Stand-by is a hybrid of booking in advance and on demand booking. It takes the best of both, to create the best solution for booking a car.
Why does anyone need this?
Simple answer is because it brings the guarantee of an advanced booking, to the flexibility of demand booking.
You’re going out for the evening, and you know what time you have to be there, so you book a car to take you there for that time. When it comes to going home, you don’t know what time your evening will be finishing, so you cant book a car in advanced. The time comes to go, so you phone for the car, only to find out that there is a significant wait, or even worse, there are no cars available. It’s the risk you take. The other option is to book a car for a set time in advance, and hope that you are ready by that time, and if your not ready, hope the driver can wait. That can lead to expensive waiting time charges. You could book the car for later, to make sure you are ready, but what if you are ready to go home early, you still have to wait for the car. Which ever approach you take, you are compromising somewhere.
Whats the Answer?
Stand-by is the answer. It combines the guarantee of a car, and minimal waiting time that you get with an advanced booking, with the flexibility of being able to leave whenever you are ready or want, on demand booking brings.
How does it work?
With traditional Advanced Booking, you book the car for a set time. Such as 6:00pm, 9:00pm, 1:30am etc. The car then turns up at the time you booked. You get in the car and away you go. Assuming you are ready when the car turns up. Which you may not be. With a Stand-By booking, you don’t book a car for a set time. Instead you book a time window of up to 3 hours (2 hours on Friday & Saturday evenings) that you would like to be met during. For example, the function you are attending is scheduled to finish around 11:00-11:30pm, so you book the car for 11:30pm. In reality this could be any time between 10:45pm and 11:45pm. With a standby you can book a car for a time window of 11:00pm-12:00pm, or even 10:00pm-12:00pm or 11:0pm-1:00am, or what ever time window you would like. We then park a car up as close to the requested meeting location, as parking restrictions will allow. If we can park right outside, we will. The driver will then quite literally Stand-By and wait for your call, for the duration of the window. They will not carry out any other work during this time.
As with all our bookings, we will advise your driver, and their contact details, in advance of the booking. When you are ready, simply phone the driver directly. If they are not already at your requested meeting location, they will make their way to you as soon as you call, and take you to your destination. The flexibility and convenience of on demand booking, allied with the guarantees and minimised waiting time of an advanced booking. The best of both.
It doesn’t have to be a night out either. It can be any reason. A meeting, hairdressers, shopping, work function, networking, interview. Just about any reason where you cant say with absolute certainty what time you will want a car.
What if I’m not ready by the end of the time window?
If you haven’t contacted your driver with 15 minutes left of the window, they will contact you to advise you there is only 15 minutes left. If you still haven’t contacted your driver by the end of the window, your driver will contact you once more, to advise you the window has ended. Our normal waiting and cancellation procedures will then come into effect after the end of the window. For a guest booking, the driver will wait up to an additional 15 minutes, and may request additional payment for the extra waiting time at their discretion. For Personal Account Holders, the driver will wait at least a further 15 minutes, but extra waiting time may be charged for after 10 minutes. For Personal Class Driver Share Club Members, the driver will wait at least 30 minutes more, but extra waiting time will be charged for after 15 minutes.
What if I would like to be met somewhere different?
From time to time, for various reasons, the place someone needs to be met, is different to the meeting place they booked. With a Stand-By we can amend the meeting location if need be, however, the driver will be parked up outside, or near the booked location. So if you need to change the meeting location for any reason, this could effect the drivers response time when you do phone them. For guest bookings, this may also result in a request for additional payment from the driver as with any changes to a journey for pre-paid guest booking.
How Expensive is it though?
Naturally this is not a free service. Much as we would love to, we simply can not afford to take a driver off the road, and make them unavailable for a couple of hours at a time. However, Stand-By is more cost effective than waiting time fee’s. Stand-By is £12.50 per hour (£15 per hour on Friday & Saturday evenings) in addition to the journey fee. Our current waiting time fee’s after the inclusive waiting time are £0.50 per minute, and £2.50 £0.40 per minute for Personal Class Members. 1 hour’s waiting time for a guest booking would equate to £27.50. For a Personal Account Holder, the same amount of waiting would cost £25.00, while for a Personal Class Member it would be £20.50. As you can see, Stand-By offers considerable value when compared with waiting time fee’s
If I dont use the full booked window is the driver available to me for longer?
Unfortunately not. The Stand-By window is merely pre-booked waiting time. Once the driver has completed the booking, they will be available for other bookings. You can of course make another booking, but this would be treated as an extra booking.
Retainer
If a 3 hour window is not big enough for you, or you would like the driver to be available to you after the booked journey has been completed, a Timed Booking may be more suitable. These cost £35.00 for the first hour, and £25.00 for each subsequent hour, and are ideal should you have errands to run, or lots of short trips to make in a relatively short amount of time.
If you are an Account Holder or Personal Class Member and just need a car available to you for an extended period of time, you can book a Retainer. You can have a car available to you for 6 hours for £125, or 10 hours for £200. During this time, the driver will be available to you, and just you for the duration of the time booked. You can use them as much or as little as you wish. Throughout the duration of the booking, each journey made will be recorded, and then at the end of the booking, the total value of all the bookings will be calculated. If the total value of the bookings is more than the retainer value, the total value of the bookings will be charged to your account. If it is less than the retainer value, the retainer fee is charged. A Retainer is really the promise of a guaranteed minimum level of income for the driver for the time they are available to you, at a potentially lower rate than a timed booking of similar duration.
For more information about Stand-By, Retainer, Timed Bookings or any of our private hire services email booking@personalclasstravel.com or phone 029 2268 0850
We look forward to driving you soon
