Deposits, moved dates and the evening a diary took back

Why an evening written into a diary is paid for in halves

A confirmed hour is an hour that has stopped being available. Once a therapist has agreed to stand at a door at nine on a Wednesday, that piece of her week belongs to your booking whether or not the two of you are behind the door, and the hours on either side of it are now cut into pieces too small to offer anyone. The advance half is what makes the promise run both ways. Nothing is parked in a holding account and handed back at the end: this is simply the first half of the fee, worked out from the figures printed in the profile of the woman you named, written out in full in the booking thread as soon as the hour is agreed, and settled while she is still at home.

The seven bookings that ask for half up front

Each profile on the roster carries the whole grid: one guest or two, one therapist or two, at every length offered. Halve the figure that matches your arrangement and you have the sum that goes first. It is asked for whenever a booking answers any one of these descriptions:

• an evening agreed more than twenty-four hours ahead, which is almost every evening fixed while a trip is still being planned;
• an eight hour block, wherever in the night it starts;
• a therapist each, at any length, which is the shape most couples on a short week ask for;
• three hours or longer in one sitting, on any date of the year;
• a room at Schiphol or at an airport hotel, which is arranged on its own terms with the journey time settled with you in writing before the hour is fixed;
• a peak date, by which is meant King's Day, Pride, the Amsterdam Dance Event, the run between Christmas and the new year, and the large trade weeks that fill the exhibition halls, each of them named for you when you ask;
• a couple's first booking with the house, however short and however far off.

Halved, the grid becomes arithmetic anyone can do in a taxi. Two hours with one therapist between the two of you sends half ahead and leaves the other half for the door, and the same two hours with a therapist each is held by a sum twice as large, because the fee behind it is twice as large. Ninety minutes, three hours and the eight hour block follow the identical rule, each sending exactly half of its own total. If the partner with the free afternoon books a single hour alone while the other is in a session across town, half of the single rate holds it, the smallest advance the house ever asks for.

One arrangement carries nothing in advance, and a couple on their first week here will not be in a position to use it. A client the house has already looked after, at an address inside the city, asking for one or two hours later that same day, pays everything on arrival. Push that request onto a different date, add a second therapist, run it past three hours, move it to an airport hotel, drop it on a peak date or make it the first booking of all, and the advance half returns.

How the two halves move

Card is the usual route for the advance half, and a couple who would rather use Revolut, Wise or cryptocurrency can say so in the thread. Bank transfer and PayPal are not in use here. Cash cannot hold an evening for the plain reason that the advance half is settled before anyone travels and cash only appears once she is in the room. The exact figure and the way to send it are written into the booking thread after the hour is agreed, and they appear nowhere else. Every number on this site is a euro number. The balance is one payment on arrival, not two, whichever of you hands it over, and a balance offered in cash in another major currency is fine provided the precise sum in that currency has been confirmed in writing beforehand. The booking page sets out the order the messages travel in.

What giving up an evening costs

Calling an evening off never leaves you owing damages to anyone. All that may be retained is the part of the fee already earned when your message lands, and the amount of warning in that message is the only thing that sets it:

• More than twenty-four hours before the agreed hour: nothing is retained and the advance half returns to you whole.
• Inside the final twenty-four hours, with her still at home: half of the advance half is retained as fee already earned and the rest goes back.
• After she has set out: the advance half is retained in full as fee already earned.

Two situations pull that last line back. Where the released hour is taken by somebody else, the advance half comes back to you entire, because the evening was not lost in the end. Where you can show the real loss was smaller than the sum retained, only that smaller sum is retained.

Work it through on a Thursday evening booked for two hours with one therapist and held with half its fee. Cancelled on the Tuesday, that deposit comes back whole. Cancelled at six on the Thursday, while she has not yet left home, the deposit is split, one half kept and one half returned. Cancelled at ten past nine, with her already halfway across the city, the deposit stays in full unless the hour finds another taker.

The same day hour that carries nothing

A returning client's one or two hours later the same day at a city address has no advance half behind it, so the scale above has nothing to bite on. Dropped before she leaves, it leaves nothing owing at all. Dropped once she is already travelling, it costs the share of the fee her journey stands for, and not a cent past that.

Moving the evening to another date

A working week rearranges itself, so one change of date costs nothing. The request has to reach the thread more than twenty-four hours before the agreed hour, and the new date has to sit inside the following fortnight. Meet both and the advance half travels across untouched. A second change, or a change asked for on the day itself, is measured on the notice scale exactly as a cancellation written at that minute would be, and whatever the scale leaves alone carries on to the new date. Two practical consequences follow: fix the evening as soon as you have a date you half believe in, and keep the free move in reserve for the review that gets pushed to Thursday.

Events outside anyone's control

Something genuinely beyond either side can stop an evening: the trains and trams shutting down, serious disruption across the city, an official instruction that makes the journey impossible. Nothing is kept in that case, and neither side is asked to argue it. The advance half turns into credit, held for a date you are not asked to name straight away. A cold, a conference session that ran two hours long, a client dinner that appeared on Tuesday morning, a flight moved by an airline, and a decision at eight that you would rather sleep, all sit on your side of that line, and each one is read as a move or a cancellation on the scale above.

If the house cannot go ahead

Where the house is unable to provide the session agreed, the decision passes to you rather than staying here. Ask for the advance half back in full, or leave it standing as credit against a date you can settle on later, with no time limit put on choosing. Where the therapist you named cannot come, you are told the moment it is known, and you either choose someone else from the roster or take the money back.

Agreements made at a distance, and the fourteen days

An evening agreed entirely in writing, with neither side having met the other, is a service agreed at a distance. Those agreements are governed in the Netherlands by Book 6 of the Civil Code, at articles 6:230m to 6:230z, the provisions that carry the European consumer rules into Dutch law. A consumer normally has fourteen days to withdraw from such an agreement. Article 6:230p lists the agreements the right does not reach, and one of them covers services connected with leisure activities where the agreement names a specific date or period of performance. Every booking here names an hour on a named day, which is the precise case that article describes, so the fourteen day right never comes into being. Nothing in these pages asks either of you to sign a right away, because there is no such right here to sign away.

A same-day session stands on a second ground as well. Before she leaves, the house asks the partner who wrote to state in the thread that the session is wanted at once, and that the fourteen day right will not apply to it after it has been performed. Everything else agreed between the two sides is written down in the terms.

Ending early, by either side

If one of you decides after forty minutes that the evening has gone as far as it needs to, the fee for the reserved time remains payable in full and nothing is returned. The hours were held for the two of you, the journey out was made, and what is left of them cannot be handed to anybody else at that point in the evening. Knowing in advance that ninety minutes suits you better than two hours is worth writing before she sets out, because a length settled in the thread is simply the booking, not a session cut short.

Your therapist decides what a session includes and states her limits in her own words before it starts, and those limits hold for the whole visit whichever of you is on the bed. Where her comfort or her safety is not respected, or a limit she has already named is pushed at, the visit stops there. The fee for the reserved time stands, and beyond it nothing at all is added.

False bookings and the note kept inside the house

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

• the name on it is not a name that belongs to either of you;
• it came from a number or an account belonging to somebody else;
• it was written as a joke;
• a no-show followed any of the three above.

An evening that simply went unopened answers to none of the four. A couple who booked honestly and then did not open the door have made an ordinary cancellation, read on the notice scale like every other one.

Where a booking does answer one of those descriptions, or a visit ends because a stated limit was pushed at, a short note is written and kept inside the house. It records the date, what took place, and the name and number the booking arrived from, and it is held for twelve months. Nobody outside sees it, and it decides one question only: whether a later booking under that name is accepted. How to object to a note, or to ask for it to be corrected or deleted, is explained on the privacy page. Where the facts suggest a criminal offence, the matter may be reported to the police.

A couple who book under their own names and are in the room when she knocks have nothing in this section to think about. Entry, timing and what is worth having ready in the room are covered on the FAQ.