To have charged them full price?

[LollingGo]

I work as a PT and I am very overbooked, with a long waiting list. As such, I do charge a premium for my services, £40 per hour. I recently had a space become available and offered it to a client from my waiting list. They accepted and we booked several sessions in over July.

On what was meant to be our first session, lasting an hour an a half (£60), I received a phone call 15 minutes after the lesson was due to start. The client was very apologetic and informed me that she was having some personal issues and would therefore need to cancel. Since the cancellation, she has been reliable and has arrived at all booked in sessions.

I have just sent my invoices for July, and she queried the £60 charge for the cancelled session. I explained to her that, unfortunately, I need at least a few hours notice so I have an opportunity to find an alternative client for the session. As she had cancelled 15 minutes after the session time had started, she needed to be charged. She is now very upset. She has said she thinks it is quite harsh for me to charge the full amount and shows a lack of understanding. She has said she no longer wishes to have PT with me.

AIBU to think she should be paying full price and I have done nothing wrong? This is my livelihood and how I pay my bills and support my family.

You should start charging in advance to avoid this.

I think you need to charge people in advance. YANBU, but charging in advance would have prevented her being miffed.

I've been considering charging in advance for some time. She didn't say what the personal issues were.

I've used a few different PTs over the years and your Ts and C's are the same although no one has ever billed monthly. Are you not worried people wont pay? She should definitely be charged

I use the services of several self employed women and they all struggle to set healthy boundaries that appropriately value their time. For me that makes me want to encourage them towards setting those boundaries because they are all brilliant and don't deserve to be messed about, for other people I guess they see a green light to take advantage. Maybe your client is the latter type and expected you'd cave on your T&Cs because so many others do. Regardless, you are not being unreasonable for holding those boundaries.

My vet, dog groomer, hairdresser and pretty much every business of this type charges if you cancel less than 24 hours in advance.

It's standard practice nowadays. No doubt brought about by people like your client who think it's reasonable to just drop people at a moments notice.

You're running a business, she's not a friend who's let you down. Of course you're right to charge the full amount.

I think it's a bit much to charge the full amount especially considering she turned up for all the other sessions. Life's complicated sometimes. If I were your client it would have left me feeling pissed off and I probably would look for another PT. I think £20 for a first 'offence' would have been more acceptable and then charge her the full amount if she did it a second time.

A lot of services make you pay at time of booking now. That's maybe something you should look at OP.

You are absolutely not unreasonable to charge her. There's loads of other things she would have lost the money if she couldn't go.

So she is expecting you to foot the bill her not attending

I would be taking my payments in advance.

My PT is 12 hours notice or you're charged. Which I think is very generous, personally I'd expect it to be 24-48hours notice
.

I am a full time tutor and have a 24 hour notice cancellation policy. I do not think that you are unreasonable at all - you did not have time to offer that to an alternate customer and therefore your time should be charged for. If she is not happy with those terms then she is not the customer for you!

@LollingGo you’re not being unreasonable, charging in advance is a good way to go I think. I think unfortunately because people sometimes see these sessions as “optional extras” in their life, they fail to realise that it’s not a hobby for you it’s your livelihood.
One thing I would recommend though is to make sure you make paying as easy as possible. Maybe have a few ways (PayPal, direct transfer, if it’s in person tap to pay, not sure what else, but really make it simple) this way if someone does turn up to a session having not paid it can get sorted in seconds. I’ve had to pay for services where payment was through an elaborate e-commerce site and it was so un-user friendly and hard to tell if payment had gone through. Your clients are having a tough time, just reduce as many barriers as you can. Invoices a while after the fact are tricky, as eaten bread is soon forgotten.

Not unreasonable at all. If your that popular you’ll find a new client anyway

She's being really unreasonable.

She’s very cheeky. The key thing here is she didn’t cancel in advance and still get charged. She cancelled her session it when it had technically already begun. It’s ridiculous of her to think that she doesn’t need to pay.

I personally would charge, particularly since you have a waiting list and could easily have reallocated it with more notice, but you could offer a compromise of a 50% charge since it’s the first time if you really think it’s worth keeping her sweet. I’d give the slot to someone else who is waiting as I don’t like her total inability to think about you in this situation - it’s all about herself and the impact on her pocket, not yours.

Make sure clients are really clear on a cancellation policy if they cancel before the start, though. Get them to sign a written copy of your Ts and Cs. Cover yourself.

I used to charge (language classes) as my students were all very flakey. so I always charged a week in advance.

DH, tutor, does not and ends up silently raging a lot.

I have a PT who did not charge me for the 2x I cancelled on the day, but I am usually very reliable and had real emergencies.

technically you were right, but you did lose potentially a nice reliable customer. As you have no lack of clients, I guess it does not bother you.

OP it just depends on what's written in the contract, definitely get contracts signed before any work is done, then the cancellation policy is clear and you both know the terms before you engage with anything.

I think you were perfectly reasonable. If she had been a long standing client I would suggest some flexibility but based on these circumstances I think you were fair.

YANBU.

I was going to say it sounds like block booking would be a good way to do things.

You can even have it as £45 for 1 session, £42.50 per hour if you block book 5 hours and £40 per hr for 10.

Then have clear cancellation policy.

That way you don't earn less but encourage people to block book as it's cheaper

I pay my PT in monthly blocks upfront, ahead of my sessions. It is absolutely common practice to charge if a session is cancelled with less than 24hrs notice. Did you tell her the T&Cs when she started working with you?

YANBU, I have the same policy.

However, in this instance I would have used my discretion because sometimes things happen in life. As she did continue with the rest of the sessions, I would have reminded her of the cancellation charge, and asked for notice if she ever felt she may be unable to make another session.

Lol we both came here from the same post @Dashel 🤣

no yanbu-its on your terms she rang after the lesson started so pays full price why shold you lose out