By phone, minutes. By WhatsApp or email, usually the same working day and often within the hour. A complicated itinerary with several vehicles or an overnight leg takes longer, because those are worth planning properly rather than answering quickly and revising twice.
Category
Booking and pricing
Contact
+44 7775 554848 or info@firstclass-chauffeurs.co.uk
01/The short answer
By phone, minutes. By WhatsApp or email, usually the same working day and often within the hour. A complicated itinerary with several vehicles or an overnight leg takes longer, because those are worth planning properly rather than answering quickly and revising twice.
Speed is easy on a simple job, because a Heathrow run to Belgravia in an S-Class is a journey this desk has priced a thousand times. The time goes into the jobs where the route has to be planned before it can be priced.
QA-01/What makes a quote fast
What makes a quote fast
A complete enquiry. Pickup postcode, destination, date, time, passengers and bags produces an answer immediately. An enquiry that says "a car to the airport next week" produces two emails of questions first, which is where most of the delay in quoting actually lives.
Standard routes are fastest of all, because the fixed fares already exist. Anything on the published card, Heathrow and Gatwick runs into central London in particular, can be confirmed in a sentence rather than calculated.
Phone or message: minutes, at any hour
A complete WhatsApp enquiry for a standard route: often within the hour
Email with a full itinerary: same working day
Multi-vehicle event or multi-day trip: one to two working days
Anything with an overnight or a ferry: longer, and worth it
QA-02/Why some quotes take longer
Why some quotes take longer
Long distance runs to places without an obvious route are planned before they are priced. A drive to a Highland lodge or a Welsh coastal address involves working out what the last twenty miles actually look like, because that is where the time goes and averages lie about it.
Multi-vehicle days are the other case. Three cars across a conference schedule is a logistics problem before it is a pricing one, and a figure produced without solving the logistics first is a figure that changes later.
QA-03/Getting an answer out of hours
Getting an answer out of hours
Reservations are answered around the clock. A message to +44 7775 554848 at two in the morning gets a reply, which matters when a flight has just been cancelled and you need to know whether a car can be at Terminal 3 by four.
For anything less urgent, email to info@firstclass-chauffeurs.co.uk is read the same morning. Sending it overnight rather than waiting until nine simply means the answer is already there when you get up.
QA-04/What arrives when it does
What arrives when it does
A written quotation with the vehicle class, the journey, the figure and the pass-through costs listed separately. Usually two or three vehicle options rather than one, because the sensible choice depends on things only you know about the day.
It states that quoted figures are quoted figures and that the written quotation confirms the final price, what it includes and any applicable tax. Nothing is left implied, which is the entire reason it is written rather than spoken.
The published card gives you an immediate figure for hourly work and for the Heathrow and Gatwick fixed fares, which covers a good proportion of enquiries. Anything else is quoted by a person, because a calculator cannot see that the last mile is a farm track.
Can I get a quote for a date months away?
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Yes, and for weddings and events it is the sensible time to ask. The rate is quoted from the current card and confirmed in writing. Holding a specific vehicle for a distant date usually involves a deposit, which is stated in the quotation itself.
Will you quote against a competitor's price?
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We will quote the job honestly and show what is in the figure, which is a more useful comparison than matching a number. Where another price is much lower, the difference is usually in what happens when a flight is late, and that is worth reading closely.
Tell us the journey. We will send the price in writing.
Message us the date, the pick-up and where you are going. You will get a fixed written quotation with the vehicle, the chauffeur’s arrival time and what the figure includes — no form to fill in, and no estimate that moves later.
