A quoted price is only as useful as the guarantee behind it. If a fare can be adjusted after you have committed to a booking — because fuel prices moved, because of traffic, because of any other reason — the quote was never really a fixed price. Here is exactly how price locking works at Fare 1 and what it means for you.
The Moment a Price Is Locked
A Fare 1 fare is locked the moment you confirm your booking. At that point, three things happen simultaneously: you receive a booking confirmation, your card is authorised for the quoted amount, and the fare is recorded against your booking as the final price.
No subsequent event changes that figure. Not a change in fuel prices. Not a change to Fare 1's per-mile rates. Not a busier or quieter-than-expected travel day. Not the actual duration of the journey. The amount authorised at booking is the amount captured after your trip.
This is a hard guarantee, not a soft one. The manual capture model — where Fare 1 holds an authorisation and captures it post-trip — means the system is structurally incapable of capturing more than was authorised. The authorisation defines the ceiling, and the capture matches it exactly.
How Long a Live Quote Stays Valid
Before you confirm a booking, the quote displayed on book.fare1.co.uk is a live calculation. It reflects the current per-mile rates, the current surcharge schedule, and the current route distance as measured at the moment you requested it.
A quote that you have not yet confirmed is not a locked price. If you return to the platform later and request the same journey, the system recalculates from current parameters. In practice, rates do not change frequently, so a quote run today and confirmed tomorrow will almost always produce the same figure. But the lock only activates on confirmation, not on the first time you run the numbers.
The practical implication: if you run a quote, note the total, and then return a week later to confirm, request the quote again before confirming to ensure you are working with the current figure.
Booking Ahead: Does Earlier Mean More Expensive?
No. Fare 1 does not apply a premium for booking in advance, and it does not offer a discount for last-minute bookings. The fare for a journey booked six weeks ahead is calculated on exactly the same basis as one booked the day before.
The per-mile rate for your vehicle category, the route distance, the applicable surcharges — none of these depend on the booking horizon. If anything, booking ahead is advantageous not because of pricing but because it confirms your driver allocation and removes the risk of unavailability.
Fare Updates Do Not Affect Existing Bookings
If Fare 1 updates its per-mile rates or surcharge structure after you have confirmed a booking, your booking is unaffected. The rate that applies to your journey is the rate in effect at the time you confirmed.
This is the correct behaviour under a fixed-fare model. A passenger who has confirmed a booking and arranged their travel plans around a specific cost should not face a retrospective adjustment because the platform's pricing changed. Your confirmation is a commitment from Fare 1 as well as from you.
No Day-of Adjustments
On the day of your journey, there are no adjustments to the fare. A driver who takes a slightly longer route — because of a road closure, because of local knowledge about a better path — does not charge extra for the additional distance. The fare was calculated at booking and it stays there.
Similarly, traffic does not affect your fare. Fare 1 prices by distance, not by time in the vehicle. A congested motorway journey that takes two hours instead of ninety minutes costs the same as if the road had been clear.
The only post-trip element that can affect what you are charged is a pre-booked waiting period where the actual wait ran longer than booked — but even here, the mechanism is that you would need to have booked the additional time in advance for it to appear in your fare. An unexpected wait beyond what was booked does not automatically add to the charge.
Checking Your Locked Price
Your booking confirmation email shows the fare you confirmed. That figure is your locked price. If you ever need to verify what you should be charged, that confirmation is the reference document.
The fare on the confirmation is the fare on your receipt after the journey. If those two numbers differ, something has gone wrong and the Fare 1 team will resolve it immediately.
To lock in a fair, fixed fare for your next journey, get a live quote at book.fare1.co.uk and confirm when you are ready. The price shown at confirmation is the price you pay.