Balance on arrival, handled without fuss
The balance on arrival is what remains of the ladder price, settled privately with the therapist in the room at the outset, by cash, card or crypto.
What remains of the fee is settled upstairs, privately, in the first minutes after she has come in.
Its size
For nearly every reservation the balance is exactly half, because the other half went ahead as the deposit once the hour was agreed. For the single exception, an hour or two requested for today by a guest the house has looked after before, it is the entire fee. Three cases show the range:
- A single guest's overnight with one therapist: half the block figure has already cleared, and the matching half is handed over in the room.
- A guest writing to the house for the first time, one hour: half of it went ahead, and half remains.
- A familiar guest, two hours this evening: nothing went ahead, so the fee for both hours is the balance.
Its form
Every figure on the ladder is a price in euro, and the euro figure is what the reservation costs. A guest just in from New York or Zurich may still hand over dollars, pounds, francs or another major currency: the exact amount in that currency is confirmed in writing in the thread before she sets out, so no sum is worked out in the doorway. Card is accepted, and so is cryptocurrency. A word in the thread about which the guest intends to use keeps the moment short.
Cash has a fixed place in this arrangement: it belongs to the balance and to nothing else. A reservation is confirmed while she is still elsewhere in the city, and notes cannot travel ahead of her, so cash is never the means by which a reservation is confirmed.
Settling at the outset is a courtesy to both sides, since the subject is closed before the evening begins and does not return. Questions of gratuity are addressed in tipping and settling up, the first half is explained under deposit, and the figures themselves sit in the rates table of every profile on the rota.