How to choose a mobile detailer

Hiring a mobile detailer is a slightly odd transaction. You are giving a stranger several hours alone with an expensive item, at your home, usually with the keys, and the quality of what they do is mostly invisible until months later when the paint starts showing it.

We are obviously not a neutral party here. What follows is still the list we would give a friend hiring someone else, because every question on it is one we would want asked of us.

Start with whether they are self-sufficient

This is the question that separates a mobile detailing business from someone detailing out of a car, and it is the easiest one to ask.

Do you bring your own water?

A properly equipped van carries a tank. If the answer is that they will use your outside faucet, you are supplying part of the service — and at an apartment, an office or a job site there may not be one.

Do you bring your own power?

Extractors, vacuums and polishers all need it. Running a cord through your front door is workable at a house and impossible almost anywhere else.

What happens if it rains?

There should be an answer, and it should be a policy rather than an improvisation. Rescheduling is fine. Washing a car in a downpour is not.

How much room do you need?

Someone who has done this before will tell you exactly — space to open every door, and room for the van near the vehicle.

What a real quote looks like

A quote is where most disputes are decided in advance, and a vague one is a decision to have the argument later.

• It names the vehicle, not a category — a quote for "an SUV" is a quote for the smallest SUV
• It lists what is included as steps rather than as a package name, so "interior detail" has a definition you can read
• It states what is excluded or priced separately, particularly extraction, pet hair, odor work and machine polishing
• It gives a time window, because the time and the price are the same thing
• It says what happens if the vehicle is in worse condition than described — the answer should be that they tell you and wait for a yes

Be suspicious of an exact figure given without any information about the vehicle. Detailing is priced from how long the work takes, and nobody can know that from a body style alone — what actually changes the price of a detail is the long version of why.

Questions about the actual work

You do not need to know the answers to judge them. You need to hear whether there is an answer at all.

"How do you wash it?"

You are listening for two buckets or a rinse method between panels, and separate tools for the wheels. Anyone using one bucket and one mitt across the whole car is putting the grit from the lower panels back onto the doors.

"What protection goes on at the end, and how long does it last?"

A named product and a realistic interval. "It is sealed for a year" about a spray applied in two minutes is not a realistic interval.

"Do you dry it, or does it air dry?"

Air drying in the sun undoes the wash and leaves the water spots the wash just removed.

"What do you do about a stain you cannot remove?"

The right answer is that they tell you before starting which marks are unlikely to come out. The wrong answer is a promise that everything comes out.

Answers that should end the conversation

"We guarantee we can remove every scratch"

Nobody can. A scratch a fingernail catches has gone through the clear coat, and polishing does not put clear coat back.

A price quoted before any question about the vehicle

It is a number designed to win the call, and it gets revised on the driveway when the work turns out to be what it always was.

"Permanent" protection

No coating is permanent. Durable coatings are genuinely impressive and they are all consumable — the honest version is how long paint protection lasts.

Cash only, no written scope, no record

Not a judgment about anyone's business, just a practical problem: with nothing written down, there is nothing to point at when the account of what was agreed differs.

Steam cleaning an engine bay with a pressure washer

Water forced into connectors and modules causes faults that appear days later and cost far more than the detail did.

How to read reviews without being fooled by them

Star counts are close to useless on their own. What is worth reading is the texture underneath them.

• Reviews that describe a specific vehicle and a specific problem are worth ten that say "great job"
• A run of reviews posted within the same few days is a pattern, not a coincidence
• How a business replies to its worst review tells you more than the review does
• Photographs taken by customers, in ordinary light, are harder to fake than anything else on a listing
• A detailer with no negative reviews at all has either done very little work or is curating

What good looks like on the day

The tells are small and they are all about sequence and care rather than about equipment.

1. They walk the vehicle with you first and point out what they have found before starting
2. Wheels are done before the paint, with their own tools, because wheel contamination on a paint mitt is how swirls happen
3. Towels get folded and swapped rather than dropped on the driveway and picked back up
4. Nothing changes about the price without a conversation first
5. They finish with a walkaround, or send photographs if you are not there

And afterward: look down a panel at an angle in daylight, look at the inside of the windshield, and open a rear door and check the sill. Those three spots tell you whether the job was done or performed.