I'm not the OP and have no horse in the race, but it sounds like the Professional accepted the booking and then cancelled with less than 24 hours before the app

I'm not the OP and have no horse in the race, but it sounds like the Professional accepted the booking and then cancelled with less than 24 hours before the appointment. The OP sounds fully within common sense and again I applaud Amex for listening to reason over a grey area policy. The reason the cancellation policy exists is because if you cancel the Professional doesn't get paid and it's too late to rebook them to someone else. According to Handy, the cancelation fee goes to the Professional who you cancelled on. In this case the Professional cancelled, why should they still get paid? A cancellation fee makes perfect sense in many cases, but sometimes companies take their own policies by the letter even when it's infuriating and bad for everyone. A better tack is to instead think about what the policy's intent is and how to handle it like adults. Usually in these cases the customer just shuts up and pays the fee and will never use the company again, but at least this time they had the follow through to take their money back (and if there's one thing a company notices it is their merchant account sending money in the other direction). A win for the little guy, great job OP!