Deposits, cancellations and an evening handed back

Why an evening is paid for in two halves

Holding an hour means closing it to everything else. Once a therapist has agreed to stand outside a particular door at nine on a Thursday in November, that stretch of her evening is committed whether the door opens or not, and the hour on either side of it has become too broken up to offer anyone. Splitting the fee is what makes that commitment run in both directions. The first half is not a security sum parked somewhere and handed back at the end; it is the opening half of the fee itself, worked out from the figure printed in the profile of the therapist you asked for, written into the booking thread in euro once the hour is agreed, and settled before she leaves for your address.

The seven bookings that carry half ahead

Every profile on the roster prints the whole grid: one guest or two, one therapist or two, an hour through to a night. Whichever cell of that grid your evening falls in, half of it is what goes ahead, and it is asked for on these seven kinds of booking:

• anything agreed more than twenty-four hours before its start, which takes in every evening planned before a trip has even begun;
• the eight hour block, whatever time of night it opens;
• any booking with two therapists in the room, at any length;
• a room at Schiphol or at an airport hotel, which is put together on its own terms with the length of the drive agreed with you first;
• a peak date, meaning one of the handful of days and weeks in the year when the city's rooms are full, each of them named to you the moment you ask;
• any session of three hours or longer, on any date in the year;
• the first booking a guest ever makes here, at whatever hour and whatever length.

Set out in halves, the numbers stop being an abstraction. A night at EUR 1,250 means EUR 625 ahead and EUR 625 when she arrives. The same night with two therapists comes to EUR 2,880, so EUR 1,440 goes first. Three hours through a February evening at EUR 540 is confirmed with EUR 270. Two hours for a couple with a therapist each is EUR 1,440, half of that EUR 720. Ninety minutes at EUR 270, arranged for tomorrow night, is held with EUR 135.

A single kind of booking asks for nothing beforehand. A guest the house has already looked after, at an address inside the city, wanting one or two hours later that same day, hands over the whole figure when she is at the door. Shift that request onto another date, put a second therapist in the room, run it past three hours, move it to an airport hotel, drop it on a peak date or make it a first booking, and half goes ahead once more.

How the two halves are settled

Card is the ordinary route for the first half, with Revolut, Wise or cryptocurrency there for anyone who would rather use one of them. Neither bank transfer nor PayPal is in use for that half. Cash cannot serve as a first half for a plain mechanical reason: that half is settled before she leaves, and cash only changes hands once she is in the room. The exact sum and where it goes appear in the booking thread after the hour is fixed, and in no other place whatsoever. Every number quoted on this site is a euro number. The second half is handed over on arrival, and if you would rather pay that half in cash in another major currency you are welcome to, with the precise amount in that currency put in writing to you before she sets off. The booking page walks through the order the messages come in.

What calling it off actually costs

Cancelling never leaves you owing the house damages. The only thing that can be kept is the slice of the fee already earned by the time your message lands, and the notice in that message is the single thing that decides how big the slice is:

• More than twenty-four hours ahead of the booked time: nothing at all is kept, and the whole of the first half comes back to you.
• Inside the final twenty-four hours, with her still at her own address: half of what you sent stays as fee already earned, and the other half is returned.
• After she has set out: what you sent stays with the house in full, as fee already earned.

Two things pull even that last line back. Where the hour you gave up is taken by somebody else, everything you sent is returned, because in the end no time was lost. And where you can show the house was out of pocket by less than the amount it held on to, only that smaller amount is kept.

Put numbers on it. Two hours at EUR 360 on a wet Friday, confirmed with EUR 180. Called off the previous morning, all EUR 180 returns. Called off at seven that evening, while she is still at home, EUR 90 stays and EUR 90 goes back. Called off at nine, with her already crossing the canal ring in the rain, the EUR 180 remains with the house 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 carries no first half, so the scale above has nothing to bite on. Called off before she has left, that booking leaves you owing nothing. Called off once she is already on her way across town, it costs the share of the fee her journey stands for, and the house asks for not one euro beyond that.

Moving an evening to another date

The first change of date is free of charge. Your request has to land in the thread more than twenty-four hours before the booked time, and the date you move to has to sit inside the following fourteen days. With those two things true, what you have already sent travels across untouched. A second move, or a move asked for inside the final day, is read on the notice scale exactly as though it were a cancellation written at that moment, and whatever the scale leaves alone goes forward to the new date.

Force majeure, and what it turns into

Some things sit outside what either side can steer, and they can stop an evening happening: public transport shut down across the city, a serious disruption in Amsterdam, an official instruction that makes the journey impossible. Where one of those lands, nothing is forfeited and there is no argument to have. What you sent becomes credit, held for a replacement date you are not obliged to name straight away. A heavy cold, a plan that changed, a meeting that ran long, a flight an airline moved, a forecast that turned out worse than promised, and a decision at midnight that sleep is the better idea are all on your side of the line, and each one reads as a move or a cancellation on the scale set out above.

When the house cannot do what was agreed

If the house is not able to carry out the session that was booked, the decision is yours and not the house's. You can ask for everything you sent to come back in full, or leave it standing as credit until a new date suits you, with no time limit put on choosing one. Where the therapist you asked for cannot come, the house tells you the moment it knows, and from there you either pick another name from the roster yourself or take your money back.

Bookings made at a distance, and the fourteen days

An evening arranged entirely in writing, with neither side having met the other first, is a service agreed at a distance. Agreements of that kind are governed by Book 6 of the Dutch Civil Code, at articles 6:230m through 6:230z, which carry the European consumer rules into Dutch law. They ordinarily give a consumer fourteen days in which to step back out of a distance agreement. Article 6:230p then lists the agreements that right does not reach, and among them are services tied to leisure activities where the agreement fixes a particular date or period for performance. Every booking made here fixes an hour on a named day, which is exactly the case that article describes, and for that reason the fourteen-day right never arises in the first place. Nothing written here asks you to surrender a right, because there is no right of that shape to surrender.

A same-day booking stands on a second footing besides. Before she leaves, the house asks you to write in the thread that you want the session carried out at once, and that you understand the fourteen-day right will not attach to it once it has been carried out. Everything else settled between the two sides lives in the terms.

An evening that finishes early

If you decide partway through that you have had enough of the evening and bring a session to a close before the booked time runs out, the whole fee stays payable and none of it comes back. The hours were held aside for you, she made the journey out through whatever the weather was doing, and what remains of them cannot be handed to anybody else at that point in the night.

Your therapist decides what a session includes and tells you where her limits are before it starts, and those limits stand for the length of the visit. Where her safety or her comfort is not respected, or a limit she has named is pushed at, the visit finishes at that moment. The fee for the reserved time remains due, and past it nothing whatever is added.

False bookings, and the note left behind

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

• it was placed under a name that is not the guest's own;
• it came from a phone number or a profile belonging to somebody else;
• it was written as a joke;
• a no-show came after one of the three above.

An appointment that was simply missed answers none of those four tests. A guest who booked honestly and then did not answer the door has made an ordinary cancellation, and it is handled on the notice scale like any other.

Where a booking does answer one of those tests, or a visit is brought to an end because a limit was pressed, the house writes a short note for itself. It sets down the date, what took place, and the name and number the booking arrived under, and it is held for twelve months. Nobody outside the house reads it, and it decides one question only: whether another booking under that name is taken. How to object to such a note, or ask for it to be corrected or wiped, is explained on the privacy page. Where the conduct looks like a criminal offence, the house may put the matter before the police.

A guest who books in their own name and is there when she knocks has nothing in this section to weigh. The practical questions about entry, timing and what to have warm and ready are answered in the FAQ.