Deposits

[Elemisgeek]

Hi, we seem to get cancellations for large appointments and I would like to start taking deposits against the treatment. However how do you do it do you take the card details over the phone or use a different system?

Thanks

 

[TheDuchess]

We take card payments over the phone "to secure the booking". If we dont get a card payment when we take a booking we send an email advising that this is a provisional appointment which needs to be confirmed with a deposit.

In this email we include our bank account details so they can pay by bank transfer if that's easier, we ask them to use their first name and the date of their appointment as their reference. It works very well.

We follow this up with a courtesy email advising that "we have released the provisional appointment as we've not received your security deposit. Please let us know when you are ready to book and we look forward to welcoming you to The Duchess". Works very well for us. Obviously we confirm the terms and conditions etc. If you have a look through the threads on this forum you'll see lots of discussions about deposits and the pros and cons.