brwill2005 said:
Claying the car takes extra time, correct? Why would you do an extra step and not charge for it? I do not know about you, but my time is valuable. If a car needs to be clayed, it will be communicated to the customer, and they will have the option to pay extra for it that step. Subsidizing the customer, in the form of giving away your time, is not smart business. Actually it is pretty simple economics.
This is why I don't consider claying an "option". If I get a vehicle in for a paint correction estimate, and I charge (for example) $259.95 for the job, then that price includes the time required for claying. If I get a vehicle in and all the customer wants is a wax, then I quote and charge just for a wax. Again, the average customer doesn't know what all the steps involved are. They don't know about claying, they don't know about two-stage polishing, or LSPs. All they care about is that the job is done right and they're getting fair value for their money (this is where explaining your steps and letting them know what's going on helps (a.k.a. being a good salesperson)). Again, it's like the quick-lube shop just changing your oil and making the new filter optional. 90% of customers that go through those shops don't know *** an oil filter even is, let alone know enough to be able to make an informed decision about whether to have it changed or not.
Accumulator said:
Nah, I'm not trying to :argue against claying...just saying that *IMO* it's not something that *has* to be done every time you apply LSP. People got by fine without clay for a long, long time and there's no reason to do *anything* that doesn't need doing.
Very true, sometimes it isn't required when just applying an LSP. IMO, when doing actual polishing, it should be done every time. My rational is this: Everytime you polish, you're removing a few (or several, depending) microns. Since you can't polish a vehicle indefinitely, why take the risk of possibly not getting the best outcome on one of your polish jobs ? Also, I might say, there are contaminents and bonded junk that you just can't "see" with your naked eye. I'd suspect that there are TONS of particles that make their way into clay that we can't physically see (and if we could, we'd probably want to swap to a new clay bar after every pass, lol). Therefore, how do you qualify if a surface doesn't actually "need" claying ? I understand the whole business-aspect of "if the customer looks at it and is happy, then that's all that matters", and I can agree with that, I'm not trying to argue it. I'm just asking, on a principal level, how do you legitimately qualify when a vehicle doesn't need to be clayed ? I'd have to say that none of us are actually able to make that determination conclusively, since there are contaminents that we can't physically see.
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)...but if I were paying a pro to wash/wax any of my vehicles *right now*, today....I wouldn't want to spend one penny of my money or one minute of his time doing any claying; it's just not needed.