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 base fare of £350 or more gets a 5% reduction at quote time.
The threshold is per booking and per vehicle, not per traveller or per leg. On a return trip both legs count together toward the £350; booking two cars does not combine into one qualifying total, because each vehicle's own fare is measured.
The discount is computed on the base fare, before surcharges (airport charges, tolls, congestion charge, waiting time). Those are added on top afterwards, so they neither get discounted nor push a booking over the threshold.
In practice this means longer-distance trips, return bookings and Executive-class bookings hit the discount most often. Southampton to Manchester and back at standard saloon is £638.11 of base fare — qualifies. A Southampton to Heathrow run doesn't come close.
The 5% return discount
Return bookings get an additional 5% off. The mechanism: both legs are priced on the per-mile rate, added together, and 5% comes off that combined figure.
Two notes:
- The return discount is whole-booking, not leg-specific. If either leg is on a fixed-fare route, no automatic discount applies to that booking at all.
- It stacks with the volume discount when both apply. If your base fare hits £350+ AND it's a return, the volume 5% comes off first and the return 5% comes off what's left — just under 10% in total.
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 (base fare ≥ £350): -£47.25
- 5% off the whole booking, because it's a return: -£44.89 (5% of £897.75)
Final billable: ~£852.86.
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. £350+ 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.