This is not legal advice. It explains how these policies usually work and gives you a starting point to rewrite in your own words. Cronenta does not write your policy, does not review or approve it, and is not a part of the agreement between you and your student. If real money or liability is involved and you are unsure, ask a lawyer where you operate.
A student books Saturday at ten. At half past nine on Saturday they text to say something came up. You have already driven across town.
Every instructor has a rule for that moment. Most have never written it down, which means the rule is whatever you decide while you’re annoyed and sitting in a car. It comes out differently every time, and afterwards there’s nothing to point at.
Writing it down isn’t a legal exercise. It’s the difference between having a policy and having an argument.
What a terms of service actually is
A terms of service is the set of things you and your student agree on before the first lesson. Not a contract in the courtroom sense. It’s the plain version of one, and it answers the questions that only ever come up once something has already gone wrong.
What did they buy, exactly? One lesson, or a block of ten? What do they owe you if they cancel late, or don’t show up at all? What do you owe them if you’re the one who cancels? What happens to the unused half of a package they no longer want, and how long does a package stay valid in the first place?
You already have answers to all five. You give them out loud, one student at a time, in slightly different words each time. A terms of service is those same answers written once and sent before the first lesson, instead of after the first problem.
The reason to have one isn’t that a lawyer told you to. It’s that a student who reads the rule before booking almost never argues with it later. The argument happens when the first time they hear the rule is the moment it costs them money.
The four decisions a cancellation policy makes
Strip away the wording and a cancellation policy makes four decisions. Every policy you have ever read is those four, filled in differently.
Three of them cover your student cancelling on you. The fourth covers you cancelling on your student, and it is the side most policies never mention.
One: how much notice you want. A number of hours before the lesson starts, after which a cancellation counts as late. This is the only number most students will remember, so make it a round one.
Two: what a late cancellation costs. Your options are nothing, part of the lesson fee, or the whole lesson. If the student is on a package, charging the whole lesson usually means deducting it as if it had happened.
Three: what a no-show costs. A no-show isn’t the same thing as a late cancellation, and it’s worth saying so separately. Someone who tells you at eight in the morning has at least given you the morning back. Someone who leaves you parked outside their house has not.
Four: what happens when you cancel. Skipping this is the most common mistake, and the one that reads worst. A policy that only binds the student looks exactly like what it is. Say what you do when you’re sick, when the car is in the shop, or when the roads are bad. Reschedule at no charge is the normal answer, and writing it down costs you nothing.
There’s a fifth thing worth adding even though it isn’t a decision: how the student tells you. Text, email, in the app. Pick one and say so, and then nobody has to argue about whether a message left on the wrong channel counted.
Refunds, and the prepaid package problem
Single lessons are easy. Someone paid for one lesson, it didn’t happen, so either they rebook it or you give the money back.
Packages are where it gets uncomfortable, because a package is money you’ve already been paid for work you haven’t done yet. A student who buys ten lessons and stops after four is holding six lessons of your calendar, and you’re holding six lessons of their money.
Three questions decide your refund policy. Do unused lessons get refunded at all, or only rescheduled? If they are refunded, at what price? A package almost always has a discount buried in it, so if someone used four of ten and the ten-pack was cheaper per lesson than a single, you have to decide whether those four get charged back at the package rate or at your normal rate. Both are defensible. Pick one, write it down, and stop deciding it student by student. And does the package expire at all? A block bought two years ago at last year’s price is a problem you can avoid in one sentence.
Two things are worth being careful about here, and neither of them is about wording.
The first is that consumer protection rules exist, they differ by province, and some of them say things about prepaid services and money paid in advance that a policy cannot override. Your policy sits inside those rules. It doesn’t replace them. This post doesn’t tell you what they say where you are, and you shouldn’t assume that writing something down is enough to make it enforceable.
The second is that a ministry-approved course isn’t the same product as a private lesson. If you deliver an approved beginner driver education course, that course comes with its own expectations about what a student is buying and what happens when they leave partway through. Keep that policy separate from your ordinary lesson policy rather than trying to write one paragraph that covers both.
A skeleton you can fill in
What follows is a starting point, not a document. Everything in square brackets is a decision only you can make, and the numbers are blanks rather than recommendations. Read it, rewrite it in your own voice, delete whatever doesn’t apply to you, and check it against the rules where you operate before you send it to anyone.
Cancellations and rescheduling
Please give me at least [number] hours’ notice if you need to cancel or move a lesson. Message me on [text / email / the app], so we both have a record of it.
If you cancel with at least [number] hours’ notice, there is no charge and we will find another time.
If you cancel with less than [number] hours’ notice, [the lesson is charged in full / you are charged [amount or percentage] / the lesson is deducted from your package].
If you do not show up for a booked lesson and I have not heard from you, the lesson is [charged in full / deducted from your package]. I will wait [number] minutes at the pickup address before I leave.
If I cancel
If I have to cancel because I am ill, because of a problem with the car, or because I judge the conditions unsafe to drive in, you are not charged and we will reschedule at the first time that works for you. If you had already paid for that lesson, you can have it rescheduled or refunded, whichever you prefer.
Packages and refunds
Lesson packages are valid for [number] months from the date of purchase.
If you want to stop partway through a package, unused lessons are [refunded / refunded less an administration fee of [amount] / non-refundable but transferable to [someone else / a later date]]. Lessons you have already taken are charged at [the package rate / my standard single-lesson rate].
Payment
Lessons are paid [before the lesson / at the end of each lesson / in advance for the whole package] by [methods].
It’s short on purpose. A policy nobody reads protects nobody, and a student who is fifteen and nervous will not get through two pages.
What instructors commonly choose
Not what you should choose. This is what turns up most often when you look at what other instructors have already published. Your rate, your city and your driving time are yours, and they’re better inputs than any of this.
Twenty-four hours of notice is the most common window, and it’s common because it’s roughly the amount of time that lets you sell the slot to someone else. Some instructors use forty-eight, some use twelve, and the ones who drive long distances to pick students up tend to use more rather than less.
Late cancellations are usually charged as a full lesson when the student is on a package, and something less than full when they aren’t. No-shows are almost always charged in full.
Packages usually expire somewhere between six and twelve months out. Twelve is comfortable if your students are working through the wait between licence stages, because that wait is itself close to a year.
Treat all of it as a starting point for the argument with yourself, not the end of it.
Where Cronenta stops
Worth being direct about this, since we’re the ones publishing the post.
Cronenta is scheduling and booking software. Your policy is yours. We don’t write it, we don’t review it, we don’t approve it, and we are not a part of the agreement between you and your student. If a lesson gets cancelled and there’s a disagreement about what is owed, that’s between the two of you.
What the software does is make the policy visible at the moment it matters, in front of the student while they’re booking rather than in a document nobody opened. That’s the part that stops arguments. The words are still yours to write.
Common questions
Do I need a lawyer to write this? For a plain cancellation and refund policy on ordinary lessons, most instructors write their own. It becomes worth paying for advice when there’s serious money held in advance, when you employ other instructors, or when something has already gone wrong and you’re trying to work out where you stand.
Can I change my policy later? Yes, and you will. The thing to be careful about is applying a new policy to someone who booked under the old one. Announce a change, give it a start date, and let anyone who already has lessons in the calendar finish under the terms they agreed to.
What if the student is a minor? Then in practice you’re agreeing with a parent, and the parent is who pays and who cancels. Send the policy to the parent as well as the student, and get their acknowledgement before the first lesson.
Should the policy be in the same document as everything else? One short document is easier to keep current than four separate ones. What a lesson includes, how payment works, cancellations, refunds. One page, sent before the first booking.
What about a student who cancels late repeatedly but always pays? That isn’t a policy problem, it’s a scheduling problem, and no wording fixes it. A policy tells you what you’re owed. Whether you keep the booking is still your call.
Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing here has been reviewed by a lawyer. It is a plain-language explanation and a sample you are meant to rewrite. Rules about prepaid services and consumer contracts differ by province and change over time, so check yours before you publish a policy, and get advice if the stakes are real.