Half ahead, and what your notice does to it

Why the figure arrives in two pieces

Agreeing an hour takes that hour out of circulation. Once a therapist has put your address and your time in her week, the slot itself is spoken for whether or not anybody opens the door, and the stretch on either side of it is now too broken up to offer anyone. Splitting the figure is what makes that commitment run both ways. Nothing is being held as security and nothing is set aside to be handed back later: the first piece is simply the front half of the fee, worked out from the figures printed in the profile of the woman you named, written into the thread in plain numbers once the hour is settled, and paid before she leaves for your door.

The seven arrangements that are held with half

Every profile on the roster carries its own complete table: one guest or two, one therapist or a pair, an hour through to the eight hour block. Whichever line of that table your booking sits on, half of it goes ahead in these seven cases:

• any hour agreed more than a day before it starts, which covers most things arranged from home before a trip;
• the eight hour block, whatever time of day it opens;
• a booking with two therapists, at any length;
• a room at Schiphol or at an airport hotel, which is settled on its own terms with the travelling time agreed in writing first;
• a busy date, by which is meant King's Day, Pride, the dance event in October, the run between Christmas and the new year, and the weeks when a large conference fills the city, each named on request;
• anything lasting three hours or longer, on any date at all;
• a guest's first booking with this house, whatever the hour and however short.

The one booking with nothing ahead of it

A guest the house has already looked after, writing for an hour or two later that same day, at an address inside Amsterdam, pays the whole figure when she arrives and nothing before. Change any part of that sentence and the half returns. Put the hour on another date, add a second therapist, run past three hours, move the address to an airport hotel, land on a busy date, or make it your first time here, and the front half is asked for again.

The halves in euro

Numbers make this concrete faster than any rule does. An hour with one therapist is EUR 180, so EUR 90 is written into the thread and EUR 90 waits at the door. Ninety minutes at EUR 270 divides into EUR 135 and EUR 135. Two hours for a couple with one therapist comes to EUR 720, so EUR 360 goes ahead. Three hours with two therapists is EUR 1,080 and confirms with EUR 540. The eight hour block for a couple is EUR 2,500, half of it EUR 1,250. Read your own line off the profile and halve it; there is no separate arithmetic anywhere in this.

How each half is settled

The front half goes by card as a rule, with Revolut, Wise or cryptocurrency there for anyone who would rather not use one. Neither a bank transfer nor PayPal is accepted. Cash cannot hold a booking for a straightforward reason: the front half is settled before she leaves, and cash only exists once she is in the room. The sum and where it goes appear in your thread once the hour is fixed, and in no other place. Every figure quoted on this domain is in euro. The back half is handed over on arrival, and if you would rather pay that half in cash in another widely used currency, the exact amount in it is written to you before she sets out so nobody is converting anything in a doorway. How the messages run in order is shown on the booking page.

What notice actually keeps

Calling off an hour never leaves you owing the house damages, and no clause here invents any. What can be kept is the portion of the fee that has already been earned by the time your message lands, and the only thing that moves that portion is how much warning you gave:

• Written more than a day ahead of the agreed time, nothing at all is kept and the front half comes back whole.
• Written inside that last day but while she is still where she started, half of the front half stays and the rest is returned.
• Written after she has set off, the front half stays in full.

Even that last line has two things that soften it. Should the hour you gave up be taken by somebody else, the whole of the front half is returned, because in the end no time was lost. And if you can show the house was out of pocket by less than the amount it held, only that smaller figure stays.

Put a two hour booking at EUR 360 through it. EUR 180 went ahead. Called off the day before, all EUR 180 comes back. Called off two hours before the time, with her still at home, EUR 90 stays and EUR 90 returns. Called off while she is halfway across the city, the EUR 180 remains with the house, unless the hour is taken by another guest.

The same-day hour, called off

With nothing ahead of it, that returning guest's same-day hour has no front half for the scale to bite on. Write before she has left and there is nothing to settle at all. Write once she is already travelling and what is owed is the share of the fee her journey stands for, and the house asks for nothing beyond it.

Moving an hour to another day

You may move a booking once without cost. The request has to be in the thread more than a day before the agreed time, and the new day has to sit inside a fortnight of the old one. Both true, and the front half travels across untouched. Ask a second time, or ask inside that final day, and the moment your request lands is measured on the notice scale exactly as a cancellation sent then would be, with whatever the scale leaves carrying on to the new day.

Things neither side controls

Occasionally something genuinely outside both sides stops an hour happening: transport shut down across the city, a serious disruption, an official instruction that makes the journey impossible. Nothing is forfeited in that case and nothing is debated. What you paid becomes credit, held for a date you are under no pressure to name. A head cold, a change of heart, a meeting that ran late, an airline moving your flight, or deciding at the last minute that you would rather sleep all sit on your side of that line, and each is read on the scale above like any other message.

When the house cannot go ahead

If the session you arranged cannot be provided, the decision is yours rather than the house's. Ask for the front half back in full, or leave it standing as credit for as long as you need before choosing a new date. Where the woman you named turns out to be unable to come, you are told the moment the house knows, and you decide whether to name somebody else from the roster or take the money back; nobody is put in her place on your behalf.

The fourteen-day question

A booking agreed entirely in writing, with the two sides never having met, is an agreement made at a distance. Dutch law puts those in Book 6 of the Civil Code, at articles 6:230m to 6:230z, which carry the European consumer rules across. Ordinarily a consumer is given fourteen days in which to step back from an agreement of that kind. Article 6:230p then lists the agreements that right leaves out, and services tied to leisure where a particular date or period has been named are among them. Every hour arranged here is fixed to a named day and a named time, which is exactly the case that article covers, so the fourteen-day right never arises in the first place. Nothing on this page asks you to surrender a right, because there is no right of that shape here to surrender.

There is a second footing under a session arranged for the same day. Before she leaves, the house asks you to type into the thread that you want the hour performed straight away and that you follow why the fourteen-day right will not attach to it once it has been. Whatever else the two sides have settled between them is written down in the terms.

An hour that stops early

Decide partway through that you have had enough and the whole fee still stands, with nothing returned. The time was held for you, she travelled to reach you, and what remains of it cannot be handed to anybody else at that point in the day. This is worth reading twice by anyone booking here for the first time after a long stretch away from it: a short first session that you have decided in advance to keep short costs less than a long one you end at the halfway mark, and picking the shorter line in the thread is free.

Where her limits sit

What a session contains is hers to decide, and she says where her own limits fall before anything begins. What she names holds from that point until she leaves. If her comfort or her safety is not respected, or a limit she has named is pushed at, the visit closes there and then. The fee for the time reserved remains due and not a euro is added past it. Nothing about your build, your height, your age or your condition enters this paragraph in either direction.

False bookings, and the note that follows one

A booking counts as false where any one of these is true:

• the name on it is not the name of the person who made it;
• it came from a number or an account belonging to somebody else;
• it was written as a prank;
• nobody answered the door, after one of the three above.

A door that simply went unanswered fits none of those. Someone who booked honestly and then failed to appear has made an ordinary late cancellation, read on the notice scale in the usual way.

Where a booking does match one of the four, or where a visit ended because a stated limit was pressed, a short note is written down inside the house. It holds the date, an account of what happened, and the name and number the request arrived under, and it is kept for a year. Nobody outside sees it and it answers a single question, which is whether another booking under that name is taken. How to challenge a note, or ask for it to be corrected or deleted, sits on the privacy page. Where the facts look like a criminal offence, the matter may be put to the police.

Book under your own name, be in the room when she knocks, and none of this section is about you. The practical questions about doors, timing and what to have ready are answered in the questions.