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No-shows lose the entire deposit, except for whatever the law requires you to refund

By the end, you'll have a fixed, written rule for no-shows: what you keep, at what point it kicks in, and what you require before booking that client again.

By Yodai · Published on September 6, 2026 · Updated on October 12, 2026

4 min read

The appointment time comes and the client doesn't show up. No call, no text, and you're left with an empty slot and no idea what to do the next time they message you or ask for another appointment.

If you charge a deposit when someone books, you probably already know how late they can cancel without losing it. But canceling means letting you know. A no-show is something else, and if you treat the two the same way, you end up forgiving what you shouldn't forgive.

What you need is a fixed rule: the same one for the first customer who misses an appointment and for the one who's done it before. No judging by appearances, no weighing excuses. And put it in writing before they book: the General Law for the Protection of Consumers and Users requires that customers be able to know those conditions before signing up, and treats as unfair any clause that charges a disproportionately high penalty if they break it, or one that lets you keep what they paid without planning to pay them back the same amount if you're the one who cancels.

A no-show isn't the same as a late cancellation

You already know how to handle a late cancellation: the client lets you know, even past the deadline, and loses the deposit based on what you decided in the last lesson. There's still a conversation, even a short one.

A no-show is different because there's no conversation. You discover the empty slot on your own, once it's too late to fill it with someone else. That's why the rule needs to be stricter, not equally lenient.

Set a window for deciding when a late arrival turns into a no-show: ten minutes with no word is the point where you free up the slot and apply the rule. Before that, it's a customer running late; after that, it's a customer who didn't show. In an international survey from Monash University (Australia) of 201 podiatrists, more than half (59.3%) gave that same ten minutes before rescheduling a late arrival's appointment.

And give notice before the appointment. At a private pain clinic at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, they gave notice by letter, by phone, and with a posted sign that anyone running late would have their appointment rescheduled, and they stuck with it for a year. Patients who arrived early went from 90.4% to 95.4%.

When they no-show for the first time
Refunding the deposit
  • It seems like a nice gesture toward someone who looked like a good client
  • Next time, they have no reason to give you a heads-up
  • You're the one who ends up paying for the empty slot, not them
Always keeping the deposit
  • It's the same rule you already explained when they booked
  • No negotiating case by case or based on the excuse
  • The message you send explains the rule, it doesn't apologize

What I'd choose: You keep the deposit every time, no exceptions for whatever excuse they bring. The only thing that changes it is if they let you know before the appointment time, which is already a cancellation and gets treated as one, or if it was a genuine emergency, like a sudden hospital admission that kept them from calling: that's not an excuse, and you don't charge for it.

What you require before booking them again

Keeping the deposit closes out today, but it doesn't stop it from happening again. That's what the second part of the rule is for: for a client who's no-showed once, the next booking doesn't get the usual deposit. You only book them if they pay the full price upfront.

It's not a punishment, it's a condition: they've shown that their word alone isn't enough to hold a slot, so next time they pay for the full appointment before it goes on the calendar. Having missed an appointment before, along with the number of past appointments, is the strongest predictor of who will miss again, according to a review of 50 studies on healthcare appointments from Carlos III University of Madrid. If they agree, they book. If they don't, they don't book, and you still have that slot open for someone who will actually show up.

If they no-show again after paying in full, it's no longer about the money: that client no longer gets a slot on your calendar. It's not worth reserving time for them that you're going to lose again.

The message you send after a no-show
Hi [name]. Yesterday you had an appointment at 11:00 AM and we couldn't reach you, so we released the slot after ten minutes. The deposit isn't refunded, as noted when you booked. For your next appointment we need full payment upfront; if that works for you, I'll send the link.
The costly mistake: not deciding on a grace period
If you don't set those ten minutes, every no-show turns into an argument over whether they were "almost there" or "just about to walk in." Decide on the window once, put it where the customer can see it when they book and in the appointment confirmation message, and apply it the same way every time: that's what lets you respond without thinking when it happens, instead of improvising an excuse to let it go.

That rule handles what happens once the appointment is already lost. What comes next is the reminder you send beforehand, so fewer get lost in the first place: according to a 2013 Cochrane review that pooled eight trials on healthcare appointments, with low- to moderate-quality evidence, text message reminders increase attendance compared with sending none at all.

What you walk away with
  • The fixed rule: whoever doesn't show up loses the full deposit, no exceptions for the excuse
  • The grace period before it counts as a no-show: ten minutes with no word
  • The condition for that client's next appointment: full payment upfront
  • The message already written to send in the moment, so you don't have to improvise it

Sources

  1. Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007, of November 16, approving the consolidated text of the General Law for the Protection of Consumers and Users and other supplementary laws. Official State Gazette (Boletín Oficial del Estado), consolidated text, accessed October 2026 (articles 80.1.b, 85.6, and 87.2).
  2. Investigating the Impact of Patient Lateness on the Podiatry Profession: An International Survey. Thasvhinni Nasendran, Alexis Y. F. Lai, Luke M. Davies, and Malia Ho (Monash University, Australia), abstract 48 from the 2025 Australian Podiatry Conference, Journal of Foot and Ankle Research, 2025. Online survey of 201 podiatrists from multiple countries, January to March 2024.
  3. Patient punctuality and clinic performance: observations from an academic-based private practice pain centre: a prospective quality improvement study. Kayode A. Williams and others, Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, United States), BMJ Open, 2014. Prospective study of 1,500 visits to a pain clinic.
  4. Patient No-Show Prediction: A Systematic Literature Review. Danae Carreras-García, David Delgado-Gómez, Fernando Llorente-Fernández, and Ana Arribas-Gil (Carlos III University of Madrid), Entropy, 2020. Systematic review of 50 studies.
  5. Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments. Cochrane (Gurol-Urganci, de Jongh, Vodopivec-Jamsek, Atun, and Car), 2013.

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