What to Expect from a Chauffeur by the Hour

Most people underestimate, and the correction is almost always the same: add an hour to whatever you first thought. An afternoon of three appointments becomes four hours the moment one of them overruns, which one of them will. Booking slightly more time than the plan requires is far more comfortable than negotiating an extension at the exact point when you are already late for the next thing.

Hourly bookings carry a minimum duration, which varies by vehicle, date and location and is confirmed in writing with your quotation before you commit. If your day is likely to stretch well past what you are booking, we will usually suggest a full-day arrangement instead and tell you plainly which of the two suits your route better.

The clock is agreed at booking rather than assumed. Your chauffeur arrives before the start time, positions the car and waits, and the block runs from the time you agreed rather than from the moment he happened to arrive. The end of the block is defined the same way and stated in your written confirmation, so there is nothing left to interpret afterwards.

Where the booking starts and finishes at different addresses, say so at the outset. A day beginning in Kensington and ending at an address forty miles out of town is a different arrangement from one that returns you where it started, and it is far better reflected in the quotation than raised at half past ten in the evening.

This is the actual point of the arrangement. Inside your block you may add a stop, drop one, reverse the order, sit in the car for twenty minutes to finish a call before going in, or decide over lunch that the afternoon is going somewhere else entirely. Nothing needs renegotiating and no separate journey is being counted in the background.

Tell your chauffeur directly rather than routing changes through anybody else. He has the day, knows where the car can legally stand at each address and will usually have a view on the sensible order. Where a change takes the day well outside the area quoted for, he will say so at the time rather than simply drive.

Between stops the vehicle stays with you, which is most of what the arrangement is for. Coats, carrier bags, papers and an umbrella stay in the car instead of being carried around all afternoon. Your chauffeur holds somewhere sensible nearby rather than idling outside a door, takes his own break while you are occupied and is back at the kerb within a few minutes of your message.

You are not expected to manage him or to give notice before finishing. The whole arrangement is built so that an early finish gives the time back to you and a late one costs nothing inside the block. In London in November, the simple ability to sit down out of the rain between two appointments tends to justify the booking by itself.

Additional hours can usually be added on the night, and a message to your chauffeur is enough to start it. Usually is doing some work in that sentence. It depends on his onward commitments and on legal driving hours, both of which are fixed in ways goodwill cannot change, and neither of which is discovered at the moment you ask.

Where an extension affects what was quoted, you will be told before it is committed rather than after the fact. Where it is not possible at all, we will say so early enough for you to arrange something else rather than at the point when you are standing outside a restaurant. Booking generously at the start avoids the conversation altogether.

A handful of things reliably go unsaid at the booking stage and reliably matter on the day. None is difficult to accommodate with notice and all are awkward to solve at a kerb, which is the only reason they are listed here rather than left to good manners.

Send anything on this list with your enquiry even if it seems minor. It takes a sentence, and it is frequently the difference between a day that runs quietly and a day with one small problem sitting in the middle of it.