1st Stop Minibuses - www.1ststopminibus.co.uk

We are an events booking agency who booked 1st Stop Minibuses in Sandhurst to take a party of 20 people to an event. I was concenred that they were a coach broker because of how their website looked and called them before confirming anything and they convinced us they were a family run business.

The booking was made a couple of months is advance. We chased them for an invoice so that we could pay them in advance, then a day later (3 days before the booking)they emailed us to say they couldn't do the booking as "management" had decided to sell the larger vehicles. i.e. They had made a decision to sell the coaches on Tuesday night and would not have them the following Saturday. This was a lie and after a bit of investigation I found that the person whom I spoke with, was the MD of the company and that they only have a Restrictive Operators License, which means that they can only run 2 x 16 seat minibuses.

I don't know if this company even own 16 seater minibuses, but they definitely never owned anything bigger as they are not licensed to do so. They are clearly trying to act as a broker and 3 days before a booking cancelled it because they hadn't booked a coach for us.

Luckily, we have found another company to take our group and I'm grateful that we had not paid any money to this company. They are trying to pretend that they own lots of vehicles, when in fact they are a poorly organised broker and they will let you down with very little time to arrange an alternative.

My advice, avoid this and any other coach company that looks like a broker. Their websites use lots of stock images of staff and vehicles. They will let you down at the last minute and ruin your event.