So I've read on another board that some LA shops such as pkl now charge a cancelation fee.  

 
Ranging to as early as 24+ hours on a prebooking, you will be asked to pay 300 for cancelation no matter the reason or emergency and no matter your profile status. If you don't, they bl you.

 

Now, I think we just recently had discussion on some places doing a last minute bump/cancelation. And of course most mongers just get a "sorry", if that.  

 
Sounds to me like more inequality, assymmetry and not respecting mongers.

 
Thoughts?

Turn about is fair play! Let them kick the Monger that is canceled, bumped or shined on the morning of the appointment, a free session! Hell, get gas money too if you get canceled at the incall!

Now, that would be fair, but it's a fantasy to expect that!

There was the guy on another post that wanted an instant session, so let the orgs have a waiting list for a discount because the time could be filled!

Probably good business to set that up, but someone might think it would be too much trouble and not worth it!

Just a thought!

I just think that denying cancels of more than 24 hours in advance or rare/once-in-a -lifetime emergency cancels is yet another example of a power trip.  

 
I can cancel with some high profile doctors and lawyers 24 hours in advance with no fee. And if it's a fee, it's not the whole appointment fee lol.

 
Emergency wise, shit happens. We get it when it happens to the girls (except bumps). LA traffic is awful, I can't imagine too many people are happy about this.  

 

It's just a big contrast between how it's done on one side and on the other side...

END OF MESSAGE

Too little information.

1) Are these agencies known for often cancelling appointment on their clients?

2) Are these agencies seeing some of their client frequently cancelling on them on short notice.  

3) Just because a policy is announced it doesn't tell us how it will be applied -- it may well be selectively enforced on the clients that have frequently cancelled on them with short notice.

 
Without knowing something about those point one cannot make claims about the equity status of the policy or if there is some form of asymmetry or some assessment of respect for others.

Take their side, not the side of the mongers.

 
And $300?!  A cancellation fee that's 100% or more of the donation?  Not even racist, bigoted, overage, overpriced, overweight, bad attitude second rate so called home grown indies (as Harpman called them) have a cancellation fee of 100%.

Thanks for your thoughts!  

 
1) Why does it matter whether it's "often"? Shouldn't it be "did they ever cancel?" Why does the frequency matter? We are comparing it against a lofty cancelation fee. Unless a monger was ever compensated in full for a session he's never had, that's already +300 for one side for each occurrence.  

 
2) That's a fair point to ask. I don't have concrete info here. And I doubt anyone has besides the agency themselves. My understanding is that they got a new hot actually young girl (Jean) who is bbfscip and apparently improved service so now they want to maximize profits and get rid of flakes. I agree that cancelation fee is a deterrent vs frequent cancelations, but what they introduced was very extreme especially considering how cancelations are treated on the other side.  

 
3) First, I disagree about announcement versus applying. If you have a policy of "no blacks allowed", for example, degree of enforcement of such policy is secondary imo. Same here. As far as I understand, there was no announcement per se. It's just people have been saying that PO told them about full cancelation fee when they tried canceling, and that's the first time they heard of it. Some said no, I will not pay that fee and in that case PO said "au revoir".

 
So it's not like the org was like, from now on we will have this. People were put before the fact, so to speak. No warning, nothing. Now people, via word of mouth, know about it. But those first people.... they got fucked. And not in a good way!

1.

Frequency of cancellations plays a huge roll in deciding to apply a cancellation fee.  If cancellations are infrequent, it wouldn’t be cost effective to implement a fee policy that deters mongers from making appointments. OTOH, if an agency is experiencing a larger number of cancellations that it hurts their bottom line and creates scheduling headaches for other mongers, than it would make sense for the agency to consider implementing a cancellation policy.

2. Without concrete info, how do we know the policy is really that extreme? Was one very flaky monger blacklisted, in the process deterring other flakes? Or were many mongers, with no record of prior cancellations, impacted?  
I do agree with you that the cancellation fee serves as a deterrent, but there’s a cost to implementing the policy. They will lose a portion of their customers who don’t want to accept any risk of incurring a fee.

3.Apples versus oranges here. The agency can easily modify enforcement of a cancellation fee. Flakes will likely suffer strict enforcement of said policy. Frequent flyers and VIPs with solid track records will likely be given a warning. But for now, we don’t know. At the time of this posting, we haven’t had one monger in this thread confirm that the named agency is actually enforcing a cancellation policy, let alone let us know how strictly the policy is being enforced.

As noted in the subject line, just not enough info available to come to an informed conclusion.

I don't understand the first point. I don't think anyone is arguing that cancelations hurt the orgs bottom line. My point was that if we're trying to determine how FAIR and EQUAL it is, let's look at what the mongers get back from the cancelation and what orgs get from cancelation: both lose an hour of their time at worst case scenario. But with cancelation fee, org gets full appt price back. Does a monger ever get this price back? Rhetorical question.

 

How do you get concrete info besides directly having an org spokesperson here? And even then it's their words vs monger words. This ain't the only board and twelve and a half people who post here aren't all mongers. On other boards, people who have claimed they never canceled before and were regulars, were unable to cancel without this fee.

 

Once again, this board isn't the only place where mongers roam.  

Once again, the strictness of policy is not relevant when we discuss fairness. Black folks not being able to use public facilities back in the day, was NOT fair regardless of policy enforcement.  

 

 
Once again, I argue only the fair part. I don't really care whether or not org loses money/time - since mongers lose time/money too, I couldn't care any less about their profits, margins or revenue. If there is a cancelation fee for mongers, it's only logical and fair there should be a cancelation fee when orgs cancel, don't you think? For every action, there should be equal and opposite reaction to make it fair.  

This whole hobby is damn assymetric and the fee that extends to 24+ hrs only adds insult to injury imo.  

(Ie, us having to send real recent pic and/or actual driver license, but they can use fake and/or old pic =NOT fair, assymetric. I hope no one even tries to argue that.)

1) Yes, relative frequency between what customers are doing and what the agency is doing regarding cancelled sessions does matter here if one wants to talk about both asymmetric power and asymmetric respect. The loss is symmetric as it's the price of the session. Right? So you're saying the agency and girl should eat the 300 loss when the customer cancels and that is fine but if the customer is held responsible it's not?  

Again, your point was the cancellation policy was evidence of some asymmetric relationship. But you seem uninterested in actually considering the reality of the symmetry or asymmetry with regard to cancelled session stats/facts.

And, "what they introduced was very extreme especially considering how cancellations are treated on the other side." was not documented at all. You have not even tried to establish that the agency(ies) implementing the new policy have been known to cancel on their clients much less bump them. You're painting with a broad brush.  

Last, are you really tying to claim that an agency an agency can never have a problem that would make hosting a session very ill advised but somehow it's okay if the client needs or wants to cancel? That seems pretty asymmetric.

 
2) Yes, the facts will be opaque to both of us. However, any attempt at forming a judgement on such a situation should require one layout some basic criteria that would be applied if one had the data.  So the fact that the statistics are not available does not have any import to the point made about the need to consider the relative frequency -- even if it's pure theory -- in any assessment of the reported event.

 
I would also note your argument would support the view that the problem in cancellations is on the customer side and not on the agency side. "We've got this great provider here. Guys are going to be beating the door done and running over each other to have the chance to see her. We will make a lot of money. Hey, here's an idea. Let's add a cancellation fee to make even more."  

 
The only way that logic works is if they don't expect a lot of the reserved session to actually occur and expect enough cancellations without being able to have someone else take the spot so it becomes an unused window generating no cash flow.

 
3) The issue of freedom of association and that of a cancellation policy are categorically different. The attempt to use the former as some red herring against the latter is hardly what I would ever consider an argument with integrity underlying it.

 

If the policy was unannounced and is unpublished I do think that is something one can criticize. However, "people" said is weak evidence. Which people and what was their prior relationship with the agency and have they been clients that do in fact cancel much more often than other clients? SO how do you know the one's reporting the surprise fee are not doing something like the following hypothetical?

1) Decide it's time to see a provider.
2) Not completely sure when they will be free on the day they will make their appointment (they are busy and lead a more important life that others)
3) Make appointments for the morning, afternoon and evening
4) Appointment day comes, if busy in the morning cancel that session, in not cancel the other two. You can work through the other combinations.

Not like I have not seen behavior like that outside the P4P world so why wouldn't it occur within in it?

I'm not saying that is what those guys were doing but I have seen plenty of threads on the boards here that start with some monger complaining about some mistreatment by a provider and after more of the information comes out in the discussions the guy is not the victim and either trying get some payback on the woman or is trying to prove to himself he is by getting people to agree with his slanted post.  

 
So back to my original suggestion. Don't you think it might have been a more honest and fair post to have simply done something like:

"Hey guys, was reading on another board and some LA mongers there said they were told they had to pay a full cost cancellation fee when they needed to cancel. Doesn't seem to be anything clearly indicating such a policy. The way they described it, it sounds like a sudden, and unannounced change.

 
Anyone here have experience with that?"

 
Your post comes across for me as the closing statement from a prosecutor arguing for a guilty verdict but without any actual argument, just a charge of guilt.

 
Or you could have worked on getting information so you post something like:
"Heard reports from another board that these LA agencies are suddenly telling customers who need to cancel they still need to pay the session fee.  

 
I did some research on these agencies (maybe some details on how and what). Tey all have a reputation for frequently cancelling sessions with no justification offered, no apologies and no offer to reschedule next available window that works for the guy.  

 
Seems like an agency you don't want to do business with."

 
Those were my thoughts and responses to your responses and will stop here.

1. The frequency can only be determined if we actually know the numbers. But we don't. Does this mean nothing about symmetry/assymetry in the biz can be ever  discussed or criticized  by us? I think that's a pretty bad Carte Blanche to give out. The only people who might have concrete numbers are the org brass, and they certainly have a motive to misrepresent them even if they do disclose them.

Here is more of symmetry pre - cancel fee wise:

For customer : cost * frequency = 0*x=0

For supplier: cost * frequency =0*y=0

0=0. Hey! Symmetry regardless of frequency. Look at that!  

Here it is now  
For customer:300*x
For supplier:0*y=0

For non-zero X, the cost is STRICTLY higher for customer. This is basic ass math.  

 

If we were to include opportunity cost as you have (only for customer cancelation part for some reason, I think I might know thar reason) , then you have to also account for opportunity cost of org cancelation. And in many cases it's higher. Many folks drive for as long as an hour without traffic for a one hour appointment. Many folks make as much or even more per hour as the girls do, at least pre-tax. Time is money there. Of course, to include opportunity cost, then you'd have to know the frequency. But since we don't know, does it mean we can't say anything about the fee amount or the practice? That's bogus imo.  

 
Again, I don't give a rats ass about their revenue. If they can't make it fair, they can be in the red (and I don't mean aunt flo) for all I care.

 

 

 
About asking the board for experiences.  

This board has 12 people and many of them dislike me. I'd say for many, even if they experienced something like what I said, doubt they'd voice it because it would validate mine.

Hell, some people from NOVA who know allcomers couldn't possibly be me, could have voiced their opinions in the other thread. But hey, to many, truth is secondary to personal dislike. They wouldn't even agree with me that 2+2=4

 
Why for something to have merit, it HAS to be a person on this board to have experienced it? I don't get it. Especially since everyone knows my opinion on orgs here,and if they don't like rocking the boat, it's in their interest to never talk about it?

 
And BTW. I'm actually way easier on org cancelations that others, except the bump part - I sincerely hope karma catches up to org/girl who bumps others and they earn a lot less. As a guy who loves service I don't care a lot about last minute cancelarions if warranted - Ive sessioned with few under the weather providers and wished after most of them would canceled instead. Shit happens, on both girl part and customer parts. Girls aren't robots, obviously . Neither are mongers though. Emergency cancels happen. Lack of understanding for emergency cancels is not a good look. Not having cancelation fees made the appointment canceling symmetric for both sides. Now, the cost of doing so is much higher for one side.

 
I don't see where I read out a closing statement. I merely mentioned what I've heard about cancelation fees,  offered my opinion on the policy, and asked for other people's thoughts. The cancelation policy can definitely viewed and discussed in a vacuum without asking what caused it and why did they do it and calculating their profit margins.

This was a few months ago, I pre-booked a session and the morning of I felt under the weather, so I canceled. Turned out to be nothing and a couple of days later I rebooked a session also in advance of the day. A couple of hours later the booker texted me that the boss said I couldn't have an early booking because I canceled at the last minute! The booker went to bat for me and got it cleared up. That's all I've run into about getting punished for a last minute cancelation.  

Now, the only thing I've heard about a fee is, if you pre book and it's a last minute or same day cancelation they will ask for the session time to be paid for.

That seems fair. A lot of discussion here devoted to the extremes of good/bad experiences. But in your instance everything worked out fine.

Well, do you think if you pre book and then have something emergency come up that day, it's fair to have the cancelation fee equal to the session fee?

Yes, it did.  

I asked the booker, didn't get an answer, but didn't expect one, would the boss want me to keep the appointment and maybe get the girl sick? I mean she/they could either lose an hour, me not showing, or a few days if the girl gets sick too! That was my logic!

I said it before, they should come up with a waiting list to fill cancelations. I'm always confirming at 8am, first appointments start at 10am or 11am. Two hours should be enough time to get to an appointment, maybe even $50 less to be called off the waiting list.

One of the guys in this area has said he will often let the book know his schedule is flexible and if they have a cancellation he would generally be able to move his time. Not sure if that is only for the ladies here that tend to require a couple of days lead time to schedule or not. But has said it's gotten him same day appointments at times when the usual wait is two or three days.

 
I would guess that flexibility in schedule is probably the hardest part for many, and why the agencies have not put any effort into a waiting list option.

What seems fair? The cancelation fee equal to session fee when canceling on same day during prebook seems fair to you?