Fixed-fare offers are paused just now.
Any fixed-fare route price quoted below was a limited-time promotion and is not running at the moment — we will be opening them again. Everything else in this article still stands, and every journey is quoted upfront on our standard rates before you book.
Two discounts apply automatically at booking. No promo code. No customer-service negotiation. Just an arithmetic rule the engine runs on every quote.
The 5% volume discount
Any fare of £250 or more gets a 5% reduction at quote time.
The threshold is per booking, not per traveller or per leg. A return trip that hits £250+ on the outbound qualifies for the discount on the outbound leg; if the return leg is under £250 by itself, the return leg doesn't add an extra round.
The discount is computed after surcharges (airport drop-off charges, congestion charge if applicable), so what you see deducted is 5% of the pre-discount total including those add-ons.
In practice this means longer-distance trips and Executive-class bookings hit the discount most often. Heathrow to Manchester one-way at standard saloon is ~£280 — qualifies. A Southampton to Heathrow run at £99 fixed-fare doesn't.
The 5% return discount
Return-leg bookings get an additional 5% off. The mechanism: the system treats the return as a discrete leg priced on the per-mile rate, then applies 5% to that leg only.
Two notes:
- The return discount is leg-specific, not whole-booking. If your outbound is on a fixed-fare route and your return is not, you only get the 5% on the return.
- It stacks with the 5% volume discount when both apply. So if your fare hits £250+ AND it's a return, you get 5% on the qualifying part plus 5% on the return leg.
What doesn't discount
A few categories sit outside the auto-discount logic:
- Fixed-fare routes. The 17 published fixed fares are already discounted versus their per-mile equivalents. Volume discount doesn't stack on top of fixed-fare flat prices.
- Hourly chauffeur bookings. Hourly is priced per booked hour with included miles. Volume and return discounts don't apply to hourly mode.
- Flash offers. Time-limited promotional rates (currently Heathrow → Basingstoke at £75) are already below market — no further discount stacks.
Worked example
Southampton (return trip) → Manchester airport for a week-long holiday. Executive saloon, two passengers, no extra stops.
- One-way distance: ~210 miles
- Outbound: 210 mi × £2.25 = £472.50
- Return: 210 mi × £2.25 = £472.50
- Subtotal: £945
The system then applies:
- 5% off (whole booking ≥ £250): -£47.25
- 5% off the return leg specifically: -£23.63 (5% of £472.50)
Final billable: ~£874.13.
That's the number you'd see on the quote screen, with the discount lines shown so you know what's been deducted.
Why this is the model
Two-part answer.
First, it's transparent. Surge pricing hides itself in a multiplier you only notice on the receipt. A flat percent off, shown as a line item, is the inverse — you see the deduction before you commit.
Second, it's right-sized to demand. £250+ trips skew toward airport / long-distance / executive — the routes where we have the most margin to share. Return discounts skew toward customers who've made a planning effort (booking both legs in one go) and we'd rather reward that than try to convert each leg separately.
See it on a quote
Head to book.fare1.co.uk, enter your trip, and look at the breakdown panel. Both discount lines (when applicable) appear inline with the per-leg fares.
For the rate sheet that feeds these calculations, see /pricing. For an end-to-end view of how a quote becomes a captured charge, see how fixed fares work.