A booking with no money in it is a plan. A deposit is what turns it into an appointment — for the customer, who now has a reason to be home, and for you, who can stop wondering. This is the policy side: how much, when you give it back, and what to say when someone asks.
What a no-show costs
A no-show isn't a lost sale. It's a lost morning: you drove there, you set up, and the slot can't be sold twice, because the customer who would have taken it booked somewhere else last week. That's what the deposit is for. Nobody is being punished when you keep one; you're being paid for the part of the morning that already happened.
How much
About a quarter of the price. Less than that and it's a token — it doesn't change whether anyone shows up. Much more and it starts to read as distrust, and it adds a pause at the exact moment the customer was most sure. A quarter is enough to make a booking real without making it feel like a contract, and it comes off the total, so the customer pays nothing extra for it.
When you cancel
Refund it, the same day, without a conversation. The customer did nothing; the money was never yours. If you have to move a job, that's a cancel and a rebook — offer the new time before you mention the refund, because the time is what they wanted. A deposit kept after your own cancellation is the review you'll be reading for a year.
When the customer doesn't show
Keep it. That is the whole point of having taken it. The cases in between — they texted an hour before, it rained, a kid got sick — are yours to judge, and the line to judge by is whether the morning came back to you in time to sell it. If it did, refund it and rebook them. If it didn't, keep it and rebook them anyway. Decide the line once, before it happens, and write it where they book. A policy you make up in the driveway is an argument; one you wrote down last month is a fact.
What to text when someone asks
Three messages cover nearly every deposit conversation. Say them in your own words, but keep them this short.
- When they ask why there's a deposit: “It holds your time — I book one car per slot, and it comes off your total. If you need to cancel, a day's notice and it comes straight back.”
- When a no-show asks for it back: “I was at the house at 8 and couldn't reach you, so I'm keeping the deposit for the morning — it's the policy on the booking page. Happy to get you back on the calendar whenever works.”
- When they cancel with fair notice: “No problem. I'll refund it today — it lands back on the card in 5–10 business days. Want to grab another time now while we're talking?”
Say it before they book
The deposit and the rule for keeping it belong on the same page as the prices, in one plain sentence, so nobody learns the policy from the text you send after. A customer who read “deposits are kept for no-shows” before paying one rarely argues about it afterward; a customer who hears it for the first time at 8:15 always does. If you want the deposit collected when they book and refunded from the job when you cancel, with the policy already on the page, you can claim a booking page at detailcall.com/claim.