Getting a price in Leighton Buzzard — and why we ask for the registration

Everybody who messages us from Leighton Buzzard asks the same thing first, which is what it costs. The number is on the front page — £499 fitted for either system — so it is fair to ask why we then come back asking for a registration rather than simply agreeing a date.

The answer is compatibility, and it is the part of this that is genuinely technical. These systems talk to the car over its own data network, and what a given vehicle supports depends on the make, the model, the year and sometimes the specification. On some cars both systems fit and either would do a good job. On others one is clearly the better choice, because of how the buttons are laid out, how that manufacturer's network behaves, or what the system can be told to do on that platform. Occasionally the answer is that a particular vehicle is not supported at all, and it is very much better for everybody if we establish that from a registration than on your driveway with the trim off.

So the registration tells us what the car actually is rather than what it is called. Two cars with the same badge on the boot and three years between them can be different vehicles underneath, and a model with several engine and trim options is not one thing. It takes us a few minutes and it removes the guesswork entirely.

It is worth saying what we do not do with it. We are checking vehicle specification, not running you or the car through anything else, and we are not passing it anywhere. If you would rather not send a registration to somebody you have not met, tell us the make, model, year and engine instead and we will work from that — it is slightly less certain and it is perfectly workable.

A few other things are worth mentioning in the same message, because they change the answer. Tell us if the car is on a lease, a PCP or any finance agreement, so we can route the install with the eventual return in mind. Tell us if anybody else regularly drives it, since that affects what sort of sequence makes sense and whether valet mode matters to you. Tell us if your insurer has asked for something specific, and send the wording if you have it — that occasionally changes what we would recommend. And tell us roughly where the car lives during the day, because a vehicle that sits in a station car park has a different exposure from one that never leaves a driveway.

What comes back is which system suits the car, what it costs, and when we can do it. The figure is written down before anything is booked and it is the figure on the invoice — nobody rings you mid-fit to say it has become more complicated, because the complications were checked before the booking rather than discovered during it. There is no call-out charge whether you go ahead or not, so a quote costs you nothing if the answer turns out to be no.

If your car is in the small group where neither system is a good fit, we will tell you that plainly. We would rather lose a booking than fit something that does not suit a vehicle properly, mostly for the selfish reason that a badly matched install becomes our problem for years afterwards.

There is also no obligation attached to asking. A fair number of the messages we answer end with us saying the car already has what it needs, or that the thing the insurer asked for is not what the customer thought it was. That is a perfectly good outcome and it costs the same as any other one.

We cover Leighton Buzzard, Linslade, Heath and Reach, Stanbridge, Billington and the rest of the LU7 postcodes, fitting on your own driveway in two to three hours. Send the registration and we will come back with the system, the price and a slot.