---
title: "Terms and refunds — Palaestral"
description: "The terms of using Palaestral and its refund policy: who takes the payment, the cancellation terms a booking keeps, what happens to fees, and disputes."
canonical: "https://palaestral.com/terms"
---

# Terms and refunds

The terms of using Palaestral, for an instructor who sells on it and a client who books, and how a booking is refunded. The refund rules below are the ones a cancellation is priced by: a booking is refunded on the cancellation terms recorded on it when it was sold.

1. [Who is who](https://palaestral.com/terms#who-is-who)
2. [Payments](https://palaestral.com/terms#payments)
3. [Refunds](https://palaestral.com/terms#refunds)
4. [Moving a booking](https://palaestral.com/terms#moving-a-booking)
5. [How a refund reaches the client](https://palaestral.com/terms#how-a-refund-reaches-the-client)
6. [Fees on a refund](https://palaestral.com/terms#fees-on-a-refund)
7. [Disputes](https://palaestral.com/terms#disputes)
8. [Studios](https://palaestral.com/terms#studios)
9. [Listing on Google](https://palaestral.com/terms#google)
10. [Text messages](https://palaestral.com/terms#texts)
11. [Accounts](https://palaestral.com/terms#accounts)
12. [Acceptable use](https://palaestral.com/terms#acceptable-use)
13. [An instructor's own AI assistant](https://palaestral.com/terms#assistant)
14. [Bringing your clients over](https://palaestral.com/terms#import)
15. [Your data](https://palaestral.com/terms#your-data)
16. [Changes](https://palaestral.com/terms#changes)
17. [Contact](https://palaestral.com/terms#contact)

## Who is who

Palaestral is operated by Brick Sofa, LLC, a California limited liability company.

Palaestral is booking, payments and client records for independent instructors, built in San Diego, California. It is reached at [hello@palaestral.com](mailto:hello@palaestral.com).

A lesson is between the client and the instructor. The instructor sets the schedule, the price, the cancellation terms and the waiver their clients sign, teaches the lesson, and answers for it — including the permits, insurance and class limits where they teach. Palaestral is not a party to the lesson.

A new account starts with a short, general waiver. The text clients sign is the instructor's to write and publish, and whether it suits what they teach is theirs to decide.

## Payments

**The instructor is the merchant of record.** A client's card is charged by Stripe on the instructor's own Stripe account: the money goes to the instructor, Stripe bills its processing fee to the instructor, and any 1099-K is issued in the instructor's name. None of the instructor's money sits in a balance held here on the way through, and card numbers are never held here.

An instructor takes payment by connecting a Stripe account of their own, which they keep, with its own dashboard, under Stripe's own agreement with them.

Palaestral's fee is what the [pricing page](https://palaestral.com/pricing) states. Where a studio an instructor teaches at takes a share of what they sell there, that share is taken from the same payment, held by Palaestral, and paid on to the studio on the terms below. A booking is charged Palaestral's fee at the price in force when the client books, and a later change to the price never reaches it; the amount at that price is fixed when the client goes to pay.

A booking is confirmed when Stripe reports the payment, never by the browser returning from checkout, so a payment that went through is recorded even when the page closed first. The seat is held while the client pays. A payment that arrives after that hold has lapsed, for a seat that has since gone to somebody else, is refunded in full.

**A card on file.** A client who has booked with an instructor can save a card with them, on Stripe's own page and on the instructor's Stripe account, one card per instructor. Saving it charges nothing and allows nothing by itself: each thing it is later used for is agreed to separately, when it is offered. A newer card takes the place of the one on file, and a client can remove a card from their account, after which nothing can be charged to it — except while something they agreed to still charges it: a live membership renewing on it, a late-cancel or no-show fee not yet charged, or a weekly booking that lets a week be charged to it. Until that ends, the card can be replaced but not removed.

**A membership.** An instructor may sell a membership: a price a month for a number of visits a month, or for unlimited visits, to the lessons it names. A client joins signed in, paying the first month on Stripe's own page on the instructor's Stripe account, and agrees there that the card they pay with is charged the same price each month, on the day the paid month ends, until they cancel; the card is kept on file with the instructor for that. The price, the visits and the lessons a membership covers are fixed when the client joins, and a change the instructor makes later reaches only people who join after it. Stripe's own fee for its Billing service is charged to the instructor's Stripe account.

A visit is used by booking a lesson signed in, one seat, for oneself, and pays for a lesson that starts inside a month already paid for; visits do not carry over from one month to the next. A month whose payment fails gives no visits until it is paid. A booking made by somebody not signed in — an agent booking for a person among them — is paid by card and never uses a visit.

A client pauses a membership from their account for up to 90 days: no month is charged, and none gives visits, while it is paused, and the month already paid for stays usable to its end. It resumes on its own on the date they chose, or sooner if they resume it. A client cancels from their account at any time, and the membership ends when the month already paid for ends, its visits usable until then, with nothing more charged; until then they can keep it after all. An instructor can end a client's membership the same way. Pausing and cancelling refund nothing: a refund of a month is the instructor's to give, from their own Stripe dashboard. A month refunded or disputed takes its unused visits with it, and where the whole month goes back, or it is disputed, the lessons booked with it that have not yet started are cancelled too.

**Fees for cancelling late or not coming.** An instructor's terms may state a late-cancel fee and a no-show fee, each between $0.50 and $500.00. They apply only to a lesson an unlimited membership pays for, because such a visit forfeits nothing else; a lesson paid by card, by credits or by a counted visit keeps what its refund terms say. A client agrees to them when they sign for the lesson, naming the card on file they are charged to, and the lesson is not confirmed without that agreement. The fees a lesson carries are the ones in its terms when it was booked, and a later change reaches only lessons booked after it. Cancelling later than the terms allow costs the late-cancel fee reduced by the share of the lesson the terms would have given back; not coming costs the no-show fee reduced the same way; a lesson the instructor calls off costs nothing, and an amount under $0.50 is never charged. A fee is charged to the card on file 24 hours after it arises, and the client is told when it arises, when it is charged and if the card refuses it; until it is charged the instructor can waive it, and an absence marked by mistake and corrected withdraws it. A fee the card refuses is not tried again. Palaestral's fee is charged on a fee at the rates the lesson was booked at, and a studio's share at the share it was booked at.

**A weekly booking.** A client may make a confirmed lesson of their own weekly, signed in, for themselves alone: the same lesson at the same weekday and hour every week until they end it. Each week is booked for them the night the instructor's schedule opens it, at the lesson's price that night, and holds its seat until 24 hours before the lesson. It is paid for 72 hours before the lesson, from a visit of the client's membership, else from their lesson credits, else — only where they allowed it when making the lesson weekly — by charging their card on file with the instructor, never more than the price they were shown then. A week nothing can pay for, or priced above what they agreed, gives its seat back and the client is told; a week whose card is refused gives its seat back the same way, and the card is not tried again for that week. A week the session could not seat, or one the instructor's schedule no longer holds, is not booked, and the client is told. The client skips a week nothing has paid for yet at no cost, from their account page; a week already paid for is cancelled like any booking, under the terms it was booked under. The signature the client gave on the booking they made weekly covers each week while the waiver's text is unchanged; when it changes, no week is paid for until they sign one week again. The client, or the instructor, can end a weekly booking at any time: weeks nothing has paid for give their seats back, and weeks already paid for stay booked. Where the lesson's terms state late-cancel and no-show fees, making it weekly agrees to them for each week an unlimited membership pays for, at no more than the figures shown then. Palaestral's fee is charged on a week the card pays for, at the rates in force the night it was booked.

## Refunds

**A booking is refunded on the terms it was sold under.** The cancellation terms in force when a client books are copied onto the booking, and a cancellation is priced from that copy. An instructor can change their terms at any time; the change reaches what they sell from then on and never a seat already sold.

- **The client cancels**: The share the terms give for the notice left, from the moment of cancelling to the start of the session. A client cancels from their booking's own page — the link in their confirmation email — and is shown the amount before they confirm.
- **The instructor calls the session off**: Everything paid comes back, whatever the terms say about notice.
- **The instructor calls it off for conditions**: The share the terms set for conditions: water too flat or too big, a closed trail, weather nobody should teach in.
- **The client does not turn up**: Nothing is sent: marking a client absent refunds nothing, whatever the terms say about not turning up. Where an instructor's terms give a share back for a no-show, returning it is the instructor's to do, from their own Stripe dashboard, and a refund issued there is recorded here against the booking.
- **A payment for a seat that was never held**: Everything paid comes back, whatever the terms say.

An instructor who has written no terms of their own sells under the default, **Standard**: “100% back 1 day ahead or more; 50% back 12 hours ahead or more. 100% back if conditions are called.”

A booking paid for with lesson-pack credits gets credits back rather than money, in the same share rounded down to whole lessons: a one-lesson booking cancelled for half back gets none. Cover bought at booking — a cancellation option that widens the terms — is part of what was paid: a client's own cancellation keeps its price, and the instructor calling the session off returns it too, unless the cover is what made the refund larger.

A booking a membership's visit paid for gets the visit back, rather than money, on a cancellation the terms would refund in full, and uses it on any other — as a one-lesson booking paid with credits would; not turning up uses it too, and the instructor calling the session off gives it back.

A lesson pack is refunded by the instructor, from their own Stripe dashboard, and a pack refunded in whole or in part takes its unused lessons with it. The fees on a refunded lesson pack come back to the instructor as they do on a refunded lesson booking.

**Promo codes and first-visit prices.** A code an instructor gives out comes off the price of a lesson or a pack before anything is paid, and never off cancellation cover; one code goes on one booking or one purchase. The fees on a sale are worked out on what was paid after the code. A code that makes a lesson free is a free lesson for the person signed in who used it: cancelled on terms that would have given a payment back in full, it goes back to the code rather than to a balance, and cancelled later, it is spent as a lesson paid for would be. A code that makes a pack free puts the pack on the balance of the person who used it. An instructor's first-visit price is for somebody signed in with no earlier lesson, pack, gift or credit with them, once.

**A pack bought as a gift.** Any lesson pack can be bought for somebody else. Its lessons never expire and carry no fees, whatever the pack's own validity says, and are used by the person it was given to, signed in at the address it was sent to. The person who bought it pays for it, and may send it to a corrected address until any of it has been used. If the purchase is refunded or reversed, the money goes back to the person who bought it, and any lessons not yet used are removed from the recipient's balance. The recipient is told. TERMS AND CONDITIONS ARE APPLIED TO GIFT CERTIFICATES/GIFT CARDS

**A held seat.** Where an instructor prices a hold, a client can hold a seat by entering a card, and nothing is charged while the hold lasts. Finishing the booking charges that card the booking's full amount, with the hold price inside it rather than on top. A hold that ends unpaid — the hold runs out, the payment window closes before the payment completes, or the payment is declined — takes the hold price from the card and releases the rest. A held seat the client cancels, or one in a session the instructor calls off, releases the card and takes nothing.

## Moving a booking

**A client can move a booking to another time of the same lesson** from the booking's own page, while cancelling it would refund it in full under the terms it was sold under, and at most 3 times. The new time is priced as the booking was. The same price moves nothing but the seat, and a cheaper time refunds the difference to the card that paid. A dearer time is paid for first, as a payment of its own on the instructor's Stripe account, charged Palaestral's fee at the rates the booking was sold at; the booking moves once that payment arrives, and where the new time has filled by then, the booking stays where it was and that payment is refunded in full. Until that payment arrives, the instructor withdraws the move by moving the new time, calling it off, or calling off the booking's own lesson with another time offered: the client is told, the payment page is closed, a payment that lands on it anyway is refunded in full, and the withdrawn move does not count against that limit. A moved booking keeps the terms it was sold under. A booking a membership's visit paid for moves only to a time inside the month the visit came from, and to a lesson the membership covers.

**An instructor calling a session off for conditions may offer another time.** Each client's seat on it is held for up to 48 hours, and never past the moment that session stops taking bookings. Taking it moves the booking as above. Declining it, or not answering in time, cancels the booking with the share the terms set for conditions.

## How a refund reaches the client

A card refund goes back to the card that paid, out of the instructor's Stripe balance. It is sent to Stripe within minutes of the cancellation, and where the instructor's balance cannot cover it yet, Stripe holds it as pending until it can. How long it then takes to appear on a statement is the card issuer's.

An instructor can also refund a payment directly from their own Stripe dashboard. One issued there is recorded here too, against the booking it paid for.

## Fees on a refund

A refund returns Palaestral's fee to the instructor in the same proportion as the payment refunded, whether the refund is issued from here or from the instructor's own Stripe dashboard. Palaestral returns it separately from the refund itself, once Stripe reports the refund.

Where a studio took a share of the payment, that share is taken back from the studio, and returned to the instructor in the same proportion as the studio repays it. A share a studio never repays stays with the studio, and the instructor carries it.

Stripe's processing fee is Stripe's, and a refund does not return it at Stripe's standard pricing, which every figure on this site is worked at. Where an instructor has agreed other pricing with Stripe, that agreement decides.

## Disputes

**A dispute is the instructor's.** A chargeback a client raises with their card issuer is raised against the instructor's Stripe account, because the instructor is the merchant. The instructor answers it with their own evidence, from their own Stripe dashboard, and a dispute they lose is taken from their Stripe balance on Stripe's terms. Palaestral is not a party to it and does not decide it.

While a dispute is open on a payment, no refund of that payment is sent, because Stripe refuses one. A refund owed on it is sent once the instructor wins. Stripe keeps Palaestral's fee on a dispute that is lost, and Palaestral does not return it. A studio's share of the disputed payment is taken back from the studio as it is on a refund.

## Studios

A studio that takes a share of what an instructor sells there is paid that share by Palaestral, into a Stripe payout account the studio connects and keeps. These are the terms a studio is paid on.

- **When a share is paid**: A studio's share of a lesson booking is paid once the lesson has been taught. Its share of a lesson pack, or of a held seat that ends unpaid, is paid 14 days after the sale. A refund before then takes the share back before it is paid. Its share of a month of a membership is paid on the same terms, counted from the payment for that month.
- **How it reaches the studio**: Stripe pays the studio's account out once a month. A negative balance on that account is debited from the studio's bank account.
- **When a sale is given back**: A refund, or a dispute the instructor loses, takes the studio's share of it back from the studio: from its Stripe balance, as far as that balance covers it, and what it does not cover out of the shares the studio is owed next. While a studio owes, Palaestral pays it nothing new in that currency, and takes what it owes from its later shares until it is repaid.
- **A change in what a studio keeps**: A share applies to what is sold after it takes effect, never to a sale already made. A lower share takes effect at once. A higher one takes effect only once the instructor it is taken from accepts it.
- **An instructor's own AI assistant**: An instructor who teaches at your place may connect their own AI assistant to their own teaching records there. It reads that instructor's own sessions and clients, and your place's locations, including their directions and access notes. It reads nothing of another instructor's teaching, and nothing of your payouts, roster or settings.

## Listing on Google

An instructor can list their place on Book on Google, so that people find it on Google Maps and Search and book on the instructor's own Palaestral page, and can list lessons that meet outdoors on Things to do on Google, so that people find them where they meet and book on the same page. These are the terms a listing is made on, and turning one on agrees to them.

- **Who can list**: The owner of a place on Palaestral who teaches there, alone, and teaches at no other place on Palaestral, with payments connected. A Book on Google listing names one venue of the place's, with its street address, in a country Palaestral lists. A Things to do listing names no address: it lists lessons where they meet.
- **What the instructor confirms**: That the Google Business Profile they name is theirs; that they hold every licence, certification and permit their lessons need; and that they will honour every booking made through Google at the price and on the terms their page shows. For Book on Google, also that they own or lease the venue's address and teach there.
- **What Palaestral sends Google**: For Book on Google, the business name, phone, address and website the instructor gives, and each lesson's title, description, price and length, as their page shows them. For Things to do, the business name and phone and the Business Profile ID where the instructor gives one, and each lesson's title, description, price, length and cancellation terms, with the name, position and directions of each meeting point it has a time at — which anyone can then find on Google Maps and Search, whoever issues permits there included. Nothing about a client is sent. When a booking a Book on Google link led to is confirmed, Palaestral tells Google that it happened, with Google's own reference and nothing else.
- **What is listed**: Every lesson a stranger can book on its own at a listed price while it has a time scheduled — at the venue for Book on Google, and at a meeting point with a map pin for Things to do — at the price the page shows. Things to do shows one price for every time, so a lesson whose price an adjustment can raise is not listed there. A lesson whose title or description Google's rules refuse is left out, and the console says why.
- **A fee on new clients Google brings**: Palaestral may take a fee on a new client's first payment made through a listing: the one the price in force sets, stated on the console with its figure before the instructor accepts it. It is not taken under a price the instructor has not accepted, and while no price charges one nothing is taken. A new client is somebody who has never booked with the instructor, bought a lesson pack from them, held a membership with them or been given lessons by them.
- **When that fee is not taken, or comes back**: Nothing is taken on a client whose last arrival before paying was through the link or the QR code the instructor's console gives them, or who arrived from Google more than a day before the payment page opened. An address that opens the instructor's page directly, such as a QR code printed before the console offered its own, is not that link. The payment page asks the client how they heard of the instructor; an answer that they already knew them, or that someone told them about them, returns the fee, and so does a card that paid the instructor before, where Palaestral recorded that card: it records the card of each payment made through it from the day this section was added to these terms, and of none before. A refund returns the fee in the proportion refunded. The instructor can contest a fee within 30 days by naming the earlier client the payer was; where the payer's card or address shows they are one, the fee is returned at once, and otherwise Palaestral decides within 14 days and returns the fee if it has not decided by then.
- **A booking Google asks about**: Where Google tells Palaestral that a booking it sent was not honoured as listed, Palaestral may cancel that booking and refund it in full, as a cancellation by the instructor, from the instructor's own Stripe account. The instructor is told why.
- **Leaving**: The instructor turns a listing off from their console at any time. Palaestral stops sending it to Google that night, and Google removes it within a few days. Palaestral may hold a listing out, with the reason shown on the console, or withdraw it, where Google asks or the place stops meeting these terms. The [contact page](https://palaestral.com/contact#google) says how the owner of a Business Profile with no account here asks for it to be taken off.

## Text messages

Palaestral lesson texts are a reminder the day before a lesson and word that a lesson was called off close to its start, for lessons booked on Palaestral. A client who has booked with an instructor can ask for them for that instructor's lessons, from the page of a booking. The mobile number is checked with a one-time code first, and it must be a United States number. Agreeing is not a condition of booking, and every text is also sent by email.

- Message frequency varies with what is booked: usually one or two texts for each booking, and one when texts are turned on for an instructor.
- A reminder arrives between 8 AM and 9 PM where the lesson is. A lesson called off within 12 hours of its start is texted at any hour.
- Message and data rates may apply.
- Reply **STOP** to stop every text from Palaestral to that number, or **HELP** for help. Texts can also be turned off for one instructor, or the number removed, on the account page. Help is at [hello@palaestral.com](mailto:hello@palaestral.com).
- A number that replied STOP gets no more texts until its holder texts START to the same number and turns texts on again.
- Replies are not read by a person. To reach an instructor, contact them directly.
- Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

For an instructor these texts are part of Palaestral: up to 250 a month for each instructor. Past that the same messages arrive by email until the month turns, and the instructor is told once. An instructor is shown whether a client's texts are on, and never the number. What is held about a text, and for how long, is on the [privacy page](https://palaestral.com/privacy#texts).

## Accounts

- There are no passwords. Signing in sends a one-time link to an email address, so whoever reads that inbox can sign in, and keeping it yours is what keeps the account yours.
- One account per person, keyed on the address. Somebody who booked as a guest and later signs in with that address finds their bookings already there.
- An instructor account needs an invitation while signups are invite-only, and [Get started](https://palaestral.com/start) says how to ask for one.
- A page address an instructor claims stays theirs, including one they have renamed away from, so a link already printed keeps working and never passes to somebody else — until they release that name, which takes down every page published at it and frees it for anyone to claim. The number of names one owner may hold is limited, and releasing one is how an owner at the limit makes room.
- Anyone can download their records from [Your account](https://app.palaestral.com/account) at any time, and an instructor can close their account there. Closing calls off upcoming lessons and refunds them in full, ends memberships and refunds the unused part of the current month, ends weekly bookings, and refunds unused pack lessons — a gift's to whoever paid for it. These refunds come from the instructor's Stripe balance, as every refund does. Closing does not end a refund, dispute or fee already under way, and Palaestral goes on acting on the instructor's Stripe account only to finish them.
- The Stripe account is the instructor's and stays open. Closing Palaestral does not close it, and the instructor can disconnect Palaestral from it at any time; a refund still owed then is theirs to send from it. A closed account can be reopened, with its records as they were for 30 days and as a fresh start under the same name after.

## Acceptable use

Sell and book lessons that are really taught, under the name of the person or studio teaching them. Do not:

- take a booking or a payment for a session nobody intends to teach;
- claim a name, a page or a waiver that passes itself off as another person or business;
- reach, or try to reach, a record that is not yours to see;
- bring over a client list holding people who are not your clients;
- test the security of a real instructor's bookings or a real client's data — report what you find to the address below instead.

An account used for any of these can be closed.

Reading the public pages, a published catalogue and the [site summary](https://palaestral.com/llms.txt) is welcome, by a person or by an agent working for one. An agent that books acts for the people it books, and stops where they have to act: the booking call carries no signature. Each waiver is signed on the booking's own page by the person the booking is for, signed in through a link sent to the address it was made under, and their account and the address and user agent they signed from are recorded beside each signature.

## An instructor's own AI assistant

An instructor can connect their own AI assistant, such as Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini, to their Palaestral account, where it reads their teaching and saves drafts for them to review. The instructor chooses that assistant and is responsible for it, and for what it does with their clients' information. Before allowing it to read the notes they keep about clients, the instructor must tell those clients so, and that each of them can stop it from their own Palaestral account. Palaestral gives no medical guidance, and refuses a draft containing words about injury, pain, rehabilitation or a medical condition. Nothing an assistant drafts is published or reaches a client until the instructor uses it or sends it themselves.

## Bringing your clients over

An instructor can bring their client list from another system. By doing so they state that everyone in it is their client, that they may give Palaestral those people's details and their own notes about them, and that none of them has asked not to be contacted. Lessons carried over are lessons the client paid the instructor for elsewhere: the instructor honours them, and Palaestral takes no fee on a lesson booked with one. A client books with one on a lesson the instructor sells by lesson pack. If the instructor closes their account, lessons carried over can no longer be booked here, and because no payment for them was made through Palaestral, what is owed for them is between the instructor and the client. Nobody in a list brought over is sent anything unless the instructor asks for the one email that tells them, which is promotional mail from the instructor and carries what the [email page](https://palaestral.com/messages) sets out.

## Your data

An instructor's clients, sessions, waivers and records are theirs. What is held, how long it is kept, and what a deletion request removes and keeps are on the [privacy page](https://palaestral.com/privacy), and every message sent is on the [email page](https://palaestral.com/messages). Download a copy of yours from [Your account](https://app.palaestral.com/account).

## Changes

These terms change when the product does, and this page is where a change is published. A booking is refunded on the cancellation terms, and charged the fee, recorded on it when it was made — whatever this page says afterwards.

## Contact

Questions about these terms, a refund or a dispute: [hello@palaestral.com](mailto:hello@palaestral.com). Anything about one lesson — its time, its place, cancelling it — is faster from the instructor, who holds the booking.

[Messages we send](https://palaestral.com/messages)