We love when our customers request a particular chauffeur for an upcoming trip. It says a lot about the way the chauffeur represents our company. We know that in your eyes, your chauffeur IS the face of our company and the person that you have the longest and most interaction with.
We don’t like when we must turn down your request for your favorite chauffeur. We understand that the familiarity with your chauffeur makes for a comfortable experience for you. We want you to be comfortable and we also want to deliver on every request a customer presents to us. However, it isn’t always possible to honor such requests for a variety of reasons and today we want to explain some of those reasons.
Our industry is highly regulated for safety reasons. One of those regulations includes something called Hours of Service. The Federal Department of Transportation regulates how many hours a commercial driver can legally drive in a single day and in a single week. We must carefully balance our scheduling to avoid steep fines that would be issued to the chauffeur, and to us as a company for violations. In some cases, a chauffeur might be scheduled to drive for 6 hours in a day but end up driving for 10 hours. Legally, your chauffeur must have 8 hours off after 10 hours of driving. If you have an early morning trip and your chauffeur ended up working too late into the previous night, the chauffeur will be reassigned – even though we may have told you that we could and would accommodate your request. This is just one reason for declining your request or sending another chauffeur.
Like you, your chauffeur likely has dental appointments, parent-teacher conferences and other personal matters to tend to. He/She may have requested the day off for your date of travel and be unable to work. In these cases, we will inform our chauffeur of your request and give them the option to rearrange their appointments or continue with their requested day off.
As a company, we prefer to assign a total of three chauffeurs to our most frequent travelers. This includes a primary chauffeur and two backup chauffeurs. By using this system, each of the three chauffeurs can learn your routines and expectations and if by chance your primary chauffeur is unavailable, your backup chauffeur understands your specific needs just as much as your primary chauffeur. Through this process, we have had clients request a backup chauffeur to become their primary chauffeur instead. In other words, having a team of three people dedicated to serving you provides options for you.
Ecko Worldwide Transportation Group provides luxury ground transportation in 54 countries and more than 1100+ cities. Wherever you are going, we are already there waiting to provide service for you. You can make reservations any day, any time for any city by calling 877-FLY-ECKO. Whether you need a sedan, an SUV, a van, or full-size motorcoach, we have you covered.