The “new client” fee: are you paying commission on your own regulars?
How marketplace commission works, why owners keep getting charged for people they already knew, and five things to check this week.
Booking marketplaces sell a simple promise: we send you new customers, you pay us a share of their first visit. Published rates for that first booking run from about 20% to 35% on the big beauty and wellness platforms. If the customer really was new, and really came from the marketplace, that can be a fair trade.
The trouble starts when the customer wasn’t new.
How a regular becomes “new”
Read reviews from salon owners, barbers and therapists and the same story comes up again and again. A client who has been coming for years books through the app instead of texting you. The platform counts them as a marketplace booking, and you pay the new-client fee.
It happens for a few ordinary reasons:
The client found your profile by searching for you by name. You sent them there. The platform still logs a marketplace booking.
They hadn’t booked in a while. Some platforms treat a client as new again once they haven’t booked through you for a set period, often a year.
Their details don’t match. A different email address or phone number from the one in your records, and the system can’t tell it’s the same person.
Your own link sends people through the marketplace. If the “Book” button on your Instagram goes to a marketplace page rather than a direct booking page, every tap starts on their turf.
Some platforms ask for proof, such as written confirmation from the client, before they reverse a fee. Check what yours requires.
Why it adds up
Take a stylist charging £60 a cut. At 30%, one wrongly tagged regular costs £18. Five a month is £90. That’s more than £1,000 a year, on people who already had your number.
Five things to check this week
Find the rule in your contract. Look for “new client”, “marketplace” or “commission”. Note the percentage, any minimum fee, and how long a client stays “new”.
Check every link you control. Instagram bio, Google Business Profile, website, WhatsApp auto-reply. Each should go to a direct booking page that doesn’t charge commission, not to your marketplace listing.
Pull last month’s commission report. Pick five names and check them against your own records. If you knew them before they booked, write down why.
Ask how disputes work, in writing. What counts as proof? How long do you have to dispute? Keep the answer.
Tell your regulars where to book. A card at the till or a line in your confirmation message: “Book direct at …”. Most clients don’t mind which link they use. They just use the first one they find.
The bigger question
Marketplaces can be a useful way to fill quiet slots. The problem is when the same tool runs your whole diary, so every booking passes through a system whose fees depend on how each customer is tagged.
Keep the two jobs apart. Use a marketplace for discovery if it works for you, and take bookings from your own customers on a system that charges you nothing for them.
hackney.club is a free booking system, CRM and website for independent businesses. It charges 0% commission on every booking, whoever the customer is. Stripe’s standard card fees apply. See yours in two minutes →
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