Chauffeur hire by the hour, London

Hourly hire ("as directed", in the trade's own phrase) is the booking for a day whose shape is not known in advance. You give a pick-up address, a start time and a number of hours, and nothing more is required: no destination, no list of stops, no route. The car and the chauffeur are yours for the hours booked, and where they go after the first address is decided from the back seat as the day unfolds.

Because the hire is priced on time, the fare does not move with the route. The quote is the chosen car's hourly rate for the number of hours booked, and whatever the calendar adds is itemised beneath it: a night or bank holiday rate if the hire begins in those hours, and the congestion charge if the pick-up is inside the zone while it is running. Each car's rate is in the fares block on this page, beside the shortest hire the booking form will take.

Every hour booked brings a mileage allowance with it, and the quote states the total in miles, so a longer hire carries proportionately more. In central London, where an hour of meetings, waiting and short hops covers very little ground, the allowance is rarely what limits a day. It is worth a second look when the diary includes a run out to the country or a trip to an airport and back. Miles past the allowance are charged per mile, at the rate stated under the booking form.

There is a shortest hire and a longest one. Both are shown in the booking form, and both are set in the pricing tables by the control room rather than written into the site, so the form is the place to check them. A diary that runs past the longest single hire is quoted by the day instead, on a multi-day booking: a set number of chauffeur hours each day, one chauffeur throughout, and a lower daily figure for consecutive days held together.

Plans change once the car is moving, and the hire can change with them. Ring the control room from the back of the car to add hours and the booking is re-priced as the longer hire from its start: the same arithmetic as if it had been booked at that length to begin with, not a separate overtime rate bolted on. The original quote stays on the record beside the new figure, so the difference is visible rather than folded into a total.

A hire can begin at an airport terminal (somebody landing for a day of meetings, say) and it remains an hourly hire rather than being converted into a transfer, because that would throw away the day actually asked for. Meeting inside the terminal can be added to it when you book. Where the day is a single run with a wait at the other end, compare a pair of fixed transfers against the hire in the booking form before choosing; it prices either in a few seconds.

It suits days that would otherwise be a string of separate bookings: a roadshow of client visits, a morning of property viewings, a shopping day with bags to leave somewhere safe, a visitor being shown London between appointments. The common thread is that nobody wants to be standing on a pavement working out how to get to the next address.