Terms of service

About us and these terms

DriveDrop Ltd, registered in England & Wales. Company number: 17409161. Registered office: Unit 11, Tilcon Avenue, Baswich, Stafford, ST18 0YJ. Contact: Enquiries@drivedrop.co.uk.

By creating an account, requesting a quote or accepting a job you agree to these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the service.

Our role

DriveDrop is a marketplace. We price, list and administer vehicle transport jobs and match them with vetted, independent transport businesses. The transporter, not DriveDrop, carries out the movement of your vehicle and is responsible for the carriage itself. We vet transporters before approval, including insurance, operator's licence, driver licensing and tachograph calibration where applicable.

Quotes and pricing

Quotes are calculated from the road distance between the collection and delivery postcodes, the transport type (open or enclosed), your chosen collection window and any surcharges that apply to the vehicle's condition or specification. The price shown at checkout is fixed for that job and does not change afterwards unless you change the booking.

Where you provide a vehicle registration, we may look up specifications to check suitability. You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you give us. If the vehicle materially differs on collection — for example it is non-running, oversized or inaccessible when declared otherwise — an additional charge may be raised for your approval before work continues.

Payment

Payment is taken in full at the time of booking through our payment processor. A job is only published to transporters once payment has succeeded. Prices include VAT where applicable.

Where you pay by card, a card handling charge of £7 is added and shown as its own line on your invoice. It covers the cost of taking a card payment, is never taken out of the transporter's payment, and may be varied with notice. Business accounts paying from a prepaid balance are not charged it.

Transporters are paid into their DriveDrop wallet and settled by bank transfer from our business bank account. We do not hold client money as a regulated payment service.

Collection windows

The 14 day option is a collection window, not a fixed appointment time. Once a transporter accepts your job they propose a collection date, which you confirm through the job conversation. Delivery follows collection as agreed between you and the transporter.

Cancellations

• Unpaid quotes — you can cancel at any time from your account, free of charge.
• Paid, not yet accepted by a transporter — you can request cancellation from your account. A £20 cancellation charge is retained to cover payment processing and administration, and the balance is refunded to your original payment method. The job is withdrawn from transporters immediately.
• Accepted, in progress or completed — the booking cannot be cancelled by you. Contact us and our team will review the position; a transporter who has already committed time or travel may be entitled to payment.

We may cancel a job and refund you in full if no approved transporter accepts it, or if we reasonably believe the booking is fraudulent or unsafe.

Delivery and approval

When the transporter marks the vehicle delivered, the job waits for your sign-off and we email you asking you to confirm you are happy or to raise a dispute. You have 48 hours. If you confirm, or if 48 hours pass with no dispute, the job is completed automatically and the transporter's payment is released. Raising a dispute inside those 48 hours holds the payment until we have looked at it.

Extra costs or price changes raised on a job during the move follow the same 48-hour rule: you are asked to approve or dispute the amount, and anything left unanswered after 48 hours is accepted automatically and invoiced.

Disputes and damage

If a vehicle arrives damaged or a job is not performed as agreed, raise a dispute on the job page with photographs as soon as possible. We will hold the transporter's payment while we investigate and may apply a refund or adjustment. Claims for damage in transit are made against the transporter's goods-in-transit insurance; we will assist with the evidence we hold.

Reviews

Reviews must be honest, relate to a job you were party to, and must not contain abusive, defamatory or personal information. We may hide reviews that breach these terms.

Transporter obligations

Approved transporters must hold and maintain valid insurance, licensing and calibration appropriate to the work, keep their documents current on the platform, only accept jobs they are equipped to carry out, and honour the agreed collection date. Referral rewards, volume bonuses and payout shares are as published on our Referral & Pricing Structure page and may be varied with notice. Repeated cancellations, expired compliance documents or misconduct may result in suspension.

Transporter ratings and tiers

We place approved transporters into tiers using their insurance cover, tachograph, uniform, customer ratings, completed jobs and the type of vehicle they run. Tiers help us match work fairly and are set and reviewed by us; they are not a guarantee of any particular transporter's performance and can be changed as the underlying information changes.

How a booking is agreed

A transporter starts a discussion on your job, which holds it for a short period so two transporters cannot chase the same booking. They then offer you a collection date and time. The job is only confirmed when you accept an offer, or when it falls inside a date range you asked us to book automatically. Nobody else can accept on your behalf.

Preferred collection dates and automatic acceptance

You can give a preferred collection day inside your collection window, together with how many days either side of it you are willing to accept. If you switch on automatic acceptance, the first offer a transporter makes for a date inside that range forms the booking immediately, without any further confirmation from you: the job is assigned, the date is fixed and your invoice is issued. You will be told by email and in your account as soon as this happens. Leave automatic acceptance off and every offer waits for you to accept or decline it.

Who you see on a job

Before a job is confirmed, a transporter discussing it with you sees only the general area of the collection and delivery — never your name, phone number or full address. Full contact details and addresses are released to both sides only once you have accepted a date and the job is confirmed.

While a job is in discussion or in progress you see the first name of the person carrying it out, so that messages are personal. Once the job is completed you also see the transporter's business name, which is the name shown on your invoice and on any review you leave. We always hold the full business details and provide them where a dispute, an insurance claim or the law requires it.

Notes on a job and agreed price changes

Notes you add when booking are shown on the job to you, to the transporter carrying it and to our team, so please do not put anything in them you would not want the transporter to read.

A transporter can propose a change to the agreed price up or down, with a reason, using those notes. Nothing changes until you accept it: the price, your invoice and the transporter's payment only move once you have agreed, and a proposal you decline stays on the job as a record.

Business accounts, discounts and rewards

Customer discount codes and referral vouchers are for personal bookings only and cannot be applied to bookings made through a business account. On each business booking the business chooses, at the time of booking, whether its agreed percentage comes off the price of that job or is credited to its account as referral pay. Either the business reward or referral rewards are paid on that job — never both — and the total of all discounts, commissions and referral rewards on any single job is hard-capped at 10% of the customer price, shared as published on our Referral & Pricing Structure page.

Approved business accounts can hold a prepaid balance with us. Top-ups are held to pay for that business's own bookings, each booking is drawn from the balance at the point of booking, and no card handling charge applies to a booking paid this way. We show the balance and every movement on it in the business account, email the account when it runs low, and refund any unused balance on request when the account is closed and no bookings are outstanding.

Amendments to a booked job

You can edit an unpaid draft booking free of charge. Once a job is paid, changes to the route, vehicle, dates or contact details are requested through the job page and are subject to transporter agreement. Any change is confirmed to you before it is applied. If a change increases the price you pay the difference, with no separate fee; if it reduces the price a £20 administration fee is retained from the amount refunded to you.

The DriveDrop mobile app, tracking and proof of delivery

Transporters using our mobile app agree to location tracking while a job is in progress. Tracking begins only when the transporter confirms the job at the booked time, records a position no more often than once every ten minutes, and can be paused by the driver for breaks and rest periods. Customers can see these positions for their own job only, and tracking stops on delivery.

Transporters must record photographic proof at collection and at delivery. At least one photograph at each stage carries the date, time and location printed onto the image. These photographs are evidence of condition and of collection and delivery, are visible to the customer and to us, and may be used in a dispute or insurance claim.

DriveDrop Recovery

Recovery requests are booked with a £50 deposit which secures an operator and is applied against the final recovery price. The recovery price itself is set by the attending operator based on the fault reported, distance and vehicle. Recovery is a separate service from scheduled transport, is carried out by independent recovery operators, and access to recovery work is restricted to approved operators within their published working radius.

Business API and integrations

Where we issue API credentials to a business, those credentials are confidential, are for quoting and booking on that business's own website or systems, and must not be shared, resold or used to scrape or replicate our pricing. Quotes returned by the API are indicative and confirmed on booking. We may rate-limit, suspend or revoke credentials for misuse, and all API use is logged.

Each business gets 100 free quote calls a day, and a burst limit of 120 calls an hour per key. Once the daily allowance is used, further calls are refused unless the business has opted in to paid usage, in which case each extra call that day is charged at 2p and added to the business's account. Both figures may be varied with notice, and a business can turn paid usage off at any time.

More than one vehicle, extra stops and return journeys

When you book more than one vehicle on the same move, each vehicle is priced on its own details — condition (for example a non-runner), weight and declared value. The dearest vehicle is charged in full and the published multi-vehicle discount is applied to each of the others. The breakdown on your quote shows every vehicle separately.

A route with further addresses (for example Stafford → Leek → Sheffield → Stafford) is priced leg by leg, and the legs are added together. A return journey is booked as a second, separate job with the addresses reversed; each job can be accepted, amended or cancelled on its own, and the cancellation terms above apply to each job separately.

Exact locations, photos and PO numbers

After paying you may drop an exact collection and delivery pin within 3 miles of the postcodes you were quoted for. Pins further away need a new quote. Transporters see pins once the booking is confirmed. You may add optional photos of each vehicle; they are shared with the transporter on your job and help show the vehicle's condition before collection, but they do not replace the condition record made at collection. Business customers may add a purchase-order number, which appears on the invoice; it can be changed until the invoice is issued.

Journeys outside the UK, ferries and customs

Jobs that need a sea crossing — for example to Ireland, Jersey and other islands, or mainland Europe — include the ferry or crossing cost shown on your quote. Permanent exports and carnet movements carry a higher crossing rate and a customs paperwork charge. You are responsible for the vehicle's documents, any duties and taxes, and for the vehicle being legally allowed to travel.

Insurance cover and territory

Transporters must hold goods-in-transit insurance and, where required, motor-trade road risk cover. Cover limits and the territory a policy covers vary between transporters. You must declare the vehicle's value accurately so a suitably covered transporter can be chosen. A transporter's cover may be below the declared value of your vehicle; if that matters to you, ask us before accepting an offer.

If a job goes outside the territory a transporter's policy covers, the transporter and you will both be warned before the offer can be accepted. Going ahead may mean the vehicle is not insured during part of the journey, unless the transporter arranges short-term extra cover with their insurer. By confirming such an offer you accept that risk, and DriveDrop is not liable for any loss that the transporter's insurance would otherwise have covered.

Your statutory rights

If you book as a consumer, nothing in these terms affects your legal rights. By asking for your booking to be listed to transporters straight away, you agree that the service starts within the 14-day cancellation period. If you cancel within that period before a transporter accepts, you receive the refund described under Cancellations. Once the move is fully carried out you lose the right to cancel.

Liability

Nothing in these terms excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else which cannot lawfully be excluded. Subject to that, our liability to you in connection with a job is limited to the amount you paid for that job. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including loss of profit or loss of use.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of England & Wales and the courts of England & Wales have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer living in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may also bring proceedings in your local courts. We may update these terms; the "last updated" date above will change. A booking is governed by the terms in force when it was paid for.