Legal
Cancellation and refunds
Draft — pending qualified review
Version 0.1. What happens when a booking does not go ahead — whoever cancels it, and whatever the reason. It forms part of the terms of service.
Your legal right to cancel, which comes first
Booking here is a distance contract for services. The Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 give you 14 days from the day the contract is made to cancel for any reason and get your money back. That right exists whatever else this page says and cannot be signed away.
If you ask for the work to be done inside those 14 days — which anyone booking a detail for this week is doing — you can still cancel, but once the detailer has started you may be charged for what has already been done, in proportion to the whole service. If the work is finished within the 14 days at your request, the right to cancel ends at that point.
If you cancel
These are our own terms, which apply after the statutory position above. Times are measured from the start of your booked slot.
- Before a detailer has accepted
- No charge, whenever you cancel. Nobody has held time for you yet, so nobody has lost anything — there is nothing to estimate a charge from.
- 48 hours or more before the start
- No charge. There is enough notice for the slot to be filled by other work.
- Between 24 and 48 hours before
- The deposit, and no more. The rest is refunded.
- Between 2 and 24 hours before
- Half the booking. By this point the detailer has usually turned down other work to hold your slot.
- Less than 2 hours before, or after the start time
- The full booking. The day is gone and cannot be refilled.
- Once the work has started
- You are charged for the share of the work already done, never more than the price of the booking. Timing stops mattering once somebody is at the car — what matters is how much of it they have finished.
You are always shown the charge before you confirm a cancellation. A charge that reflects what was genuinely lost is what the law allows; one that punishes is not, and these are set as an estimate of real loss rather than a deterrent.
If we can fill the slot
Where we are able to fill a cancelled slot with other work, we may reduce or waive the charge. We are not obliged to look, and a slot cancelled at short notice usually cannot be filled — but a charge is meant to cover a real loss, and if there was no loss we would rather not take it.
If the detailer cancels
You are refunded in full, whatever the notice and whatever the reason. You did nothing wrong, and the charge above never applies to you when somebody else ends the booking.
Where there is reasonable notice the job is offered to another detailer first, so in most cases you keep your slot rather than getting your money back. The detailer who cancelled takes a strike against their record.
If the detailer does not arrive
Treated as a detailer cancellation, so you are refunded in full. We count it as a no-show when a detailer is more than 45 minutes late and not answering messages — both, because somebody stuck in traffic who is telling you so is not a no-show.
If we cannot reach the car
If the detailer arrives and cannot do the work — no access, the car is not there, nobody is home — the booking is treated as cancelled at short notice and the charge above applies. Telling us anything that might get in the way when you book is what avoids this.
If the work is not right
This is separate from cancelling and it does not expire when the windows above do. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 a service must be carried out with reasonable care and skill, and if it is not you are entitled to have it put right, or to a reduction in price where that is not possible.
In practice: raise it within 48 hours through the booking and the detailer gets the first chance to come back and fix it. If that does not settle it, we decide — a redo by somebody else, part of your money back, or all of it.
That 48-hour window is our own process for the guarantee. It does not shorten your statutory rights, which last considerably longer, and nothing here should be read as if it does.
Weather, and things nobody controls
Where the work genuinely cannot go ahead — weather that makes outdoor work unsafe, a closed road, illness — neither side is charged and the booking is moved or refunded in full.
How refunds are paid
To the card you paid with. No booking can be paid for on this site yet, so nothing has been refunded either; this describes what will happen when payments are live rather than what happens today.
Changes
This policy is versioned. The version that applies to a booking is the one in force when you made it, not whatever is on this page later.