Cancelled booking rights?

NeptunesMoon

whatd be the best way to deal with someone cancelling a booking they made with you if you provide a service? imagine they aranged a job and cancelled it leaving you no time to get more business to fill the space. This could mean a day or two with no work as you had them booked in and didn't take other business for that day.

Does the service provider have a right to still charge them for the job? Up to what point is it acceptable to charge? 24 hours till job, 7 days till job or what? Wheres the line drawn between a fair charge and giving your business a bad rep?

What kind of agreement does the initial job have to be? verbal? email? or do they have to sign something to make it legally chargable?

Cheers

Afuera

Your best bet is probably to charge an upfront payment of say 10-20% of the overall price when drawing up the contract/taking the booking. If anyone cancels on you, then that should cover you somewhat for the loss of business. You'll also find that people are less likely to cancel in the first place if they've already shelled out some readies.

antoinolachtnai

It's basically a commercial issue rather than a legal one. It's all about your bargaining position at the end of the day. I don't know what business you are in. In the building trade, most bookings seem to be provisional, rather than cast in stone. That's just the way it is. If you have some specialized setup or some capital asset, then maybe you can do better.

Legally, I'd think you'd need to have a hard contract with someone to be able to do a penalty charge. That doesn't necessarily mean you need a big fancy written agreement, but you would need to have agreed a time, the basic work to be done without extras, and the charge to be made in advance.

fintan

Maybe call ahead a few days / week in advance and confirm the booking?

or even send out reminder text messages