Booking Cancellation and Refund Policy

The appointment business decides. They provide the service and they hold the money - every charge is made on their own payment account. We provide the button they press, and we cannot refund a booking over their heads.

So the fastest route is always to contact the appointment business directly. Their phone number is on the booking status page, which is linked from your confirmation email and from the screen shown to you when you booked. If you cannot reach them, or you believe you were charged for a booking that was never confirmed, contact us and we will help - see section 6.

Your card is charged when you book, not on the day. There is no waiting period in which the business accepts or rejects the booking: if the time was offered, it is yours the moment payment succeeds.

If the business later cancels the appointment, the full amount including the booking fee is refunded - you do not have to ask for the fee back, and it is not the business's money to keep.

That refund is submitted to your card network straight away, but card networks typically take 5 to 10 business days to post it. Your booking status page shows the refund as soon as it is issued, which is usually well before your bank shows it.

Once a booking is in place, a cancellation is at the business's discretion. Most will refund without argument if you catch them early. Things they can do:

• Refund the whole booking - deposit and fee both.
• Refund part of it - for example half the deposit when you cancel late, keeping the rest against the time they held for you.
• Move the appointment to another time instead of refunding, if that suits you both.
• Refund after the visit, if something was wrong with the service.

A business cannot refund more than you paid, and cannot refund the same booking twice. Those limits are enforced by the software, not by policy.

The booking fee is ours, not the business's, so who funds its return depends on why the refund happened.

Where the table says the business chooses, the choice is a single explicit setting on the refund they issue - it is not a hidden default, and the amount you get back is shown on your booking status page.

A refund is submitted to your card network immediately. Card networks typically take 5 to 10 business days to post it, and we have no way to make that faster. You will see the refund on your booking status page as soon as it is issued, which is usually well before your bank shows it.

Occasionally a refund fails at the payment processor - an expired card is the usual reason. When that happens the business is told loudly and the refund is retried automatically; it is not quietly dropped.

Please try the appointment business first, then us at [email protected], before disputing a charge with your bank. A chargeback takes months, costs the business a fee on top of the refund, and usually ends with the same outcome you would have got by asking.

If you do dispute, we and the business will provide the booking record, timestamps, and the appointment status to your bank. If the charge was genuinely wrong, you get your money back either way.

Refunds you issue come from your own Stripe balance. Card processing fees on the original charge are not returned by the card networks on a refund, so a refunded booking costs you the processing fee. Whether our booking fee is returned is your choice per refund. Excessive chargeback rates can put your payment processing at risk - see the Business Agreement.