Cancellation and Refund Policy

1. Free to Cancel Until Your Provider Actually Leaves

For every service, with no exceptions, there is no cancellation fee of any kind until your provider has actually left for your booking. In particular, cancelling is always free:

• Before a provider has accepted your booking (while we are still finding or confirming a provider).
• At any time before your provider has actually departed for your location, no matter how close to the start time you cancel. Whether a provider has departed is determined from location evidence tied to your booking, never assumed from the clock.

2. The 5-Minute Grace Window

Once your provider is on the way, a meter for their travel time starts at the later of two moments: when they actually departed, and when they were due to depart (for an on-demand booking, right after they accept; for a scheduled booking, early enough to arrive around your scheduled start). The first 5 minutes on that meter are always free, so if you cancel within those first 5 minutes there is still no cancellation fee.

3. After the Grace Window: You Pay for the Provider's Time, With a Cap

If you cancel once the grace window has passed and your provider is on the way, the cancellation fee compensates the provider for the time they spent traveling for your booking. Each minute past the free window is priced at our standard hourly labor rate for errands (currently $35 per hour, which is about 58 cents per minute). The whole fee goes to your provider.

The fee is always capped, and the cap depends on your service:

• Cleaning: capped at your booking's upfront booking fee.
• Errands: capped at your booking's travel fee (the upfront fee priced from how close available providers were when you booked).
• Laundry: capped at $10.
• Massage: capped at $20.

For example, if your provider has been on the way for 13 minutes when you cancel, the first 5 minutes are free and you pay for 8 minutes of their time, about $4.67 at the current rate, unless your service's cap is lower, in which case you pay the cap. The fee never grows beyond the cap no matter how much time passes.

4. Fee Waived if the Provider Has Not Left or Is Running Late

The cancellation fee exists to protect providers who are genuinely on their way. So if your provider should be en route but has not actually left their starting location, and more than 5 minutes have passed since they were due to depart, the cancellation fee is waived entirely. You should not pay a no-show-protection fee for a provider who is not on the way.

The fee is also waived when the provider is running well behind at the moment you cancel:

• The provider has not arrived yet and their live estimated arrival is more than 10 minutes past the arrival time your booking was based on.
• The provider arrived more than 10 minutes past that time and the work has not begun.
• The scheduled start passed more than 15 minutes ago and the work has not begun.

Whether a provider has departed is determined from location evidence tied to your booking. Small movements near the starting point (GPS jitter) do not count as departure.

5. Cancelling After the Service Has Started

What you owe once a job is underway depends on the service:

• Cleaning and errands. The upfront fee for your booking (the booking fee, or the travel fee for errands) is due in full, plus the value of the provider's time worked so far, calculated from the real rates for your booking.
• Laundry. Weighing in your laundry starts the job and locks in the measured order price. If you cancel after weigh-in, the full measured price (including any surcharges) applies and is not refunded.
• Massage. You pay for the session time used so far only. There is no cancellation fee.

6. If Your Provider Cancels

If a provider cancels or fails to perform a confirmed booking, you are not charged a cancellation fee. FreeTime may help you rebook, and any amounts collected for the affected service are refunded, consistent with FreeTime's role as the provider's limited payment-collection agent, as described in the Terms of Use.

7. Refunds

Where a refund is due, it is issued to your original payment method through our payment processor, Stripe. Refunds are typically processed promptly, though the time it takes for the funds to appear depends on your bank or card issuer. If you believe you were charged in error, contact us and we will review it.

8. Your Consumer Rights

Nothing in this policy limits any rights you may have under applicable consumer-protection law. If any part of this policy conflicts with a right you have under the law of your state, that law controls.

9. Questions

Contact us

If you have questions about a cancellation, a fee, or a refund, contact FreeTime LLC at legal@freetime.app or 521 Fifth Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10175.