I take the DIY wash and hose down approach to car cleaning.
WInterior -£80hile waiting at a main dealer I noticed their valeting proposals and made a few notes
Described as
Mini - £50 Wash n wax, clean door shuts, vacuuum interior and boot & clean dash
Standard - £80 includes wheels hand cleaned & washed
Standard + wax - £96
Full - £150
Interior - £80
Spruce & shine -£30
Are these typical prices outside of the carpark crew ?
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I think those prices are silly.
There are a number of hand car wash outfits not far from where you live HK:- just over Walton Bridge; Esher Rugby Club; opposite the dump at Charlton. They will all do a mini valet for £11 to £15.
My personal favourite is the team at the Rugby Club - couple of quid more than the others - but very efficient.
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Here's what I charge. I never get any complaints that its expensive but I get nice tips, helps people find their budget without charging less well off people the earth.
Those other prices are just silly but theres hope for me to make a decent living of there are fools who would pay that much.
Mini - £15 Wash n wax, clean door shuts, vacuuum interior and boot & clean dash
Standard - £20 includes wheels hand cleaned & washed - umm, you kinda have to use your hands to clean a wheel??
Standard + wax - £30
Full - £45-65
Interior - £25
Spruce & shine -£-- Spruce is a tree isnt it?
One thing that annoys me - calling a valet by some generic term - I call it what it is, item by item so people know what they are getting - dressing it up with some term is silly. Mini means little doesnt it? So by definition, your saying you will do very little valeting!
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>Spruce & shine -£-- Spruce is a tree isnt it?<
Maybe it's one of those little deodorant trees that you hang on the mirror? ;-)
Your prices seem very reasonable Stu. Shame it's my brother who lives in Northampton and not me.
Edited by mike hannon on 14/08/2008 at 07:33
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Spruce & shine -£-- Spruce is a tree isnt it?
And one that you don't want anywhere near your car. We have some in our garden, and spruce needles get stuck in the car mats and carpets. Total nuisance.
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Mini - £50 Wash n wax clean door shuts vacuuum interior and boot & clean dash Standard - £80 includes wheels hand cleaned & washed Standard + wax - £96 Full - £150
Standard plus wax sounds as comprehensive as anyone could do. So what does "Full" give you in addition?
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Scarg, could possibly include a wet vac, claying, glass polishing, engine bay steam clean, machine polish pre-wax, wheels sealed. But without asking how could we know....
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Those dealer prices are just insane.
I have some ongoing unhappiness with our SEAT dealer over its last service, but one thing they always do, without mentioning cost or time etc, is clean the car to within an inch of its life.
In fact they really over-valet - I had to ask them this year NOT to spray black shiny stuff all over the extensively plastic interior, but they'd vad'd it, and the exterior was very well done (and it's metallic black, so it's not a trivial job to get it looking good) plus the windows had been cleaned, tyres dressed (not sure I like that) and wheel trims completely cleaned.
Only thing I noticed that hadn't been done, and an odd omission compared to how thorough a job they'd done, was that the boot hadn't been vac'd.
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>>>>Standard plus wax sounds as comprehensive as anyone could do. So what does "Full" give you in addition?
>>...could possibly include a wet vac, claying, glass polishing, engine bay steam clean, machine polish pre-wax, wheels sealed. But without asking how could we know....
I did not have time to take more notes but it certainly did not include most of above but I think they cleaned the windows. ;-)
My OP was because I was a "little" surprised at the costs but only had a few supermarket type operations to compare them with.
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Standard + wax - £96
Standard plus wax takes me about 4 hours, so I'd definitely want £96 if I was doing it for a living. And don't forget that a professional has to include in his prices for any periods of time when he's not actually valeting cars, because that's effectively part of his overheads.
Edited by L'escargot on 14/08/2008 at 11:21
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I had the interior of my V70 cleaned last year, paid £30 for it IIRC, the whole interior was cleaned, all the interior mats lifted adn shampooed as was the carpet underneath, the boot was all done adn the leather all conditioned adn cleaned (even the steering wheel came back cream again, as opposed to the black that it went in... joy of having 180k on it at the time... now at 198.5K)
I clean the exterior myself, normally at either morrisons or tescos as they've both got decent jet washes, takes about 10mins to do it properly even with a wax and spot free rinse.
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i wash and polish(turtlewax ICE) my car on a weekly basis but im definitly going to start having a though valet done in the spring and possible autumn, i think its worth the money if the job done is decent enough and its so much easier to keep the car clean after a valet rather then waiting for the mess to buildup to a point where your too embarassed not to get the vacuum out
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Those prices are cretinous. There's going to be some serious 'readjustment' in peoples' lives when the recession comes. People will struggle to keep their car full stop, paying ridiculous prices to keep it clean is off the radar.
There's a bunch of Poles near us who clean cars from a disused petrol forecourt - £20 inside and out.
I am old and tired - seen it all before. Recessions of the 1970's etc.
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On teh contrary, I would love everyone to put up their prices, it makes me look cheap. Im only a bit above what the E.europeans charge but i go to peoples houses, so im almost level pegging anyway. Suits me :-)
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