How we verify agencies

Paxeto is operated by Paxeto. Reviews are carried out by our own team, not outsourced and not automated. Every decision is recorded with the reviewer, the date and the reason.

• The operator licence. We take the licence number and issuing authority, and check them against the public register where the authority publishes one - for example the Transport for London private hire operator register in London. Where no public register exists, we rely on the licence document itself and note that on the listing.
• The insurance certificate. It must be current on the day we check, and it must name the same legal entity as the licence and the listing. A certificate in a different company name is rejected.
• That the business is real. We check the website and phone number resolve to this business rather than to a lead-generation page or a disconnected line.
• That it is not a duplicate. One agency gets one profile covering many airports. We do not allow the same business to appear several times under variations of its name.

A decision takes up to 2 business days. We either approve, ask for something specific, or decline with a reason the agency can appeal once.

The badge appears only when both an operator licence and an insurance certificate have been checked and approved, and neither has expired. An agency that is listed without the badge has been approved as a real business but has not completed both document checks.

We re-check expiry every night. When a document is within 30 days of expiring we chase the agency for a renewal; the day it expires, the badge is removed automatically. Nobody has to remember to do it.

It is a documentary check, not an inspection or an endorsement. We do not inspect vehicles, we do not meet drivers, we do not audit an agency’s day-to-day operation, and we do not guarantee the quality of any journey. The agency is responsible for its own drivers, vehicles and service, and your agreement is with the agency.

On a public profile we show who issued the licence and when we last checked it. We do not publish the licence number. Publishing licence numbers invites impersonation, and the number proves nothing to a reader who cannot check the register anyway - so we do the checking and publish the result.

Licence and insurance documents are held in private storage. They are readable only by a reviewer with an admin session, and every access is logged.

Every agency profile has a “report this listing” link. Tell us what looks wrong and we will check it. If an agency has lost its licence or its insurance has lapsed, we suspend the listing while we investigate rather than waiting for a renewal.