Dealer horribly swirled my new car, what should I do?

[kcarter]

I took my brand spankin` new Audi back to the dealer to to have him buff out some clearcoat scratches and take care of some ugly gunk on both wheel wells that I could not remove with Bug and Tar. I took delivery of the car with both problems.



I get it back, and it looks like they used Scotchbrite on the wheel well. It is actually dull. The rest of the car is swirled to hell. I mean, you can see the individual passes that the buffer made up and down the hood. Bascially, they f*cked up the car big time.



They have agreed to have a detailer do the car for me (I told them that they weren`t touching it again).



What should I look for when I get the car back? I expect to be absolutely perfect - Clearcoat smooth, no scratchs, absolutely bright. Is that unreasonable?

[Nebraska99]

Just ask the detailer politely what processes and products he will use and make it clear to him what you expect. If he is a professional he will gladly oblige. Let us know how it turns out.

[chrisd]

Kcarter, I can sympathize with you. I had the exact same thing happen to me a few years back. An idiot detailer swirled the hell out my dark blue 5.0 Mustang. I couldn`t believe how bad he swirled it. Of course, the swirls didn`t show up until I washed the car a few times and all the wax fillers were removed. This was the incident that really got me interested in detailing. There was no way in hell I was going to take that car back to the detailer and ask him to fix it, so that left me two choices: try to fix it myself or do my homework and find an experience, highly respected detailer. I didn`t have the experience or confidence to use a rotary buffer (which I new this fix would require since the swirls were so deep), so I went the second route. The guy new what he was doing and got my paint smooth as glass. I hate to think how much clear coat thickness I lost in this whole debacle, but at least it was fixed. Now the only one who polishes my paint is me. I firmly believe this industry needs some kind of licensing, regulation, or whatever to let the good detailers make a living and get the idiots out (you need a license to cut hair, and unlike paint, that grows back in a few weeks!). Good luck and keep us informed.