The confirmation gave an arrival window. The window is nearly up. Nobody has knocked. Before assuming the worst, work through five checks, in order. An outcall therapist not arrived at the expected time is, far more often than not, a therapist standing downstairs with a message you have not seen.
The checks take about two minutes in total, and the first one solves most cases on its own.
Before the window opens
Three small steps, taken when the confirmation lands, prevent most of what follows. Turn the phone's sound on and leave it somewhere you can hear it. Keep the booking thread open rather than buried under other chats. And for the last five minutes of the window, wait near a front-facing window or close to the intercom handset, so neither a text nor a buzz goes unnoticed.
If the window still passes quietly, start here.
01 · Your phone
She sends a text when she is close. If the phone is on silent, on do-not-disturb, or face down under a pillow, that text arrives and nobody hears it.
Look at the screen now. Check the booking thread specifically, not only the lock screen, because some phones fold messages from one app into a single quiet notification. In basements and the back rooms of thick-walled canal houses, a phone can also sit on one bar and deliver messages minutes late. If that describes your flat, stand near a window while you wait.
02 · The buzzer
Buzzers in older Amsterdam buildings fail in specific ways. The button works but the bell only rings on the lower floors. The label beside it belongs to a tenant who left years ago. Two panels serve the same address, one for the upper flats and one for the ground floor.
If she has been pressing the button named in your message and nothing sounds upstairs, the delay is inside your building, not on the road. The booking page describes how the arrival messages run, so you know which text to expect and when.
03 · The street
Look out of the window. Then think about the address from outside.
A house number with a suffix can mean several front doors side by side. A courtyard building may have a gate on one street and the flat's door on another. Houseboats are numbered by the quay rather than by anything visible. If any of these apply, the likeliest explanation is someone at the right number and the wrong door. Stairs, houseboats and no lift goes through the entrances that cause it.
04 · The thread
Scroll up and read the confirmation again, slowly.
- Is the address in it the address you are at?
- Did the suffix make it into the message: hs, 1, 2, 3?
- Is the start time the time you meant, in Amsterdam time?
- Did you send a correction afterwards that might have crossed with her journey?
A partial address correction sent after she set out is a common cause. So is a time written as 12:30 when 00:30 was meant.
05 · The clock
The window counts from the confirmation, not from your first message. Send a request at 22:00, receive the confirmation around 22:10, and the knock is due between 22:30 and 22:40 for a central address. People frequently start counting from the moment they first wrote.
Addresses beyond the centre, such as Amsterdam Noord across the water, have the journey time stated in the confirmation for that specific trip. Read the figure given there rather than applying the central one.
Outcall therapist not arrived after all five checks
Send one message to the thread. Make it complete, so it can be acted on immediately.
"Confirmed for 22:40, nobody here yet. I am at the street door now. Buzzer says Visser." That line tells dispatch the time you expected, where you are, and what she should be looking for. Dispatch knows where the therapist is, and the reply comes back with a position and a time.
What not to do while waiting
Do not send five messages in two minutes. Each one has to be read, and the useful one gets buried.
Do not walk off down the street to look for her without saying so. She may arrive at the door you just left.
Do not change the address or the time in a hurry. If something does need to change, send the whole detail again, in full, as the post on moving a confirmed booking recommends.
When the delay is on her side
It happens. A bridge swings open for a boat at the wrong moment, a tram stops, a street is closed for an event. In that case the thread is where the delay is reported, with a revised time.
Nothing about the booking changes because of it. The block you confirmed starts when she arrives. The price is the same. And payment, as always, is settled at the door once she is actually there.