What is Prebooking Bidding?
At Ideal Cars, bookings over £30 are no longer allocated by queue position.
Instead, these bookings are offered to drivers through a bidding system.
When a booking becomes available to bid, it will appear in:
Prebookings > To Bid in your Driver Companion app
From here, you can view available bookings and decide if you want to take part.
How bidding works
- Swipe right to accept a booking
- Swipe left to remove it from your list
- Long press a booking to see more details
Booking categories and bidding rules
Different bookings have different rules depending on distance, value and time until pickup.
Long Distance Bookings (£120+)
Become available 72 hours before pickup
You can win 1 successful bid every 7 days
Medium Distance Bookings (£70 – £119.99)
Become available 72 hours before pickup
You can win 1 successful bid every 4 days
Short Distance Bookings (£30 – £69.99)
Become available 72 hours before pickup
You can win 2 successful bids within a 72-hour period
Late or Unclaimed Bookings
If a booking has not been allocated:
- Within 48 hours of becoming active, or
- If it was created with less than 24 hours until pickup
It will move into a second bidding stage.
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Long distance booking - £120+
1 successful bid every 1 hour
Medium distance booking - £70.00 - £119.99
1 successful bid every 1 hour
Short distance booking - £30.00 - £69.99
1 successful bid every 1 hour
This new two tier system means drivers have the ability to pre-plan there bookings more effectively and then any bookings that have not been claimed can be claimed by a driver despite already having hit there limit on the previous method. this should ensure drivers that are working will bid on the bookings rather than Ideal cars having to request drivers to come out for the bookings. this will also guarantee an allocated driver on all bookings.
Unable to do a prebooking after accepting
If for any reason a driver is unable to meet the prebooking and the driver needs to give the prebooking back for another driver to complete, there will be no reimbursement of another prebooking.
Drivers should plan there bookings effectively and ensure they are available when bidding.
This ensures drivers are not accepting the first job that becomes available and then swapping for a more favourable booking at a different time.
Cancelled prebooking's
Should a drivers prebooking cancel, then a driver should inform the office or management and Ideal cars will manually find a same value or similar booking for the driver.
This happens has cancellations are not the drivers fault and this would result in a bid missed due to cancellation by the customer rather than the driver no longer being able to commit to the booking.
Access to prebooking's
To have access to the prebooking's section, drivers need to have achieved a minimum of 24 hours worked and 20 bookings completed in the previous week.
(Drivers that take holidays and time off may be exempt blocked access but will need to discuss with management and will be treated on a case by case basis)