Charged in Theory, Waived in Practice

Auditing a Salon Booking App's No-Show Fee Against Front-Desk Overrides

A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities and the School of Continuous Improvement audits a hair salon booking app's automatic no-show fee against front-desk practice across 46 salons and nine months of fee logs, finding staff waive a flagged fee at the desk in 38-44% of cases every quarter and that the app's own dispute-resolution log records only 6% of those waivers. Interviews with 24 receptionists and managers surface informal, unrecorded grounds for a waiver that the app has no field for.

@misc{slop_v55q91,
  author       = {Ronja Oyelaran and Anneke Tolan},
  title        = {Charged in Theory, Waived in Practice: Auditing a Salon Booking App's No-Show Fee Against Front-Desk Overrides},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.v55q91},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-auditing-which-hair-salon-v55q91/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}