Managing your booking

Your home screen, as soon as you log in. Surrounders puts a calendar of everything you've booked front and centre, in 3 views: an agenda listing your appointments over the next 14 days, a week view, and a month view. Every booking you make lands there automatically - no adding, no syncing, no separate "my bookings" page to hunt for.

Each view suits a different question:

• Agenda answers "what's coming up?" - a simple list of the next 14 days, closest first. For most people this is home.
• Week answers "how does my week look?" - handy when you're deciding where a new booking could fit.
• Month answers "when was that?" and "how often am I doing this?" - the wide view, good for spotting patterns and planning ahead.

Tapping any booking opens its detail page: the status timeline, the time and address, the booking ID, and the actions available at that stage (reschedule, cancel, message the pro, or "Book again" on past ones).

Past bookings stay in the calendar too, so scrolling back through month view doubles as your history. If a booking seems to have vanished, check two things first: any filters you've applied, and whether it was a request the pro never answered - unanswered requests expire after 48 hours, and you get a notification when that happens.

Prefer your phone's own calendar? Any booking exports as an .ics file via "Add to calendar", though the in-app calendar is the copy that always reflects reschedules and cancellations.

Every booking moves through a small set of statuses, and you can see the full history on a timeline on the booking page. The happy path has 4 steps: requested (you sent it), confirmed (the pro accepted), in progress (the session is happening), and completed (it's done). Four more cover everything else: declined, expired, cancelled, and no-show.

Here is what each one tells you:

• Requested - your request is with the pro, waiting for an answer. Nothing is committed yet.
• Confirmed - the pro accepted. Accepting confirms in one step, so there is no separate "accepted but not confirmed" limbo. The appointment is now in both calendars, with reminders.
• In progress - the scheduled time has arrived and the session is underway.
• Completed - the session finished. This is the status that unlocks reviews.
• Declined - the pro said no. Normal, not personal; book someone else.
• Expired - the pro didn't answer within 48 hours, so the request lapsed on its own. You were notified and are free to book anyone.
• Cancelled - you or the pro cancelled before the session. The timeline shows who and when.
• No-show - the pro recorded that you didn't turn up. It stays on the booking and is terminal.

One status change worth knowing: if either side proposes a new time, the booking goes back to requested until the other side re-approves. That's by design - a reschedule is a new agreement, not a done deal.

If a professional does not answer your booking request within 48 hours, it expires automatically - you are notified, nothing is stuck, and since no money ever changes hands through the platform, there is nothing to unwind. You are immediately free to book someone else, and for time-sensitive jobs you do not even need to wait: send a message to another pro in parallel.

Better yet, you can mostly avoid the situation before it happens. Every professional's profile shows their response rate and typical response time, based on their actual history. A pro who answers within the hour looks different from one who takes a day, before you commit to either.

Non-response is usually not rudeness - it is a pro who is fully booked, on holiday, or no longer active in that service. The expiry mechanism exists precisely so their silence costs you 48 hours at most, not an indefinite wait. If your date is close, pick pros with fast response times and message before you book.

Yes. Every booking has an "Add to calendar" button that downloads a standard .ics file, which opens in Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook, or any calendar app on your phone or computer. One tap on the file and the appointment, with its time and details, is in your personal calendar.

To be honest about the limits: this is a one-time export, not a live sync. Surrounders does not automatically push bookings into your Google or Apple calendar, and if a booking is rescheduled or cancelled, the copy in your phone calendar will not update itself. You would download a fresh .ics after a change, or just delete the stale event.

In practice most people lean on two things instead:

• The built-in calendar. Your Surrounders home screen is already a calendar of everything you've booked - an agenda of the next 14 days, plus week and month views. It always reflects reality, including reschedules, because it is the source rather than a copy.
• Reminders. At booking you pick when to be nudged: 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, or 1 day ahead, multi-select allowed. Reminders arrive by push, email, or in-app depending on your settings, and they reset automatically when a booking moves.

So the honest recommendation: use the .ics download when you want a booking sitting next to your work meetings and flights, and trust the in-app calendar and reminders for accuracy. All times are Cyprus time (Europe/Nicosia), which the .ics file carries correctly into whatever timezone your calendar displays.

Start with a message in chat. Most lateness has a boring explanation - the previous job overran, traffic, a wrong turn on an unfamiliar street - and a quick "are you on your way?" usually gets an answer with an arrival time within minutes. Give it a reasonable window before assuming the worst; being 10 minutes late is human, disappearing is not.

If the pro is late but coming, decide together what to do: run the session shorter, or reschedule from the booking page to a time that actually works. A reschedule needs the other side's approval, so it stays a mutual agreement rather than something done to you.

If the pro never shows and never answers, you have real options, and it's worth using all of them:

• Say so in your review. Reviews on Surrounders can only be written after completed bookings, which is exactly why an honest account of reliability matters - future customers depend on it. If the session did eventually happen but started badly late, that belongs in the review too.
• Don't rebook them. There are other pros; listings show each one's response rate and typical response time, which are decent proxies for reliability.
• Block them if you don't want any further contact - blocking is instant and works both ways: no messages, no bookings.
• Report it via the in-app three-dot menu or [email protected], with the booking ID. Every report is reviewed by the team, and accounts can be suspended.

Surrounders never holds your money, and no payment happens before a session unless you arranged one directly - so a no-show costs you time and patience, not cash paid through the platform. Frustrating, but recoverable: book someone else.

Message the professional in chat the moment you know you'll be late. Even 10 minutes of warning changes everything: the pro can shuffle their plans, wait for you, or tell you honestly whether the remaining time still works. Your conversation with them is one tap away from the booking page, and a short "stuck in traffic, there in 15" is all it takes.

Why speed matters more than the apology: pros schedule their day in blocks. A heads-up lets them adapt; silence leaves them standing at your door or watching an empty studio, deciding whether you're coming at all. After a short grace period with no sign of you and no word, a pro can mark the booking as a no-show - that's recorded on the booking and can't be undone, so a message is also how you protect yourself.

Practical playbook, in order:

• Slightly late (minutes)? Message, apologise, come. Most sessions absorb a small delay, though the pro may need to end on time if they have someone after you.
• Badly late? Message and ask what they prefer. Some pros would rather run a shorter session, others would rather move it.
• Not going to make it at all? Say so and reschedule from the booking page - propose a new time at least 2 hours ahead within their availability, and the booking waits as "requested" until the pro re-approves.

One more habit that helps: set a reminder you'll actually notice when booking - 1 hour before is enough time to leave, 10 minutes before is not. You can pick several.

A booking ID is the unique reference code attached to every booking on Surrounders. You'll find it on the booking's detail page - open the booking from your calendar or bookings list, and the ID is displayed there with a copy button, so grabbing it takes 1 tap. Each booking gets its own ID for its entire life, from request to completion.

Its main job is precision. "My cleaning on Tuesday" could be any of several bookings; the ID points at exactly one. That matters most in two situations:

• Writing to support. If you email [email protected] about a specific booking, include the booking ID along with your account email, what you did, and what happened. It lets the team find the exact booking straight away instead of asking you follow-up questions first.
• Sorting out a mix-up with your pro. If you have several bookings with the same professional, quoting the ID in chat removes any doubt about which appointment you both mean.

You don't need the ID for normal use. Booking, rescheduling, cancelling, and reviewing all happen from the booking page itself, and your calendar views keep everything organised by date without you tracking codes. Think of it like a flight reference: invisible until something needs looking up, then exactly the thing you want on hand.

There's nothing sensitive about a booking ID on its own - it's a reference, not a key - but there's also no reason to share it with anyone except support or the other party on that booking.

The professional marks the booking completed once your session has finished - that's the normal path, and it usually happens shortly after they're done. If the pro forgets, the platform quietly completes the booking automatically some time after the scheduled end, so no booking stays stuck as "in progress" forever. Either way, you don't have to do anything.

Completion matters mostly because of what it unlocks:

• Reviews. You can only review a booking after it's completed, and so can the pro (reviews go both directions on Surrounders). From completion you have a 90-day window to write yours - 1 to 5 stars plus text - and one review per booking per author.
• "Book again". The shortcut back to that pro's calendar appears on past bookings.
• The record. The booking joins your history as a finished session, and for pros it counts into the earnings and session numbers on their dashboard.

The status timeline on the booking page shows the whole journey - requested, confirmed, in progress, completed - with timestamps, so you can always see exactly when the switch happened.

A couple of honest notes. First, we deliberately don't publish the exact delay before auto-completion; it's a fallback for forgetful pros, not a mechanism to plan around. Second, completed is a statement that the session took place, not a quality verdict - if the work itself disappointed you, the review is where that gets said, and it can't be edited or deleted after posting, so write it once and mean it.