Cancellations
I’m currently trialling an ‘Honesty Box’ approach to late cancellations: i.e., those within 72 hours of an appointment. Please read on to find out more.
How It Works
If this is your first late cancellation and it’s genuinely been unavoidable, then please feel free to cancel at no charge and make a new booking at your convenience👍
Alternatively, if the cancellation was avoidable, if I could have known sooner, or if it’s not the first time, then I kindly ask that you contribute 50% of the appointment fee via BACS.
Just send me a quick text, WhatsApp, or email, and I’ll provide the payment details.
Further Information
A late cancellation is anything within 72 hours of an appointment.
With 72 hours’ notice, I’ve got a good chance of swapping things around or fitting in a new booking. After that, it gets much less likely that I’ll be able to fill the gap.
That way, we share the cost of the cancellation equally. This seems a fair way to split it.
I’ll leave that to your discretion. But in the past, examples have included:
- Accidental double-bookings
- Something else being prioritised
- A change of mind
- A forgotten booking
- Failure to have the piano delivered / in place ready for the appointment
I have considered it, but for the vast majority of customers it simply creates unnecessary admin. If the Honesty Box doesn’t work though, I may revisit the idea.
When I started the business, I simply let first-time cancellations go and allowed customers to reschedule. The upside was that most customers would rebook soon afterwards. The downside was that unfilled cancellations cost the business around £1,000 a year.
After a few years of that, I began asking a fee for all late cancellations. Plenty of customers were apologetic, happy to pay, and made a new booking. Unfortunately however, a larger number never responded and never rebooked.
So I’m hoping this approach strikes a positive balance between the two🤞
