Luggage policy

Luggage decides the vehicle. Four people with four large cases and four people with hand baggage are two different bookings, and only one of them fits in a saloon.

Give us the count when you book: large cases, cabin bags, and anything that is not a suitcase. It takes one line in a message and it is the single most common cause of a car arriving that is the wrong size for the job.

Each vehicle page publishes the number of large cases that class carries alongside the number of passengers, and those two figures are a pair rather than two separate promises. A car at full passenger capacity is not also at full luggage capacity.

The figures on your quotation assume ordinary hard cases. Soft bags pack better and occasionally get you an extra one; a rigid case with an unusual footprint can take the space of two, and no amount of optimism at the kerb changes that.

Handbags, laptop bags and coats travel in the cabin, and there is room for them without anyone holding a bag on their knees for two hours.

A rear seat carrying luggage is a seat that is not carrying a passenger. Where the boot is full and something has to come inside, it comes at the cost of a seat, which is another reason the counts matter at booking.

Sports and instrument cases are carried and are worth mentioning early, because most of them will not go in a saloon boot at all and need a larger vehicle allocated from the start.

Golf bags travel well in the MPV class. Skis and boards usually need the same, and sometimes need the rear seats folded, which reduces the passenger count for that journey.

A cased instrument that must not go in a boot can travel on a seat, and that seat is chargeable as a passenger seat if it takes one out of use. We would rather quote that honestly than argue about it in a loading bay.

Bicycles are only carried boxed or bagged, in a vehicle large enough to take the box flat. An unbagged bicycle with a chain on it does not travel in a car with a carpeted boot.

A short list, and none of it is negotiable at the roadside.

• Fuel, gas cylinders, camping stoves and anything else flammable under pressure.
• Fireworks, ammunition, explosives and pyrotechnics of any kind.
• Corrosives, oxidisers, poisons and industrial chemicals.
• Lithium batteries outside the device they belong to, including damaged or recalled ones.
• Anything whose possession is unlawful, as the passenger conduct policy sets out.
• Livestock, and anything alive other than the animals dealt with below.
• The useful test: if a passenger airline would refuse it in the hold, assume we will too, and ask before the day rather than at the kerb.

Passports, cash, jewellery, medication and laptops belong in the cabin with you, not in the boot. That is not about trusting a chauffeur; it is about the ten seconds when a boot is open on a hotel forecourt with six people around it.

We take reasonable care with everything we handle, but we do not know what is inside a case and we do not accept responsibility for the contents of one we did not pack. Where our handling damages something, we put it right, and clause 11 of the terms and conditions means we never try to exclude liability for harm we actually caused.

The chauffeur loads and unloads the car as part of the fare, meets you at the trolley in arrivals, and walks the cases to the door at the other end.

What a chauffeur will not do is lift something that will injure them. A single case over about twenty-three kilos, or an item that needs two people, needs to be flagged when you book so that two chauffeurs or a trolley can be arranged.

Carrying luggage up several flights of stairs is not part of the job. Getting it to the front door is.

Loading a full boot properly takes four or five minutes and it is time well spent, because a case wedged in badly is a case that arrives scuffed.

That time comes out of the waiting allowance in the booking terms, which is worth knowing when a booking is already tight. Where a party is large and the luggage is heavy, we build the extra minutes into the quoted timing rather than letting them eat the allowance.

We do not fit roof boxes, roof bars or trailers to any vehicle, and we do not tow. The cars are not specified for it and the insurance does not contemplate it.

If your luggage genuinely exceeds what the largest vehicle carries, the answer is a second car, which we will quote for. It is a better answer than a first car with a boot that will not shut.

Assistance dogs travel with their owner, in the cabin, at no charge and without notice being required. The accessibility statement covers that properly.

Other pets are carried by prior arrangement, in a secure carrier, in a vehicle that can take one. Say so when you book; a dog that arrives unannounced at a saloon is a booking that cannot proceed.

Where an animal has left hair or damage behind, the cleaning provisions in the passenger conduct policy apply in the same way as any other soiling.

Anything found is logged with the date, the journey and a description, and is put somewhere secure the same day.

Tell us as soon as you notice, on +44 7775 554848 or at info@firstclass-chauffeurs.co.uk, with the date and the route. We will check the car and tell you either way, quickly, because the second most useful answer is a definite no that lets you look somewhere else.

Items are held for thirty days. They can be collected by arrangement or sent by tracked courier at cost, and we will not post a passport or anything else of that kind by ordinary mail. Anything unclaimed after thirty days is disposed of, except documents and cards, which are destroyed securely, and anything suggesting a criminal offence, which goes to the police.

We are responsible for damage our loading or handling caused, and we will put it right. We are not responsible for a case that was already split, for the fragility of something we were not told about, or for a bag left in a hotel lobby before it ever reached the car.

Claims are dealt with under the complaints procedure. Send photographs early, before a case is repaired or thrown out, because a claim with pictures is settled in days and one without them turns into an argument about memory.