Deposits, Explained Without Mystery

Why any of this needs explaining at all

Sending money before meeting anyone sits oddly with most people the first time, and it should. The hesitation is reasonable, not a sign of doing something wrong. A wedding photographer takes a deposit before the day. A restaurant with a large table takes a card to cover a no-show. A hotel itself holds a deposit against the room. None of those feel sinister once the reason behind them is plain, and the same is true here.

The difference is that a companion booking is arranged in a single chat rather than through a website with terms and conditions scrolling underneath it, so the reasoning has to be said out loud rather than left to a form nobody reads. This guide says it out loud.

There is also a second, quieter reason it can feel unfamiliar: most transactions in daily life happen after the fact, a bill at the end of dinner, a fare at the end of a taxi ride. A deposit flips that order, and flipping a habit, even a small one, always feels a little more deliberate than following it.

What the 25 percent actually buys

Once a booking is confirmed, the companion turns down every other message that might have filled the same hour. That is the real cost of holding time, and it happens whether or not the guest who asked for it follows through. A deposit is the guest's side of that same commitment, proof the request is not one of several idle messages sent out on a whim.

It works the other way too. The guest now knows the hour is genuinely held rather than provisional, and the desk has a record that both sides agreed to the same evening. Nobody is relying on a verbal promise alone once the transfer has gone through.

How the figure is worked out

The percentage is always taken from whatever line on the rates board the booking sits on, never a flat figure regardless of length. A one hour room visit at £250 carries a deposit of about £63. A four hour dinner date at £900 carries roughly £225. The maths is simple on purpose: a quarter of the total, rounded to a sensible figure, sent by bank transfer to an account named inside the same chat.

Nothing about the calculation changes for a repeat guest or a longer standing arrangement. The percentage stays fixed at 25 for any standard hotel or residence visit, whoever is asking and however many times they have booked before.

Why overnights and events ask for half instead

An overnight, a formal event or a trip where a companion travels with a guest clears an entire evening and often the following morning too, so the deposit doubles to 50 percent to match the size of the commitment. The share of that figure covering her travel is non-refundable, since the time and the journey are both given up the moment the booking is confirmed, whatever happens afterwards.

That distinction, a quarter for an ordinary evening, half for anything that takes over a whole night or a whole event, runs consistently across every companion on the site and every district it covers, from a West End hotel to a room by the runway.

The moment of hesitation, and why it is normal

By the time a deposit is asked for, three things have already been checked in the same conversation: a name, a hotel and a room. The deposit is never the first thing requested, and it never arrives out of nowhere in an otherwise silent chat. If it feels like a leap at that point, it should feel like a small one, not a blind one.

First time guests sometimes wait a few minutes before sending it, rereading the chat, checking the account details twice. That pause is sensible, not something to feel awkward about, and it changes nothing about how quickly the booking moves once the transfer clears.

What the deposit is not

It is not a fee charged on top of the rate. It counts directly towards the total, and the remainder is simply the rest of the same figure, settled in cash on arrival or by transfer beforehand. It is not proof of anything beyond genuine intent, and it is never asked for before the three basic checks are done.

It is also never sent to a different account than the one named inside your own booking thread, and never larger than the percentages set out here. Any message suggesting otherwise, a second payment, a release fee, an unrelated account, is not this desk, whatever the wording claims.

Companions who treat it as routine

Margo, from Knightsbridge, describes the whole process as simply what a serious evening requires, no different in principle from booking a table that actually holds itself. Karolina sees it the same way an opera seat works: reserved properly, or not reserved at all.

Both are on the late twenties list, the age band that carries most of this site's planned evenings, and neither treats the deposit as anything more dramatic than the first practical step of a night that is already decided.