Cancellations and refunds: the three tiers, and what you keep
In short
- If a player cancels within the first 60 minutes after paying, they get everything back. After that, your cancellation window decides.
- Inside your window you keep 50% of the court price; past the no-cancel cutoff you keep 100%. The slot goes back on sale automatically.
- If you cancel, the player always gets 100% back, service fee included.
When the player cancels: three tiers
A grace period comes first. If a player cancels within 60 minutes of paying and the slot has not started yet, they get the full amount back, including the openmatch service fee. This is our withdrawal buffer, modelled on BGB §312g legal review pending. The Terms are what binds, not this article.
After that your own cancellation window applies. From this point only your venue share is refunded, and openmatch keeps the service fee in every case. Take a €55.00 booking (€50.00 court price plus €5.00 service fee):
| Cancelled | Player receives | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| Within 60 min of payment (slot not started) | €55.00 (100% incl. fee) | €0.00 |
| Before your cancellation window (more than 24 h ahead, say) | €50.00 (100% of the court price) | €0.00, and the slot is immediately bookable again |
| Inside the window, before the no-cancel cutoff | €25.00 (50%) | €25.00 |
| Past the no-cancel cutoff (under 2 h, say) | €0.00 | €50.00 |
In that last tier the app blocks the cancellation outright: the booking stands and you keep the full court price.
When you cancel
If you cancel a slot yourself, or openmatch has to do it for you because of a conflict, the player always gets 100% back including the service fee, however short the notice. It is not their fault. So cancel responsibly: for genuine losses such as weather or maintenance, pick a structured reason in the app, which is recorded in the booking log.
Setting the windows, and what happens to the slot
You set both boundaries per court type: the cancellation window and the no-cancel cutoff. Typical values are 24 hours and 2 hours before start. Your padel court is allowed to be stricter than your pool table. The factory values are set to exactly that: a 1440-minute (24-hour) cancellation window and a 120-minute (2-hour) no-cancel cutoff. Check them before you go live anyway, because matching your operation matters more than matching the default.
⚠️ Important: the three-tier logic depends on your cancellation window being LARGER than the no-cancel cutoff. If the two values are equal or the wrong way round, the middle 50% tier disappears and every cancellation is either free or blocked outright. The app points this out when you save and refuses that combination.
A note for court types you created before August 2026: the factory values back then were inverted (a 60-minute cancellation window against a 120-minute no-cancel cutoff), so the 50% tier could never apply. Existing court types keep their stored values, so open the court-type editor and correct them if needed.
Two things openmatch handles for you. The cancelled slot goes straight back on sale, so you can fill it again. And every refund always goes back to the player's card, never into a balance, so there is nothing for you to transfer by hand legal review pending. Here too, the Terms are what binds.