Here is the story, my friend from NYC was coming to Indy to visit her boyfriend who is here working. She was only going to be here for one day so we decided to do lunch and get a mani/pedi. I usually go to the cheapie salons, but when I asked her she said she’d like to go to a nicer place and that she would pay. I said I would pay for mine, but no biggie I would book it at this nicer place.
Anyway, I book the appts. at 3:00 on Tues. for appts. at 3:00 on Wed. Around 9 p.m. she calls me and says her flight has been cancelled and she won’t be here until later that night. I immediately call the salon and they say, “We have a 24 hour cancellation policy.” Obviously I could not have given that kind of notice, but anyway I figured they would just charge me a fee and that would be that.
Wednesday afternoon rolls around and my phone rings, “Hi, this is blah blah and I wanted to know if you are coming for your appt.?” I told her that I had already cancelled, etc. and she was making a big deal over it. I told her to have the manager call me back. While waiting I go online to look at my bank account and the salon has charged me $220. WTF? I thought that had to be a mistake. The manager calls me back and says, “Well, our policy is to charge 100% on cancellations made under 24 hours from the appt.” No amount of reasoning would change her mind, no matter that I gave 18 hours notice on the same day I scheduled. AND no one explained that policy to me. I talked to three different people and not one bothered to tell me that policy, nor did they give me the option of rescheduling or anything like that.
So I am obviously going to fight this with the bank and stuff, but here’s the immediate dilemma…my friend knows what happened, shouldn’t she offer to pay for her half of this shit? She’s the one who wanted to go to a spa, not me. Her flight getting cancelled was no more my fault than it was hers. It seems obvious that she would pay her half. Two friends have told me they think that would be rude/outlandish for me to suggest.
What do I do? I can’t afford to eat $220 like that.
She *should * offer to pay for at least half. That doesn’t mean she will. At that point it becomes one of those things that you have to decide if it’s possibly worth the friendship. Will you feel better if you get $110 out of her and she’s mad at you for a long time?
Maybe a gentle “oh I’d like to go eat at Mr. FancyPants Restaurant but I’m tapped out after that cancellation fee!” will be enought to prod her. Also, since you paid the $220, does that mean you get the manicure? If they won’t refund you may try to bargain with them that way.
What ShelliBean said, with another idea for suggesting that she pay her half. Politely, of course, something along the lines of, “Gee, I really can’t afford to absorb the entire cancellation fee for both our appointments. Any chance you could pay your half? I know it stinks that we got stiffed like this . . . My regular place isn’t quite as expensive, but you wanted to make it a special occasion, and you DID offer to pay . . .”
If she won’t pony up, then you have your answer about which she values more, your friendship or $110.
Can’t you call your bank and get a charge back? It seems totally unreasonable to me to charge you that much for a missed appointment especially when they didn’t inform you of the fee when you booked.
I would wait until the outcome of the dispute with the credit card company to approach your friend about contribution. If your credit card provider agrees with your position and reverses the charge, no harm no foul. If they don’t, I think that’s the time to talk to your friend. If your friend pays you now and the charges are reversed, you’re in a position of having to reimburse her for her reimbursement.
One idea: call her up and say “Hey, you’re more familiar with these types of places than I am. How do you think I should handle this?” Perhaps she’s assuming that it can be fixed, or is waiting for it to play out before she makes an offer to pay?
Did she know that you were putting the reservations on your credit card? Or is there a chance she assumed you guys would just go as walk-ins, and if you couldn’t get in no-biggie? If the latter were to happen to me (has happened to me, in fact), then I would feel that I shouldn’t have to pay, but I would offer to pay for the sake of the friendship.
I am in the process of trying to do just that. Since I did not authorize the charges and was not informed of the policy upfront, I have a decent shot at getting my money back (says the bank).
I think it is entirely reasonable to level with your friend: You tried to cancel the appointment but they charged you full price for both you and your friend, and no matter how hard you tried, they wouldn’t refund the money. “Could you please pay your share while I fight this with the credit card company?” I see nothing wrong with that whatsoever.
(On another topic, if someone says they have a 24 hour cancellation policy, my automatic assumption is that I will pay full price if not canceled outside of that window. Personally, I’m not so sure they’d have to spell that out, I think it’s pretty clearly implied.)
I would have never interpreted that to mean they would charge 100%. I assumed it meant they would charge a fee, $25 or something, but I honestly have never been anywhere where that is the policy. Most of the salons I go to are not swanky places that take your cc info just to book an appt. I would think if they knew it was my first time coming to their salon that they would be a little more forthcoming with an explanation of this policy.
And I called a few different spas to see what their policies on this were and this spa’s biggest competitor has the same policy. However, the girl said that if it had been that situation I would have gotten out of it since I called that night rather than say, the morning of the appts. And she said that they tell people they will be charged whether or not they show up, in order to get them to still make the appt. or at least make sure they are informed about what is going on.
She said they try to be flexible when things like this happen, and if it turns out the person is getting charged they do everything they can to let that person know so they can make arrangements to be there or to give that appt. to a friend or something since they are being charged anyway.
The owner of the place I got hosed by was completely inflexible about the whole thing. She wasn’t going to bend for any reason at all and couldn’t see my point about how I only made the appt. the day before and called to cancel only six hours after I made it. I did give them 18 hours notice (which was as much as I possibly could have given), it’s not like they had to call their nail techs in for appointments because they knew that night that the appts. had been cancelled.
And for that matter, if I had realized they were charging me anyway I’d have grabbed another friend and gone for the services. If I understood the policy why wouldn’t I have done that? Like I said, this woman was totally unreasonable about it and wouldn’t let me reschedule or anything. She just took my money for nothing.
After I get my money back from the bank I will be filing a complaint with the BBB and I’ll make sure I tell all of my girlfriends and co-workers never to go to this salon. Instead of gaining clients, she is losing quite a few potential clients. Why would a good businesswoman do that?
If I were her, my first thought wouldn’t be to pay half, it would be to take it upon myself to go down to the salon and threaten to get my lawyers on their ass.
This is how I woudl handle it, too: Making it clear that I wasn’t asking her for money up front but that if there was a charge for cancelling it was my expectation she’d pay half.
But I probably wouldn’t make a big deal out of it because I’m reasonably confident you’ll be able to successfully dispute the charge because they didn’t tell you about the cancellation policy when you made the appointment.
You could also drop a line to the Better Business Bureau as well as calling the Indy (or state) prosecutor to ask how the law is interpreted–particularly since you were not advised of the extent of the “fee” in advance.
Frankly, that is a bizarre. You cannot consent to a legal contract without being informed of all the terms and conditions. It’s quite plain that Indygrrl wasn’t fully informed, so the contract (and therefore the cancellation fee) is null and void.
I would personally consider the charge to be theft (it is an unauthorised charge) and would inform my credit card company in that way (although I’m not suggesting she do that as the law may well be different in the US and IANAL).
Almost the same thing happened to me with a hotel: Made a reservation for the next day and called back about an hour later to cancel. The hotel wanted to charge for a full day. Luckily I had charged it to my card, and the credit card people thought the hotel’s policy was as unreasonable as I did. They removed the charge. Now let the hotel fight with Visa.
Oh, and my personal opinion about your friend? Mention it once, then let it drop. If nothing comes of it, it cost you $110 to learn something about her.
She’s going to be visiting again in a couple of weeks. If it goes as I think it will, she will probably take me out to lunch or to do something and foot the bill. I don’t think she’s the type to just forget about it and go on.
Still, they said “24-hour cancellation policy” which means that you’re paying full price whether or not you show up. I thought that was standard pretty much everywhere. (It’s nice if they don’t charge you “just this once” - but you can’t say you weren’t informed)