When the night runs long and a booking is already in place

An evening out in Amsterdam is not a timetable. Friends turn up unannounced, a restaurant is slower than its reviews suggested, an encore runs long, and someone at the table insists on one last place. A booking made on the way back has to survive all of that, and it can, because the rules behind it are built around one simple question: has she set out yet? Almost everything on this page follows from the answer.

The single question that decides the cost

Before she sets out, a change is a line in the thread and the hour is still yours to shape. After she sets out, her journey has begun, and part of the fee is already earned by the time you write. The difference between those two positions is not a matter of minutes on a clock but of which side of her front door she is on. So the first habit worth forming is to write the moment you suspect the plan will slip, not the moment you are sure. A guess sent at 22:40 is worth far more than a certainty sent at 23:15.

A later hour on the same night

Say the booking is confirmed for 23:30 and at 22:45 you can see the table is not going anywhere. Write in the thread with a new hour, and make it an honest one. While she has not left, a later start on the same night is an adjustment to the hour you already agreed, not a cancellation and not a move to another date, and it costs nothing when she can keep the new hour.

She may not be able to. Each therapist keeps her own hours, and midnight might suit her where one o'clock does not. If she cannot make the later time, the reply says so plainly and tells you who is free at the new hour; you can name one of them, keep the original hour after all, or cancel. A cancellation at that point is read on the notice scale below, exactly as if you had sent it without asking about the later hour first.

Two practical points. Move the hour once, and move it far enough: a booking pushed back by fifteen minutes three times in an evening is harder on everyone than one pushed back by an hour at the first sign of trouble. And keep the new hour realistic rather than hopeful. If you think the table will break up at half past eleven, ask for half past twelve.

An earlier hour

Sometimes the evening ends sooner than planned: the show was shorter, the friends went home, the restaurant emptied. Write and ask. If she can set out sooner she will say so, and if she cannot the original hour stands. Nothing is ever charged for asking.

Cancelling on the night, with a deposit behind the booking

A deposit of half the fee sits behind a first booking, an overnight, a booking with two therapists, a room at Schiphol or an airport hotel, a peak date, a session of three hours or more, and anything arranged more than twenty-four hours ahead. When a booking of that kind is cancelled, the notice you give is the only thing that decides what is kept:

• more than twenty-four hours before the booked time, the whole deposit returns to you;
• inside the last twenty-four hours but before she has set out, half the deposit is kept as fee already earned and the other half returns;
• from the moment she sets out, the full deposit stands as fee already earned.

The kept share can shrink in two ways. If someone else takes the hour you gave up, the deposit is repaid in full, because the time was not lost. And if you can show that the real loss was smaller than the share kept, only that smaller sum is kept. No claim for damages is ever added to that.

In figures: two hours at 360 euros, a first booking, confirmed with 180 euros ahead. Cancelled on the night before she has left, 90 euros is kept and 90 returns. Cancelled after she has set out, the 180 euros is kept unless the hour is taken by someone else.

Cancelling on the night, with no deposit behind the booking

A returning guest who asks for an hour or two later the same day at a central address pays the whole fee at the door and nothing ahead. With no deposit, there is nothing for the scale above to act on. Cancelled before she sets out, that booking costs nothing at all. Cancelled once she is on her way, it costs the share of the fee that her journey represents, and nothing past that.

This is where writing early pays off in practice. A returning guest who realises at 22:50 that the evening will run on, and says so, has lost nothing. The same guest writing at 23:20, with her already crossing the city, owes the journey share. The evening was the same in both cases. Only the message moved.

Moving to another night entirely

Sometimes the right answer is not a later hour but a different evening. One change of date is free, provided the request reaches the thread more than twenty-four hours before the booked time and the new date falls within fourteen days. With both conditions met, the deposit travels across to the new date intact.

A move asked for on the night itself falls inside the final twenty-four hours, so it is measured on the notice scale exactly as a cancellation sent at that moment would be. Any part of the deposit the scale leaves untouched moves with you to the new date. So a guest with a 180 euro deposit who moves to the following night while she has not yet left keeps 90 euros of it as credit for the new booking. A second move of the same booking, whenever it is asked for, is read the same way.

When she is already on her way and you are still out

This is the one situation the page cannot make cheap, and it is worth describing honestly. She has set out, the thread shows it, and you are still at the bar with a twenty minute walk ahead of you. Write immediately, with a real figure for when you will be back. What can be done from there depends on her and on the rest of her night, and the reply will say so plainly. If the session cannot go ahead, it is read as a cancellation made after she set out.

What never helps is silence. A therapist who reaches a door that does not open, with no message and a phone that is not answered, has lost the hour and has been left standing in a building at night. That is the part of a long evening the house takes seriously.

A missed booking is not a false booking

Guests sometimes worry that failing to turn up will mark them in some way. A missed appointment on its own is simply a late cancellation and is handled on the scale above. A booking counts as false only if it was made under a name that does not belong to the guest, from a number or profile that belongs to someone else, as a joke, or if a no-show followed one of those three. Honest guests who lost track of the evening are not in that category.

When something outside anyone's control stops the evening

A transport shutdown, a serious disruption in the city or an official instruction that makes her journey impossible is not a cancellation by either side. Nothing is forfeited, and the deposit becomes credit against a date you choose later. A dinner that ran long, a club that was too good to leave and a decision at midnight to sleep are on the guest's side of that line, and each is read as a change or a cancellation in the ordinary way.

Why the rules lean on notice rather than on reasons

Guests sometimes ask why the terms do not simply ask what went wrong and decide case by case. The answer is that a reason is hard to check and a message is not. The time your message reached the thread, and whether she had already set out, are both visible to everyone in the same record. Tying what is kept to those two facts means nobody has to argue about whether a dinner overran for a good reason or a bad one, and a guest can always work out in advance, from his own phone, what a change will cost before he makes it.

A short routine for evenings that tend to run long

• If you know the evening is loose, name an hour later than you think you need. Moving it earlier is easy.
• Look at the phone once, at a fixed point: after the main course, at the interval, before the next round.
• If the plan has slipped by more than fifteen minutes, write then, not when you leave.
• If the evening has turned into something you would rather see through, cancel before she sets out. Every later way out costs more.

The complete terms, with more worked figures, are on the booking terms page, and the page about booking from a taxi or tram covers the last stretch of the evening once you are finally on your way.