Journal · 2026-08-19
A Thunderstorm, a Cancelled Evening and the Notice Scale
A summer storm crossed the city one evening in August and produced a run of questions about cancelling. Here is the notice scale, set out plainly.
Thunderstorms here arrive at the end of hot runs, usually in the evening, and they clear the air for about a day. They also produce a particular kind of message: somebody who booked at four, watched the sky go the colour of a bruise at eight, and wants to know where they stand.
The answer is the same as it is on any other evening, and it is worth writing down clearly because a storm feels like it ought to be an exception and is not.
Weather is not force majeure
Force majeure means something outside what either side can steer: transport shut down across the city, a serious disruption, an official instruction that makes the journey impossible. A thunderstorm, on its own, is none of those. It is loud and it is unpleasant and journeys continue to be made in it.
Where a storm genuinely does shut the city down, nothing is forfeited and there is no discussion to have. What was sent ahead becomes credit against a date you are not obliged to name straight away. That is a real provision and it does get used. It is simply not triggered by rain, however theatrical.
The scale, in three steps
What a cancellation costs is decided by the notice your message carries, read from the moment it lands in the thread.
More than twenty-four hours before the booked time: nothing is kept and everything sent ahead comes back.
Inside the final twenty-four hours, with her still at her own address: half of what was sent stays as fee already earned, and half is returned.
After she has set out: what was sent stays in full. Two things pull that back. If the hour is taken by another guest, it all comes back, because no time was lost. And if you can show the house was out of pocket by less than it held, only the smaller figure is kept.
It is never damages and it is never a penalty. It is the share of the fee already earned, and nothing beyond it is ever asked for.
A worked example from that evening
Two hours at EUR 360, confirmed earlier in the day with EUR 180. A message at six, before the storm, more than twenty-four hours out from a booking the following night: the whole EUR 180 returns. A message at eight on the evening itself, with her still at home: EUR 90 stays and EUR 90 goes back. A message at half past nine, with her already crossing the city in it: the EUR 180 stays, unless the hour finds another guest.
Moving rather than cancelling
In most storm cases this is the sensible route and it is free the first time. Ask in the thread more than twenty-four hours before the booked time, pick a new date inside the following fourteen days, and what was sent ahead travels across untouched. A second move, or one asked for inside the final day, is read on the scale above exactly as a cancellation written at that moment would be, and whatever the scale leaves alone goes on to the new date.
The booking with nothing sent ahead
A returning guest asking for an hour or two the same day at a city address sends nothing in advance, so the scale has nothing to act on. Called off before she leaves, that booking costs nothing at all. Called off once she is already on her way, it costs the share of the fee her journey stands for, and not one euro past that.
Why any of this exists
Ending early, which is a different question
One related question came up that same week and it has a separate answer. A session brought to a close before the booked time is up, for any reason and by either side, stays payable in full for the time that was reserved. The hours were held, she made the journey out, and what remains of them cannot be handed to anybody else at that point in the evening.
Beyond the fee for the reserved time, nothing further is added. If you already suspect while the thread is still open that one hour is all you want rather than two, say so before she leaves and the booking simply becomes an hour at EUR 180.
Because an hour held is an hour closed to everything else, and the hours either side of it are usually too broken up to offer anyone. Splitting the fee is what makes that commitment run both ways rather than only one. The deposit page sets the whole of it out with more examples, and the glossary entry is the short version.