How bookings, chat and reviews work on Bouncing Bison

This guide follows one booking from start to finish, for customers and for providers. Browsing is open to everyone. To book, chat or review you need a free account, and to publish listings a provider needs a posting subscription.

1. Finding a provider

You can start from the search page, a category or the map. The filters narrow results by:

• category and subcategory;
• country, county and city, or a distance around a city or your current location;
• price range and minimum rating;
• home service, for providers who come to you;
• verified businesses, meaning providers registered as a company with a tax ID in a valid format, who can issue invoices.

You can sort by newest, price, rating or distance. If you run the same search often, save it from the results page and find it again under saved searches. Listings you like can be saved with the heart icon and appear under saved.

2. Reading a listing

A listing shows the provider's photos, description, price and unit, the area they work in, and an approximate location on a map. Some providers show their weekly schedule, portfolio albums or a video. Badges tell you whether the provider is a registered business or has been verified by our team.

Below that are reviews, with a breakdown by star rating, photos customers attached, and any public replies from the provider.

3. Requesting a booking

Pick a date, and the listing shows the times the provider has free that day, based on their working hours and existing bookings. Choose a time, add a note (up to 500 characters) describing what you need, and send the request.

A request is not yet a confirmed appointment. Its status is pending until the provider responds. You will find it under bookings, and you get a notification when the status changes.

4. What the provider does

The provider sees the request on their dashboard and in their bookings list, and can:

• Accept it. The time slot is then reserved, so no other customer can book the same slot for that listing.
• Decline it, for example if the job is outside what they do.

Either of you can cancel a booking later if plans change. Only the provider can accept, decline or mark a booking as done.

5. The booking chat

Every booking has its own chat, open as soon as the request is sent. Only the customer and the provider on that booking can read it. Status changes (requested, accepted, declined, canceled, completed) appear in the chat as short system messages, so the conversation and the history of the booking are in one place.

Use the chat for the details that do not fit in a listing: the address, how to get in, what materials are needed, and any change to price or scope. If there is a disagreement later, a written agreement in the chat is much easier to point to than a phone call.

6. Before the appointment

For accepted bookings with a set time, both of you receive a reminder email about a day before. From the booking page you can also add the appointment to your calendar.

7. Completing the job

After the work is done, the provider marks the booking as completed. The contract for the service is between the customer and the provider, on the terms they agreed. Bouncing Bison handles the booking and the messages, as described in our terms.

8. Reviews

Once a booking is completed, the customer can leave one review for it: a rating from one to five stars, a written comment and optional photos. Only customers with a completed booking for that listing can review it, which ties each review to a real job.

Providers can reply to each review publicly. Customers read those replies, so a short, factual answer to a critical review is worth writing.

When you write a review, describe the job and what happened: whether the provider arrived on time, whether the price matched what was agreed, and how the result looks. That is what the next person reading it needs.

9. If something goes wrong

Start with the booking chat, since most problems are easier to sort out directly. If a listing looks misleading or like a scam, use "Report this listing" on the listing page. Reports go to our team for review.

For providers

If you want to offer services, create a listing from post a service. The guide on writing a listing that gets booked covers titles, photos, prices and availability.