Picking a slot
On a one-on-one listing, opening “Book” takes you into checkout on the same page — you do not leave to a separate site. The available slots come from the creator’s own calendar: their working hours, how long each session runs, and how much notice they need before a booking. Only slots that are actually open show up; a time they have already blocked out, or one too close to now, will not appear.
Paying
Checkout asks for your email and a one-time code — no password to set. Once you confirm, the listing price plus GST is paid from your token balance or through the payment option you pick, and held in escrow for that booking. See Tokens, explained for what a token is worth. Nothing is charged twice, and nothing is deducted per minute while the session runs — the whole price is settled one way or the other only after the session is over.
Right after payment you land on a confirmation screen with a link straight into your session room, and the booking is always visible afterwards from “All my bookings” in your dashboard.
Where the session runs
A booked 1:1 session runs in your browser at its own web address (no app required to attend). Before you’re let into the call, avaTOK runs a quick preflight check of your camera, microphone and speaker so a broken device doesn’t surprise you mid-session. Once that passes, you’re placed in the session and see a waiting screen until the creator joins too — you are never billed extra for the time spent waiting.
What decides whether the creator gets paid
avaTOK does not charge by the minute. Once the session’s time window has passed, the system looks at whether both of you were actually present together for a meaningful stretch of the call:
- If you and the creator were both present, the creator is paid and the tokens leave escrow.
- If the creator never showed up in any meaningful way, you are refunded in full.
- If the creator was there and you didn’t join, the session counts as delivered and the creator is paid.
There is currently no partial/pro-rata charge for a session that ran short — it is one of those two outcomes. For the exact refund rules by situation (creator no-show, buyer no-show, cancellation), see Refunds & Cancellations.
A note on where we are today
avaTOK’s payments are still in a testing phase with a small number of invited users (see Refunds & Cancellations) — if anything is charged in error, support will refund it in full.