Charging for missed appointments?

[ns21]

Hello nail geeks, I have a question for you all. Has anyone ever heard of charging clients for missed appointments or cancelletions or being late? If so, how exactly does that work? If your clients know that they will be charged for missed appointments won't you run the risk of losing them as clients? I work by appointment only and so I count on my appointments. My loyal clients do call and say that they will be late and they'll also call in advance to cancel. They know that I am very busy and if they don't keep their appointment they know that I can call someone else to come in their time slot. But then there are those that do not call or show and I'll try calling them and they don't answer. That is why I was thinking about charging for missed appointments but I wanted to know how this actually works. I also have a sign that reads "If you are more than 15 min. late be prepared to reshedule so that I can efficiently service all my clients." That has worked but still I would like to hear from you all on this matter.

Nidia

 

[naturalnails]

Nidia, have a search as this has been covered from both angles - those that successfully take deposits, charge for missed appointments and also from the other side of grinning and bearing it LOL.

 

[ns21]

Thank you Fiona for responding to my question. I did a serach on this topic and I found previous posts on this subject that really helped. What I'm going to do from now on is call my appointments 24hrs before to confirm. I don't know why I didn't do that before. For new clients I'll let them know that they can't be more than 15 minutes late and if they are going to cancel to call 24 hrs before. Lets see how that turns out.

Nidia