A transfer invoice arrives weeks after anybody remembers the journey. By then the person checking it has a total, a date, and no way to reconstruct whether the number is right. Most of them get paid unread, which is precisely why the interesting differences between suppliers live here rather than in the quote.
Six lines account for nearly all of the variance. Not the mileage — everybody charges for distance and everybody charges roughly comparably. It is the other five, and the order below is roughly the order in which they cost you money.
One. Waiting
The largest single source of unexpected charges, and the one with the most definitions. Three questions settle it: when does waiting start, how long is free, and what is the increment afterwards.
“Starts at the scheduled landing time” and “starts when the passenger reaches the chauffeur” are entirely different products, and since biometric border checks came in the gap between them has widened considerably. Our answer is sixty minutes after landing, included, never charged — but the useful thing is not our number, it is that a supplier should be able to state theirs in one sentence.
Watch also for the increment. Billing in fifteen-minute blocks means eleven minutes of waiting costs fifteen.
Two. Mileage bands and minimums
A per-kilometre rate is easy to compare. A minimum fare is where short journeys actually price, and it is often left out of a rate card sent for comparison.
Our tariff is CHF 6.486 per kilometre for Business, the Van and the electric car, and CHF 7.567 for Premium and SUV, floored at CHF 129.72 and CHF 140.43 respectively. Zürich city is thirteen kilometres, so it prices at the minimum rather than at the multiplication. A supplier quoting only a per-kilometre figure has not told you what a short run costs, which is most airport work.
For hourly work the same applies to what the hour includes: ours is CHF 129.72 with twenty kilometres inside it, CHF 648.60 for a half day of four hours and a hundred kilometres, CHF 1 297.20 for a full day. An hourly rate without an included distance is half a price.
Three. Night hours and weekend supplements
A 03:40 collection genuinely costs more to staff than a 14:00 one. The question is not whether that cost exists but whether it was named before you travelled. On our Swiss routes it is already inside the published rate; on cross-border runs it is stated in the written quote alongside tolls and driver rest, because those journeys are quoted per route rather than off the kilometre tariff.
The failure mode to look for is a supplement with a threshold nobody mentioned — a night rate that begins at 21:00 rather than midnight, or a Sunday loading that only appears in January.
Four. Tolls and the vignette
Small amounts, disproportionate irritation. The Swiss motorway vignette is an annual sticker on a vehicle you do not own; billing it per journey is difficult to justify, and some suppliers do it anyway. Cross-border tolls are real per-journey costs and should be inside a quoted figure rather than reconstructed afterwards from receipts.
We put waiting, luggage, tolls and the vignette inside the quoted fare. Child seats too — fitted before the flight lands, at no charge.
Five. Parking and airport access
The quietest line on the invoice. Meeting a passenger inside arrivals requires parking a car, and airport car parks are not free to anybody. Whether that appears as a line depends entirely on the supplier, and it is worth asking at quote stage rather than discovering it eleven times on a monthly statement.
Six. Cancellation
The line you hope never to read, and the one most likely to be missing from the terms you were sent. It needs three numbers: the notice period, the charge inside it, and what happens to a no-show as distinct from a cancellation.
Ask specifically about the case that actually occurs — a passenger who does not travel because the outbound was cancelled, or who is refused at the border. If your supplier has not written that down, you will be negotiating it under time pressure with an invoice already issued.
Two things that are not lines, but should be
- VAT. Every figure we publish includes 8.1% VAT and passenger insurance. A rate card quoted excluding VAT will be roughly eight per cent higher than it looks.
- Your own reference. Monthly invoicing per cost centre, with your reference on every line, is the difference between checking an invoice and merely paying it.
Six lines, on a document nobody reads. Ask for a sample invoice during the tender rather than a rate card — the rate card is what a supplier would like to be compared on, and the invoice is what you will actually pay.