Cancellations & rescheduling

Open the booking and cancel - it takes a couple of taps, you pick a reason, and the professional is notified immediately. Surrounders charges nothing for cancelling, ever, because the platform never handles money in the first place.

What listings do show is the pro's cancellation policy, which is a notice expectation, one of 3 levels:

• Flexible - short-notice cancellations are OK with this pro.
• Moderate - please cancel at least 24 hours in advance.
• Strict - please cancel at least 48 hours in advance.

Treat the policy as what it is: how much warning this professional asks for, because a cancelled slot is income they can only recover with enough notice to rebook it. Any consequences of a very late cancellation are between you and the pro - the same as they would be with any independent professional - and in practice, regulars who communicate early have no friction at all.

Also worth knowing: pros can cancel too, and you are notified the same way; rescheduling is often the better move when plans shift rather than collapse ("Thursday instead of Tuesday?" keeps the slot and the relationship); and if you no-show without a word, that is the one thing pros remember. A 30-second message beats every policy.

Open the booking, tap Cancel, pick a reason, confirm. That is the whole process - a couple of taps from the booking page. You choose 1 of 4 reasons: schedule conflict, found another provider, no longer needed, or other. The professional is notified immediately, and Surrounders charges nothing for cancelling, ever.

You will find the booking on your calendar home screen or in your bookings list. Once cancelled, the booking shows as cancelled on its timeline and the slot goes back to the pro.

Two things worth doing alongside those taps:

• Check the timing. Each listing carries the pro's cancellation policy - Flexible, Moderate (please give 24 hours' notice), or Strict (48 hours). None of these is a fee; they are how much warning the pro asks for.
• Add a line in chat. The reason you pick is a category, not a message. If the situation deserves more than "schedule conflict", a short personal note in the conversation goes a long way, especially with a pro you plan to book again.

If your plans have shifted rather than collapsed, consider rescheduling instead of cancelling. Either side can propose a new time and the booking survives - the pro keeps a client, you keep the slot relationship, and nobody starts from zero.

No. Surrounders charges nothing for cancelling, ever - the platform never handles money, so there is no fee to collect and nothing to refund. The cancellation policy you see on a listing is not a price list. It is a notice expectation: how much warning that professional asks for, up to 48 hours on the strictest setting.

The 3 policy levels pros can choose are:

• Flexible - short-notice cancellations are OK.
• Moderate - please cancel at least 24 hours ahead.
• Strict - please cancel at least 48 hours ahead.

Since you pay the professional directly - cash, transfer, Revolut, whatever you agreed in chat - anything money-related around a late cancellation is between the two of you, the same as it would be with any independent professional you found through a friend. Most of the time there is nothing to settle at all: you cancel with reasonable notice, the pro rebooks the slot, done.

The honest caveat is the human one, not a financial one. A cancelled slot is income the pro can only recover if they have time to fill it. Cancel early, say why in chat, and even a Strict-policy pro will have no problem with you. Cancel an hour before repeatedly and no fee is needed for the relationship to cool.

Open the booking and propose a new time - either side can start a reschedule, you or the pro. The new slot must be at least 2 hours ahead and inside the pro's real availability, so you are only ever offered times that can actually happen. The other person then re-approves, and the booking is confirmed again at the new time.

Between your proposal and their approval, the booking returns to "requested" status. That is by design, not a glitch: a new time is a new commitment, and the other side gets to confirm they can make it. Until they accept, treat the new slot as pending, exactly like a fresh booking request.

Useful details while you are in there:

• Duration is adjustable too. When rescheduling you can switch between 30, 60, 90, and 120 minute options, so "same session, but shorter next Tuesday" is one move, not two.
• Reminders follow the booking. Whatever reminders you configured update to the new time automatically.
• No hard limit worth worrying about. A counter shows how many times a booking has been rescheduled, but nobody is cut off for shuffling a session twice.

Rescheduling is almost always kinder than cancelling when plans shift rather than disappear. The pro keeps the work, you keep your place in their calendar, and the whole exchange usually takes less time than writing the apology message a cancellation would have needed.

Surrounders charges you nothing, at any notice - that part never changes. What does change with a last-minute cancellation is the pro's side of it: they lose a slot they almost certainly cannot refill, which for an independent professional means lost income. Pros with a Strict policy ask for 48 hours' notice for exactly this reason.

So the honest answer has two halves. Formally: you cancel from the booking page, pick a reason, the pro is notified, and that is it. No fee, no penalty, no mark against your account. Practically: how it lands depends on how you handle it.

What makes the difference:

• Message the moment you know. Even 3 hours of warning beats none - sometimes a pro can fill the slot or shuffle their day.
• Say why. "Kid is sick, so sorry" reads completely differently from a silent cancellation with a reason category attached.
• Offer to reschedule. If your plans shifted rather than vanished, propose a new time instead of cancelling. The pro keeps the work, you keep the pro.

Whether anything money-related follows a very late cancellation is between you and the pro, as it would be with any professional you deal with directly. In practice, people who communicate early and honestly almost never have friction. People who go quiet at the last minute get remembered - and with a pro you want to keep booking, that memory costs more than any fee would.

No. Once a session has started, the cancel option is gone - a booking in progress runs to its outcome. Up to the start time you can cancel normally, in a couple of taps, but a session that is underway is no longer something the app can unwind. If something has come up, talk to the pro directly.

The logic is straightforward: cancellation exists to release a future slot. Once the pro is at your door, or you are at their studio, or the online lesson has begun, there is no future slot to release - the time is already being spent. Whatever needs deciding at that point is a conversation, not a button.

And the conversation genuinely covers the real cases:

• Emergency mid-session? Say so and go. Any reasonable professional wraps up a session early for a real emergency, and how to treat the cut-short session is something the two of you agree on.
• Session not what you expected? Raise it there and then, politely and specifically. Most pros would far rather adjust on the spot than discover the problem in a review.
• Something seriously wrong? You can always end your participation, and afterwards the usual tools apply: an honest review after completion, blocking, or a report - in-app or to [email protected] - which a person will review.

Since payment happens directly between you and the pro, an interrupted session settles the same way everything else does: by agreement. No platform charge appears either way, because Surrounders never handles the money at all.

Yes. Every session in a recurring series is its own booking, so cancelling one works exactly like cancelling any single booking: open that session, cancel, pick a reason. The rest of the series continues untouched - same days, same times, with sessions scheduled up to 6 months ahead. Skipping one Tuesday does not cost you your Tuesdays.

That per-session independence runs through the whole feature. Each session has its own reminders, its own booking timeline, and later its own review. The series detail page keeps the overview - your progress as "N of M sessions" plus the full list - so after cancelling one you can see at a glance what remains.

If your situation is bigger than one skipped week, there are better tools than cancelling sessions one by one:

• Pause the series - going on holiday, pause and resume when you are back.
• Cancel remaining sessions - ending the arrangement entirely takes one action, not twenty.

Worth knowing the reverse case too: if the pro blocks a date on their calendar, your session on that date is automatically cancelled and you are notified. The session is skipped, not pushed - the series carries on from the next scheduled one.

The usual courtesy applies at series scale, arguably more. A pro holding a weekly slot for you has built their schedule around it, so cancel the odd session as early as you can, with a line in chat. Regulars who communicate keep their slots happily for months.

No. Surrounders keeps no cancellation score, applies no penalties, and charges nothing when you cancel - your account after 10 cancellations works exactly like your account after none. A cancelled booking simply shows as cancelled in your booking history and on that booking's timeline, and that is the full extent of the record.

Compare that with a no-show: if you skip a confirmed session without cancelling and the pro marks it, the no-show is recorded on that booking. Still not a score, still not a penalty - but it is the less flattering entry, which is one more reason a two-tap cancellation always beats silently not turning up.

Now the honest part, because "no penalties" is not the same as "no consequences". Pros are people running their own schedules, and like anyone, they remember. A customer who cancels occasionally with decent notice and a friendly word is every pro's normal. A customer who repeatedly cancels at the last minute becomes someone a busy pro quietly deprioritises - slower replies, less flexibility on prime slots, maybe a declined request when their calendar is tight. No algorithm does that; the human on the other end does, exactly as your hairdresser or plumber would.

The good news is the fix is free and takes seconds: cancel as early as you know, add a line in chat when it is late notice, and reschedule instead of cancelling when your plans moved rather than vanished. Do that, and you can cancel when life requires it for years without it costing you anything - on the platform or off it.

The pro can mark the booking as a no-show, and it gets recorded that way on the booking - that is the entire formal consequence. Surrounders charges nothing and applies no penalty, because the platform never touches money in the first place. What happens next is between you and the pro, and the next move is 1 message away.

Send it. Today, not next week. Something like "I completely missed our session, my fault, I'm sorry - can I make it up to you?" costs thirty seconds and changes everything about how this lands. The pro blocked out time for you, possibly turned someone else away for that slot, maybe travelled to your address. They know life happens; what they cannot work with is silence.

Whether anything should be settled for the missed session is a conversation between two adults. Some pros will wave it off, especially a first time with an apology attached. Others, reasonably, will feel a held slot deserves something. Since you pay pros directly anyway, whatever you two agree is simply what happens - there is no platform mechanism in the middle, and none is needed.

Then rebook if you want to continue. One missed session with a prompt, honest follow-up is a blip; most pros will take the new request without a second thought. The thing that actually erodes the relationship is the pattern - miss, go quiet, rebook, repeat. Pros remember reliability the way you remember theirs.

You are notified immediately, and because no money ever moves through Surrounders, there is nothing you can be charged and nothing to claw back - the booking simply ends and your slot opens up. Yes, pros can cancel too, and yes, it is annoying. The good news is that rebooking takes minutes, not a support ticket.

What to do next:

1. Check the chat. A pro who cancels for a real reason (illness, emergency) usually says so and often proposes a new time. If the reason is temporary, rescheduling with the same pro may still be your best option.
2. Rebook elsewhere. Search again, message a pro or two in parallel, send a request. You are not locked to anyone.
3. Pick for reliability this time. Every profile shows a response rate and typical response time computed from the pro's actual history. A pro who answers fast and consistently tends to be the one who shows up.

One cancellation is life - pros are humans with sick kids and broken cars, same as customers. A pattern is different. If the same pro repeatedly confirms and then cancels on you, say so in a report or write to [email protected]; every report gets reviewed by a person. And if you completed earlier bookings with them, an honest review is how the next customer finds out what you wish you had known.

A no-show is a confirmed session where the customer simply does not turn up. The pro waits a short grace period first - nobody gets marked for being stuck 5 minutes in traffic - and then can mark the booking as a no-show. From that point it is recorded on the booking and final: the session does not resume, restart, or reschedule from there.

The grace period matters in both directions. It protects you from being written off over a small delay, and it protects the pro from standing outside an apartment for an hour wondering whether to leave. What it cannot do is read minds, which is why the real dividing line is not minutes - it is communication.

Running late? Message the pro. "Stuck in traffic, there in 15" turns a would-be no-show into a late start, or into a quick reschedule if the delay kills the session. Silence is what produces no-shows; almost nothing else does.

A few facts to round it out:

• Marking a no-show is the pro's action, not automatic - a pro who hears from you and agrees to wait simply will not mark it.
• No-show is one of the terminal statuses a booking can end in, alongside completed and cancelled, and it stays visible on that booking's timeline.
• Surrounders charges nothing around a no-show; anything to settle is between you and the pro, who did after all reserve the time.

In 2 places. Before you book, the cancellation policy is shown on the service listing itself, so you know the notice expectation before you commit to anything. After you book, the same policy stays visible on your booking, so you never have to go digging for the listing again to check what applies.

The policy is one of three levels the pro picked for that listing:

• Flexible - short-notice cancellations are OK with this pro.
• Moderate - please cancel at least 24 hours in advance.
• Strict - please cancel at least 48 hours in advance.

Worth a glance before booking, not just before cancelling. A Strict policy usually tells you something useful about the service: think preparation-heavy work, travel to your address, or a calendar that fills weeks ahead. If your own schedule is unpredictable, filtering for Flexible pros saves everyone awkward conversations later.

One clarification, because the word "policy" invites the wrong assumption: none of these levels involves money from the platform side. Surrounders charges nothing for cancelling at any notice. The policy is simply how much warning the professional asks for, and what happens when a cancellation lands inside that window is a conversation between you and them.

Because a new time is a new commitment. When the booking was confirmed, the pro accepted one specific slot - that Tuesday at 10:00, not "some Tuesday". Change the slot and you have changed the agreement, so the other side confirms they can actually make it. Re-approval is usually 1 tap and a formality, but it has to exist.

Note the symmetry: this is not a rule aimed at customers. If the pro proposes moving your session, you are the one who re-approves - the same protection points both ways. Nobody's calendar gets rewritten without their yes, which matters when a session involves travel to an address, childcare arrangements, or a work meeting shuffled to make room.

While the new time waits for approval, the booking shows as "requested" again. What that means in practice:

• Do not treat the new slot as confirmed until it is accepted - plan around the pending state.
• If approval is slow, a quick message helps; the request sits right there in their app.
• If the proposed time truly does not work for the other side, the conversation is where a third option gets found.

The alternative - reschedules landing as instantly confirmed - sounds smoother until the first time someone moves your session to a slot you cannot attend and the system tells you it is already settled. One tap of friction is cheap insurance against that.

Yes, immediately. The moment you confirm the cancellation, the pro is notified that the booking is cancelled, along with the reason category you picked from the 4 options: schedule conflict, found another provider, no longer needed, or other. There is no delay and no quiet cancel - their reserved time is being released, and they find out at once.

The notification reaches them the same ways any booking update does: in the app, and by push and email according to their own notification settings. A system message also appears automatically in your conversation with them, in each person's own language, so the chat history reflects what happened without either of you typing a word.

Some people hesitate over the reason - especially "found another provider", which can feel awkward to send. Send the true one anyway. Pros deal with all four reasons constantly; a truthful category is ordinary business, and it beats an "other" that leaves them guessing. The categories are broad precisely so you are stating a situation, not writing an essay.

If the situation deserves more than a category, the chat is right there. "So sorry, work exploded this week, I'll rebook once it settles" takes ten seconds and does what no dropdown can. For a one-off booking it is a courtesy; with a pro you like and plan to use again, it is the difference between a cancelled booking and a paused relationship. The notification tells them what happened - only you can tell them it was not about them.