Cancellation policy

1. Which policy governs your booking

There is no single cancellation policy on Vribe: the host picks one per vehicle out of three, so two bookings made on the same day can carry different terms. The one that governs yours is the one the vehicle had at the moment you booked, and it is frozen there. If the host later changes their vehicle's policy, that change applies to new bookings and never to yours — just like the daily rate, the commission and the deposit, which are also fixed when you book and are not recalculated.

2. The three policies, tier by tier

All three behave the same way in essence: there is a band in which cancelling costs nothing, and from a certain point before the start the refund begins to fall. What changes between them is when that band starts and how much is retained. The table uses a round example rental so the arithmetic can be followed at a glance; your amounts are the ones on your booking.

3. The security deposit always comes back in full

In every cancellation, under any policy and at any moment, the security deposit is returned to you in full. The reason is simple: the deposit answers for damage, missing items, fuel and fines from the trip, and if the trip did not happen there is nothing to answer for. The tiers in the previous section do not touch it. It was charged together with the rental in a single payment, so it comes back the same way and in the same operation, without you having to ask. All of this applies when the vehicle asks for a deposit; if it asks for none, there is no held amount to return and the cancellation only moves the rental.

4. How late you can cancel

Cancelling belongs to the period before the trip. Once the vehicle is in your hands the booking is no longer cancelled: it closes by another route. It is worth knowing before you need it, because the button stops being available and the reason is not a bug.

5. If the host cancels

You receive 100% of everything you paid — rental, delivery if there was one, and deposit — regardless of the vehicle's policy or how long is left before the trip. No penalty applies to you, because the decision was not yours. If you had paid part with promotional credit, that credit returns to your balance in full with its original expiry: you do not pay for someone else's failure. A host who cancels an already-confirmed booking loses 10 Trust Score points and may be temporarily suspended from new bookings; frequent cancellations are grounds for suspension.

6. If the vehicle is never handed over

It can happen that the booking is confirmed, the date arrives and the handover simply does not complete. The system detects this on its own: when the handover deadline passes it flags the booking and notifies both parties and our team. From then on the refund is 100%, deposit included, and neither party receives a penalty for the cancellation that formalises the case, whoever signs it. The penalty, where it applies, was already issued at that moment: 15 points to the host, and only if they never documented the vehicle with the handover inspection. If the host did document it and the handover failed for another reason, no penalty applies to them. Any promotional credit you had applied also returns to your balance. On a trip with chauffeur the window is shorter: if two hours after the start time nobody has validated the start code, the booking is marked as not started, and the host penalty applies only if the host neither responded nor reported anything.

7. What happens to the promotional credit you applied

If you paid part of the booking with Vribe credit, the rule depends on who decides to cancel. When you cancel by your own decision and the trip was still possible, the applied credit is lost entirely and the cash refund is calculated only on what you actually paid by card: the policy applies to real money, not to credit. When the failure is the host's — they cancel, or the vehicle is never handed over — the credit returns to your balance in full, keeping the expiry date of the original batch. And if instead of cancelling you change the dates, the credit is kept. That is the main reason to ask yourself, before cancelling, whether what you need is really to move the trip.

8. Effect on the Trust Score

Cancelling can cost trust points, and it is worth knowing the three cases with their exact figure, because the system applies these and no others:

• A host who cancels a confirmed booking loses 10 points.
• A traveler who cancels inside the penalty window of their booking's policy loses 8 points. That window is precisely the moment when the refund stops being 100%: 24 hours on flexible, 72 on moderate and seven days on strict. Cancelling before that window costs no points.
• A host who never documents the vehicle handover loses 15 points. It is the highest of the three because it leaves someone waiting for a vehicle that never came.

9. How the refund is executed

The refund is not a promise someone has to keep by hand afterwards: it is executed at the same moment the cancellation is recorded, against the payment method you paid with. There is no need to request it or write to support to ask for it. When the money goes out, you receive an email confirming it with the amount.

10. What happens on the host's side

If the cancellation returns all the money, the host earns nothing on that booking: their payout is voided, though not deleted — it stays on record as voided, with the amounts it held. If the policy retained a part, that part is split between the host and Vribe in the same commission proportion the original booking had, as if it had been a normal rental. If the host had already been paid before the cancellation, the difference is recovered with our team's intervention, not automatically.

11. Changing the dates instead of cancelling

Before the trip begins you can request a date change, which the host must accept. It usually suits you better than cancelling: you keep the applied promotional credit and there is no trust penalty. There is one lock worth knowing: the change cannot be requested if the current dates have already entered your policy's penalty window. If it could, it would be enough to push the trip into the future to dodge a penalty already incurred and then cancel for free. If the change makes the booking more expensive the difference is charged; if it makes it cheaper, it is refunded to you.

12. Extending the trip

With the vehicle already in your hands you can ask to extend the trip. The difference is calculated at the vehicle's current rate and charged as a separate payment. The extension only becomes firm when that payment completes: if it fails, the trip keeps its original dates and the return remains as agreed. Because an extension happens with the trip already under way, it is not cancelled — it closes with the return, like any trip in progress.

13. Disruptive events and force majeure

If a natural disaster, a road blockade, an order from the authorities or an equivalent event prevents the trip, the tiers in this document do not apply. The treatment of those cases is in the disruptive events and force majeure clause of the Terms of Service, which is what governs in that situation.

14. Exceptional circumstances

Outside force majeure, there are grave personal situations — a medical emergency, a hospitalisation, the death of an immediate family member — in which Vribe may authorise a refund outside policy. It is not an automatic right nor an exception that grants itself: it is assessed case by case and supporting documentation is requested. To request it, write to support from the affected booking, with the documentation at hand. The same route serves if you believe a refund was calculated wrongly.