What Happens If It Rains

The question before the booking

On the West Coast, anyone booking outdoor work or an outdoor outing asks the same thing first: what happens if it rains.

Exterior painters, landscapers, roofers, patio restaurants, tour operators and outdoor event companies all have an answer. It is usually in someone's head, or in a line of small print saying the work is weather dependent.

The customer reading that line still does not know whether they lose the deposit, how they will find out, or when the job will happen instead.

So they phone to ask, or they put off booking, or they book with whoever explained it.

What a weather page should answer

• Who makes the call, and what it is based on.
• When the decision is made, and how customers hear.
• What happens to the deposit or payment.
• How rescheduling works, and how soon the next date is.
• What counts as bad weather for this kind of work.
• What happens if the weather turns partway through.

The fifth surprises customers most. A balloon flight can be called off on a clear morning because of wind, and a painter may not start on a dry day because last night's rain left the siding wet.

Who decides, and when

Name the person who makes the call by role: the pilot, the crew lead, the owner. Customers trust a decision more when they know who made it and why.

Give the time the decision is made, and stick to it: by six the evening before, or by seven on the morning of the job. A fixed time stops customers watching forecasts and phoning to ask.

Say what the call is based on, in plain words: forecast rain, wind above a safe limit, surfaces too wet, temperatures too low for the materials. Some calls can only be made on site; say so.

How customers hear

Say how a cancellation reaches people: a text, a phone call, an email. Ask for a mobile number at booking for exactly this reason.

Give every cancellation message the same three parts: what was called off, why, and what happens next.

Then say what silence means. "If you have not heard from us by six, we are going ahead" saves an evening of calls and the occasional wasted drive.

For tours and events with many guests, a status line on the home page or a post on the business's Facebook page on doubtful days helps everyone who did not keep the confirmation email.

Deposits and rescheduling

The question underneath every other is money. Say plainly what happens to a deposit when the business cancels for weather: rebooked at no charge, held as credit, or refunded.

Treat cancellations by the weather and by the customer separately, because they are different. A customer who cancels the night before a sunny day is not in the same position as one the weather cancelled.

Say how rescheduling works: who offers the new date, how soon it is likely to be, and whether rebooked customers go to the front of the queue. In a wet spring the backlog matters.

If you sell gift certificates or prepaid packages, say how the weather affects those as well.

Halfway through

Weather that turns during a job raises its own questions. An exterior painter who has scraped one side of a house needs to say how the bare wood is protected and when work resumes.

A landscaper may stop laying a patio but carry on planting. A tour may turn back early. Each needs a sentence on what the customer is owed when the weather cuts it short.

Say, too, who pays for a second trip, a tarp over the work or a return visit to finish. Customers accept the weather; they dislike surprises on the invoice.

A worked example

A hot air balloon company flies small groups over farmland in a river valley at sunrise, from spring to early fall, and sells most of its flights as gifts months ahead.

Flights depend on calm air more than dry skies. A clear morning can still be unflyable because of wind, and the pilot often makes the final decision at the launch field after sending up a small test balloon.

The site said only that flights were weather dependent. Customers phoned the evening before to ask, some drove an hour before dawn unsure whether to expect a call, and some assumed a cancelled flight meant a lost gift.

The new page explains that the pilot checks the forecast each evening and texts everyone by eight, that a final check happens at the field, and that a flight cancelled for weather is rebooked at no charge.

It also says that cancellations are common, so gift recipients should book with flexible dates in mind. The confirmation email and the gift certificate both link to the page.

It answers in writing what the pilot used to explain on the phone every evening.

Where the answer goes

Give the page a plain name such as "Weather and rescheduling" and link it from the booking page, the quote, the confirmation email and the frequently asked questions.

Put one sentence about weather on each service page that depends on it, pointing to the full page. Customers should meet the answer before they pay, not after they have been cancelled.

Keep the wording plain. Specific times and a short example, such as what happened on a wet Saturday last May, explain more than a paragraph of conditions.

The counter-case

Businesses that work indoors, or whose work carries on in most weather, need a sentence rather than a page. An interior painter does not need a rain policy.

Some decisions cannot be promised in advance. Safety calls belong to the pilot or the crew lead on the day, and the page should say that rather than suggest a certainty nobody can give.

For anyone whose work stops when the weather does, the page belongs on the site: who decides, when, how customers hear, and what happens to their money and their date.

Writing the page

1. Name who makes the weather call.
2. Set the time the decision is made.
3. Say how customers hear, and what silence means.
4. State what happens to deposits and payments.
5. Explain how rescheduling works and how soon.
6. Describe what counts as bad weather.
7. Link the page from bookings, quotes and confirmations.

Step four is the one customers read first. Most of the worry about weather is worry about money, and a plain sentence on the deposit settles it before anyone has to ask.

Getting a weather-dependent outdoor space found in the first place is covered in the patio nobody knows you have.

Frequently asked questions

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