Tims Vette said:
Hi guys, I am in a bit of a quandry here. I have been doing this for a few years now and have owned my own shop for 3 years. Lately i have been getting ALOT of complaints about black cars from my biggest account. :dunno I cannot afford to lose them. I think it's mostly because of the new used car manager, he's a PITA. Anyways, what do you guys use to make black cars look good and STAY looking good if the car sits on the lot a awhile. He's bitching about swirls and streaks. I've tried LOTS of products and pads and methods but they all seem to swirl to some extent. PLEASE help me??!!
Sorry to hear your dilemma, I've been there too. Unfortunately all but the finest show cars have swirls in them to some extent. Unfortunately black cars are the WORST, (and many detailers actually charge extra for black or dark colored cars).
I know you really don't want to loose his business, but odds are he's just an unrealistic PITA and expects you to perform miracles on his swirled cars...all at a wholesale price. Either you need to spend even more time/money/research making his cars close to perfect like ASAP or you need to educate him about the cold reality of swirlmarks on used cars.
If you don't accomplish one of the above you're probably going to loose his business no matter what you do. And he'll probably bad mouth you to other dealers to boot.
Sorry. I'm not to fond of car dealers. After high school I worked as a salesman for several years and know quite well how they operate with the public, their vendors and their employees.
IMHO the majority of used car dealers I have dealt with as a detailer have been a waste of my time. Generally, their auction house obtained cars are extremely filthy and they always expect a lot more from you than they are willing to pay for. They try to squash your price down with the carrot of sending you quantity work since they are a dealer. I promise you, most of them will drop your services like a hot potatoe if they could get the same thing from some unlicensed, uninsured wash rat cheaper. He just hasn't come along yet.
This season, I have decided to completely remove wholesale dealer detailing from my services and website-it simply was not worth the PITA dealing with most of them. I'll let the wash rats service their needs for the prices they want to pay. If they get in a late model 500sl or a cherry 7-series Beemer that they know is to be expected to look bling-bling...and they are willing to pay a FAIR price for quality work, then they can call me. If not they can let the local wash rat suds it down with a bucket of Tide and a red shop towel for all I care.
I got tired of fighting and haggling over every stinking price for every service with these dealers. I mean once this one dealer guy wanted me to remove a HUGE baked-on vinyl H-O-N-D-A sticker across the entire hood of an accord and need to spend an additional 25 minutes just buffing it out to blend the fading...for FREE. Yeah right.
After spending seemingly 20 minutes haggling with him over the price, I finally relented and agreed to do it for an additional $10 just to shut him up. He really wanted to pay $5 and acted like I was ripping him off or something. I must have spent over an hour and a half getting that flaky, baked-ass sticker off and blending the paint.
One dealer always expected totally trashed carpet and upholstery to miraculously look like brand new and always bitched when I was done no matter how much I had improved it.
Another wanted huge globs of tar along the rockers removed and wheels degreased from a leaky CV joint, always wanted the trunk interior detailed, spare tire and jack stowed away correctly, and EXPECTED me to clean the engine.....all for a whopping $65. It was a constant fight and he would just keep pressing, pushing and conning for me to do more, more, more "as part of the job" and when I would inform him that I am in business and need to charge him extra for these extra services he wanted done and reinterate my pricing structure for the 20th time, he would go into haggling mode and try to dangle the promise of future work over me. Usually he never discussed these extras he wanted done until I was on site.
Got to the point I would cringe when my celly rang from this one dealer and it was his caller ID. Finally I just stopped returning his calls. He really wasn't worth dealing with at any price, since if we did finally agree on a fair price for what he wanted done he would nit pick and still try to milk as much from me as he could anyway. Plus the PITA would ALWAYS call me on Sat or Sunday morning every damned time and have some excuse as to why he needed it done
today.
Look, lets face it... if for example, a reputable high end European used car dealer who knows the value of a good detail and is willing to invest that kind of money in quality work for his cars, he would be smart to just do it in-house-and not pay us. Large new/used dealerships also do the same.
That leaves us left with the typical Buy-here-pay-here lots and other smaller dealers who are usually too cheap or cant afford to hire a full time detailer. At best they have some part time 19 yo lot girl doing half-assed wash and vacs. They have grimy cars they bought at wholesale and want to pay a wholesale price for detailing but expect you to recondition the entire vehicle for $50 or $60.
Trust me,unless you have a super straight-up deal with someone where you can do slam-bam wash/wax/vac/windows/tires for $50-70 and 2-3 hrs time/1 person and have 3 or 4 jobs a week or more from this lot, and the dealer doesn't expect miracles, doesn't bitch and knows he's going to get exactly what he pays for, then it might be worth it. But really only if you want to chase the quantity end of the business.
Personally, I'm leaving the dealers to the wholesale wash guys. Too hard to make any damned money from them. I'd rather concentrate exclusively on my high end customers who desire quality, comprehensive exacting work with high quality products and perform work thats appreciated and make $150-$250 on one job. For that money, I'll spend an extra hour working out a stubborn stain, scratch or a swirl mark. I'll not charge them this time for all the cat hair in the back seat...I'll remove that bumper sticker for no charge etc, etc. A "picky" customer that is paying retail price for my services is a completely different situation. They are allowed to be picky if they want-they're paying full price.
Thats where I'll be focusing my efforts going forward.
-Craig
Good post though, lots of experiences to be learned from.