Payment terms

A transfer is priced on the route: the distance, the time of day, whether the car has to reposition to reach the start, and what it does afterwards. An as-directed day is priced on hours, with a minimum block for each class of car.

Both are worked out before you commit, and both arrive as a single figure rather than a base rate with a list of things to add up. If a number can be predicted, it is in the quotation. If it genuinely cannot, it is in the short list further down this page and it is charged at cost.

No standing price list. Send the journey on WhatsApp and the written quotation confirms the price, what it includes and any applicable tax.

The figures on your quotation give you a way of sizing a journey in half a minute without speaking to anyone. They are not offers, and they cannot know that your pick-up is forty miles from the nearest car at five in the morning.

No figure anywhere on this website should be read as including or excluding tax, and nothing here states a tax treatment. Your quotation states the tax that applies to your journey, if any, and that figure forms part of the price you accept.

The quoted figure covers the whole ordinary journey, and it is a shorter conversation to say what that means than to leave you guessing.

• The chauffeur, the vehicle and the fuel, for the journey described.
• Meeting you inside the terminal, with a name board, on any airport booking.
• The waiting allowances set out in the booking terms, at an address and at arrivals.
• Airport car parking during that allowance, and the drop-off charge at the far end.
• Route planning, live traffic monitoring and flight tracking.
• Loading and unloading luggage, on the terms in the luggage policy.
• Bottled water, phone charging and a clean car, which should not need saying and occasionally does.
• A child seat we already hold, fitted and checked, as the child seats and safety policy sets out.

This list is deliberately short and everything on it is avoidable, predictable, or charged at what it actually cost us.

• Waiting beyond the included allowance, in quarter hours at the hourly rate for that class of car.
• Extra hours on an as-directed booking, in quarter hours at the same rate.
• A stop or a change of destination added on the day, quoted before the car moves.
• Road tolls, the Dartford Crossing and any city charge incurred on your route, at cost.
• Car parking beyond the free allowance, at cost and with the ticket.
• A meet inside a terminal that was booked as a kerbside collection, where you ask for it on arrival.
• Cleaning or repair after damage or soiling, as the passenger conduct policy sets out.

Charges levied on the vehicle for entering a zone are passed on at the amount actually paid, on the days and in the hours they apply. Nothing is marked up, and nothing is added on a Sunday when the zone was not operating.

For a journey that runs entirely inside a charged zone on a charged day, we will tell you at quotation stage rather than let it appear afterwards. A charge you knew about is an expense; one you did not is a grievance.

Bank transfer is the simplest and is what most clients use. Credit and debit cards are accepted through a payment link we send, and an account can be opened for clients who travel often enough for a single monthly settlement to be less work than paying per journey.

We do not take cash for a booking made in advance. Payment against the confirmation gives both of us a record, and a record is what a dispute is decided on.

For a one-off booking, payment is due before travel unless the confirmation says otherwise. The link or the account details go out with the confirmation and settlement clears the booking.

For account clients, invoices are issued in arrears and payable within fourteen days of the invoice date.

Extras that could only be known after the journey, such as waiting time or a toll, are invoiced afterwards with the evidence attached, and are payable on the same fourteen-day terms.

A deposit is asked for on weddings, multi-car days and long as-directed bookings, and it is normally a quarter of the total. The confirmation says the amount, when the balance is due, and whether the deposit is refundable.

A deposit is credited against the final figure rather than added to it. Where a booking is cancelled, the cancellation policy decides what happens to it.

We do not store card numbers. Card payments run through a payment provider’s hosted page, so the card details are entered on their system and never exist on ours.

Nobody here will ever ask you to send a long card number, a security code or a bank password by WhatsApp, email or text. If a message claiming to be from us asks for one, it is not from us; forward it to the address on this page and delete it.

A request to change our bank details mid-booking should be treated with equal suspicion. Telephone the number on this site and ask, using the number you already had rather than one in the message.

Every journey can be invoiced, and the invoice names the date, the route, the vehicle class, the fare and any extra with its evidence. A purchase order or cost reference you give us at booking is carried onto it.

Invoices go out by email as a PDF. Where a different format or a portal is genuinely required, tell us before the first journey rather than after the first invoice.

An overdue invoice gets a reminder before anything else happens, because most late payments are an approval sitting in somebody’s queue rather than a refusal to pay.

Where an account remains unpaid, we may suspend further bookings until it is settled, and for business customers we may claim interest and fixed compensation under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998.

Consumers are not charged late payment interest. Where a consumer is having difficulty paying, tell us; a short arrangement is easier for everyone than a debt that is being avoided.

Nothing is added to the fare for the chauffeur, and no service charge appears on any invoice. The price you were quoted is the price.

Tipping is entirely a matter for you and is not expected. Where a tip is given, the chauffeur keeps it, and we take nothing out of it.

Refunds are made on the timescale in the cancellation policy, by the route the payment arrived on.

If you dispute a charge with your card issuer before speaking to us, the issuer will freeze the amount and ask us both for evidence, which takes weeks. A message asking what a figure is for is answered the same day and is almost always the quicker route to the same result.

Tell us within thirty days of the invoice date, at info@firstclass-chauffeurs.co.uk, and say which line you are querying. We will hold that line, and only that line, while it is looked at.

Where the query is about waiting time, a toll or a cleaning charge, we will send the underlying evidence: the timestamps, the ticket or the valeting invoice. Where we have got something wrong, we correct it and reissue, and we do not require you to have proved it first.

Anything still unresolved after that goes into the complaints procedure, which sets out the stages and the response times.