I'm confident all of our regular forum members have seen and read this article that explains exactly what to do when taking your car to a dealership for ANYTHING.
But for all the new members and lurkers that will read this into the future, below is my article.
By the way, if any of you ever want to share this with a new member, the way I find it is I go to
Earlier this week we had a new member join and share that he had purchased a new
car and it would be delivered in about a month. He asked for tips for how to take care of his new car. Among the many tips shared I posted this same article. My hope is he won't have to find this article the
DON'T WASH CAR !!!!!!!!!!!
Subtitle: How to prevent your car dealership from putting swirls and scratches into your car's paint!
Horror Story
There's a fairly common experience many people suffer through, and "yes" suffer is the correct word because of the agonizing frustration it causes to a "Car Guy" or "Car Gal" plus all the EXTRA work and hassle it causes for the victim of DISO.
In the car detailing discussion forum world I always call it a HORROR STORY, you can call it what you want but it is a horror story because of the damage it causes to your car's precious thin paint.
Here's the problem
You, the nice customer that pays the dealership's overhead, take the car you purchased from them back to them for service, maybe an oil change, maybe some other maintenance procedure.
As a courtesy to you, they have their lot boy or detail shop
WASH YOUR CAR!
What they don't have is a clue about is you've already polished your car to perfection and you don't want them to wash your car because when they wash your car they will damage the paint by inflicting swirls and scratches into the clear coat finish.
In most cases, none of the people involved have enough
common sense to actually
LOOK at the car and notice there's something about this car that's different than most of the cars bought there, and then brought back there for service.
What they don't see is a finish on the car that in most cases is
BETTER condition than when they sold you the car and that's because you hang out on a forum like AGO and you've learned the art and craft of polishing paint and have painstakingly polished the paint on your new car to perfection.
Then in a
single car wash, they destroy the finish by using tatty wash mitts that have probably been dropped a thousand times onto the ground and the picked right back up an put back into service.
They use towels we wouldn't use to wipe the bottom of our shoes with to dry your car.
The result... a swirled-out, scratched-up mess.
Then when you confront them with the damage they've done it gets worse! Next they offer to detail your car and by this I mean they offer to have their in-house detailer buff your car's paint out.
The problem with this of course is most dealerships have,
Untrained employees or employees that don't have the "correct" training.
Tatty wool and foam pads not worthy of being used on the paint of a garbage dumpster.
Archaic, Caveman Quality compounds and polishes that are more akin to liquid sandpaper.
And alas... only a well-worn, rotary buffer. Nothing wrong with a rotary buffer but the fact is in the wrong hands with the wrong pads and the wrong products it's going to be used to inflict holograms into your car's paint at the same time the "technician" is removing the swirls and scratches that were instilled when the car was washed and dried.
Now here's the really bad news....
When swirls, scratches and holograms are instilled into your car's precious thin paint job, these are VOIDS in the paint where the depth of these swirls and scratches is below the surface.
Putting swirls, scratches and holograms into paint is
REMOVING paint.
To fix the problem the right way will mean removing a little more paint.
See the problem?
The paint was thin to start with from the factory and now due to no fault of your own the paint is now filled with swirls and scratches and fixing the problem will leave your paint thinner that it already was. For what you pay for a new car... you don't deserve this atrocity.
If you let the dealership fix it and they simply replace one type of scratch pattern with a new type of scratch pattern, then "you" fixing their botched buff job will mean removing paint again.
Starting to see why these types of incidents are Horror Stories?
Here's a solution to the problem...
Here's a simple way to avoid this whole mess, here's a way to
avoid being just another horror story posted to a forum somewhere...
Print out a few signs that say,
DON'T WASH CAR
Tape these signs to the inside windows of your car. The more you distrust the people at your dealership the more signs you put inside the car.
I recommend choosing the option of creating a document in "Landscape" mode versus the normal "Portrait" mode and then bump the font size up to about 140 and use Arial Font and then make the font BOLD. In other words, just like you see I've done below.
But don't stop here... no no no...
In a polite but stern manner, point the signs out to the Service Manager. Tell them you now a little bit about car detailing and you don't want them to wash your car, truck or suv.
Take a moment to point out how nice your car's finish looks. IF you have a Swirl Finder Light, whip it out and shine it on the paint. Educate the Service Manager on how to inspect paint for swirls and then point out that your car
DOESN'T HAVE ANY!
Maybe ask them,
Hey, doesn't it look like I just waxed this car?
(Especially if you have just waxed it)
Then say, that's because I did just wax it and it doesn not need to be washed. Then in a very polite and professional manner, just tell the Service Manager that you really don't want them to wash, or wax or do anything to the exterior of your car that it doesn't need it and when it does you'll take care of it.
Be professional. Be courteous. But above all,
be pro-active.
Don't assume anyone at the dealership has enough common sense to look at "your" car and see that it's meticulously detailed and doesn't need to be washed. These people are use to routines. It's there knee-jerk habit to do a courtesy wash for all their customers and for 99.9% of their customers this is perfectly okay.
But for you, the person that is educated on the topic of car paint and car paint polishing, it's not okay.
Hope this helps, please feel encouraged to share the link to this article with all your friends that go out and buy a brand new car.
