each half is paid

The deposit goes by card as a first choice, with Revolut, Wise or cryptocurrency available to anyone who prefers them. Bank transfer and PayPal are not accepted. Cash cannot be a deposit, for the simple reason that a deposit is settled before she sets out and cash is only handed over in the room. The exact sum and where it goes are written in the booking thread after the hour is agreed, and appear nowhere else. All figures on this site are in euro. The balance is paid in the room on arrival, and a traveller holding another major currency may pay the balance in cash in it, at an exact sum confirmed in writing before she sets out. The order in which the messages run is on the booking page.

What cancelling a layover costs

No cancellation of a layover makes you liable to the house for damages. What may be kept is the part of the fee already earned when your message arrives, and only the notice you give decides how large that part is:

• With more than twenty-four hours to go before the booked time, nothing is kept and the deposit is returned whole.
• Within the last twenty-four hours, provided she has not yet set out, half the deposit is kept as fee already earned and the other half is returned.
• After she has set out, the whole deposit is kept as fee already earned.

Two things can lower even the last figure. If someone else books the hour you released, the whole deposit is returned, since the time turned out not to be lost. And if you can show that the house lost less than the part it kept, it keeps only that lower sum.

Take ninety minutes at an airport hotel at EUR 270, starting at two in the afternoon, confirmed with EUR 135. Cancelled the morning before, the whole EUR 135 is returned. Cancelled at nine on the day, before she has set out, EUR 67.50 is kept and EUR 67.50 is returned. Cancelled at half past one with her already on the road to the airport, the EUR 135 stays with the house, unless the hour is booked again by someone else.

The city booking paid only at the door

Every airport stop carries a deposit, so this concerns only a returning client's same-day hour or two at an address in the city. If that booking is cancelled before she has set out, you owe the house nothing. If it is cancelled after she has set out, the house asks for the part of the fee her journey into town represents, and for no more than that.

Changing the date of a stop

You may change the date once without cost. The request must reach the thread more than twenty-four hours before the booked time, and the new date must be no more than fourteen days away. With both conditions satisfied, the deposit carries over to the new date untouched. A second change, or a change requested inside the last day, is read on the notice scale just as a cancellation sent at that moment would be, and whatever the scale does not keep moves on to the new date.

Why a delayed flight is not force majeure

Some events really are beyond either side's control: a shutdown of transport, a serious disruption in the city, an instruction from the authorities that makes the journey impossible. When one of these stops a booking, nothing is forfeited and there is nothing to dispute; the deposit becomes credit, held for a date you need not choose straight away. A flight delayed, cancelled or retimed by an airline falls on the other side of that line, together with a change of mind, an illness of the ordinary kind, a meeting that ran long and a decision to sleep instead. Each is read as a move or a cancellation on the scale above. The practical advice for a layover is therefore to write the moment a delay is known, because the earlier the message, the more of the deposit the scale protects.

If the house cannot perform

If the house cannot carry out the session you booked, the choice is yours, not the house's. You can have the deposit back in full, or keep it as credit for a new date for as long as you need to pick one. Should the therapist you chose be unable to come, the house says so the moment it knows, and the choice between another woman from the roster and your deposit back is yours.

Booked at a distance, and the fourteen-day rule

An arrangement made in writing, without the two sides first meeting, is a service agreed at a distance. Dutch law sets out the rules for these agreements in Book 6 of the Civil Code, articles 6:230m to 6:230z, which carry the European consumer rules into Dutch law. Those rules usually give a consumer fourteen days to withdraw from a distance agreement. Article 6:230p lists the agreements to which that right does not apply, and one of them is a service connected with leisure activities where the agreement fixes a specific date or period for performance. Every booking with this house fixes an hour on a named day, which is exactly the case that article describes, so the fourteen-day right does not arise at all. Nothing here asks you to waive a right, because no such right exists to be waived.

A same-day layover session stands on a second footing too. Before she sets out, the house asks you to confirm in the thread that you want the session carried out straight away, and that you understand the fourteen-day right will not apply to it once it has been carried out. Everything else the two sides agree is in the terms.

A session cut short, by either side

If you end a session before the booked time runs out, perhaps because the gate has been brought forward or you would simply rather sleep before the next flight, the full fee stays payable and nothing is returned. The time was held for you, she made the journey to the airport, and what remains of it cannot be offered to anyone else at that stage.

Your therapist decides what a session includes and states her limits before it starts, and they apply for the whole visit. If her safety or comfort is disregarded, or one of her limits is pressed, the visit ends there and then. The fee for the reserved time remains due, and nothing further is added to it.

False bookings, and the note that is kept

A booking counts as false when any one of these applies:

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

A missed hour by itself meets none of these. A traveller who booked honestly and then did not come to the door, because the aircraft was late or the border held them, has made an ordinary cancellation, read on the notice scale like any other.

When 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 of the date, what happened, and the name and number used for the booking, for twelve months. No one outside the house sees it, and it answers one question only: whether a later booking from that name is accepted. How to object to a note, or have it corrected or deleted, is set out on the privacy page. If the facts look like a criminal offence, the house may pass them to the police.

A traveller who books under their own name and is in the room when she arrives need give none of this a second thought. Practical questions about the room, the timing and what to have ready before she knocks are answered in the FAQ.