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SELINOZSAYAN LTD

Changes and notice. Hours before the start time, not days — and a move that is always two entries rather than one amendment.

Page
Changes
Counted in
Hours
A move
Two entries

Notice is counted in hours

A notice period is a number of hours before the start time. It is not a number of days, because a day is not a moment and an appointment begins at a moment. Twenty-four hours against a start time of eleven in the morning closes at eleven in the morning on the day before, not at midnight and not at the end of business.

The number of hours is named in the confirmation for that booking and does not change afterwards. Where two bookings were confirmed on different days, each carries the period in its own confirmation, and the later message does not overwrite the earlier one. The notice sheet below performs that subtraction against a date.

Moving a booking is two entries

There is no such thing here as an amended booking. A move releases the hour that was held and confirms a new one, and the file carries both lines with both dates. That is more writing than editing a single line would be, and it is the only version that survives a question asked three months later: an edited line cannot say what it used to say.

AA move, in two halves

Agreed

One message may do both: let the confirmed hour go and ask for a named alternative. The hour is released when the message arrives.

The alternative becomes a booking when the office confirms it, and not when it is asked for. Between the two the person has no booking, and the office says so in the reply rather than leaving it to be assumed.

Written down

  • the hour released, and the date and hour the message arrived
  • whether the release fell inside the notice period
  • the new date, as a fresh entry with its own confirmation
  • nothing linking the two beyond the dates on which each was written

The notice sheet

Enter the date and start time of the appointment and the notice period in hours. The sheet subtracts one from the other, prints the moment notice has to reach the office, and counts how long is left between that moment and the clock on the device you are reading this on.

With a twenty-four hour period and a start time of 11:00, notice has to reach the office by 11:00 on the day before: 11:00 − 24 h is 11:00, one day earlier. Fill in a date and the sheet performs that subtraction against it and prints how much of the period is left.

The button counts the remaining time again against the clock as it is now; the subtraction itself does not change. Notice goes to the office address at the foot of this page.

When notice falls outside the period

Write anyway, and write as early as you can. Late notice is recorded as late notice, with the hour it arrived; it is not recorded as an absence, because those are different facts. The hour is released on the message arriving whether or not it fell inside the period, so somebody else may still be able to use it.

Notice that does not arrive at all leaves the hour held. The entry then reads that the hour was held and not used, which is what happened, and the office writes to the address on the file once to say the entry has been made.

Where to send it

To the address at the foot of this page, from the address on the file. Notice sent from another address cannot be acted on until the office has an answer from the address on the file, and the delay is counted against the period, so it is worth using the right one.

If the address on the file has changed, say so in a separate message from the old address where that is still possible. How the office handles a message from somewhere else entirely is set out under confidentiality.