No-show policy for mobile hairdressers and makeup artists: deposits, travel fees and the wasted journey

A no-show costs a mobile hairdresser twice. There is the slot, like anyone else's. Then there is the drive there, the drive back, the petrol, the parking, and the fact that you were standing on somebody's doorstep at ten past nine with a kit bag and nobody in. A no-show policy for mobile work has to count the journey, and a travel fee is half of the answer.

What a wasted journey costs

Put a number on your own version of this. Say a cut and colour at the client's home is £120, and she lives forty minutes away.

• £120 you cannot earn from anyone else that morning. There is nobody to fit in from the driver's seat.
• Eighty minutes of driving, there and back, that you would not have made.
• Petrol and parking. Call it £8 to £12 for that distance, as an example — your figure is whatever your car and your area make it.
• The slot before and the slot after, which you kept clear for travel, so a three-hour hole in the day for a ninety-minute job.

So a mobile no-show is not one lost appointment. It is a lost morning plus money spent getting to it. A policy written for a salon chair, where the stylist at least stays warm and can take a walk-in, will not cover that.

Charge for the journey, and do it at booking

The first half of the answer is a travel fee: a small charge by distance, shown to the client before she books, folded into her total. It stops the journey being a cost you quietly absorb, and it makes the deposit below meaningful, because the deposit is taken on the whole amount.

An example ladder, and only an example: up to five miles included; five to ten miles, £5; ten to fifteen, £10. Round numbers, so a client understands them at a glance. Set the ladder once, by distance from where you start, and let it apply itself — Wunderhand charges the travel fee by distance at the moment of booking, shows it to the client before she pays, and keeps the travel time you allow clear in the diary after every visit, so the next booking cannot land on top of your drive back.

Two things a travel fee is not. It is not a surcharge for living somewhere awkward, so say what it covers. And it is not the whole no-show answer, because it only gets paid if the client turns up. That is the deposit's job.

A deposit before you set off

For a visit, the deposit has to be paid before you leave the house, not promised at the door. Take it when they book. 25% of a £120 visit is £30, as an example: enough that a client thinks twice about not answering the door, small enough that a new client pays it happily to secure a home appointment. It comes off the bill on the day.

For early-morning and one-off work — a wedding morning at 6am, a birthday, a group booking — make the deposit the whole price. You will have turned down everything else that morning and driven there in the dark. A client booking that kind of appointment expects to pay for it up front, and the ones who do not are the ones you want to hear from before you have set off.

Wunderhand takes the deposit as part of the booking and pays it straight into your own Stripe account, so a client cannot hold a slot in your diary without having paid to hold it. And a client's home address is only shown to you once the booking is confirmed and paid — a held-but-unpaid booking does not send you anywhere.

The cancellation window is about the drive, not the slot

For salon work the question is "could I refill this slot?" For mobile work there is a second one: "would I already be in the car?"

A cancellation window of 24 hours answers the first badly and the second not at all. Someone who cancels at 8pm the night before has cost you the morning, because nobody books a home visit for 9am at 8pm. Someone who cancels at 8:45am has cost you the morning and the drive.

So: free to cancel up to 48 hours before a home visit, and the deposit stays with you after that. For a wedding morning or anything else you have cleared a day for, 72 hours, or longer. A client who has not answered the door at all is a no-show, and the deposit stays with you as well. Wunderhand applies whatever window you set — cancel in time and the client's deposit goes back automatically; cancel late, or not be in, and it stays — without you having to send the message.

Say it before they book, in one sentence each

Under UK consumer law a cancellation charge has to reflect what the cancellation genuinely costs you, not punish the client, and the client has to be told the terms before booking rather than find them afterwards. For mobile work the genuine cost is easy to show: the slot, the travel time, the fuel. That is your justification, and it is also why the wording can be short.

• "I come to you, so I ask for a £30 deposit when you book. It comes off your total."
• "Travel is £5 for 5 to 10 miles, shown before you pay."
• "Free to cancel up to 2 days before. After that the deposit stays with me, because I can't fill a home visit at short notice."

Put those where the client reads them at the moment she books, not in a message afterwards. On a booking page that shows the deposit, the travel fee and the window before the client pays, the rule explains itself and you never have the conversation on a doorstep.

Reminders, and the day after a no-show

Most no-shows are somebody forgetting. An email reminder two days out, with a link to move or cancel within your rules, catches many of them while there is still time to sell the morning. Wunderhand sends those reminders by email — not texts — and the link in them lets the client move or cancel herself.

A client who has not been in twice is a pattern, not bad luck. Wunderhand can apply the fair answer for you: from then on she pays in full when she books. She can still book; she just pays for the visit before you drive to it.

What to write down this week

• Your travel ladder: how far is included, and what each band past that costs.
• Your deposit for a home visit, and the services where it is the whole price.
• Your window: 48 hours for a visit, longer for a morning you have cleared.
• One sentence for each, in your own words, on your booking page.

What it costs to run that through Wunderhand — per person, with no cut of your bookings — is on the pricing page. For the principles that apply to any appointment-based business, and where to display them, see the general no-show policy guide; for the braider's version of this problem, where the whole day and the hair are at stake, see the braider's no-show policy.