www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

Mrs D was moaning about her car which had a load of muddy streaks after the recent bad weather. I said well wait until it warms up a bit and I will wash it for you as mine needs doing too. The moan factory started so I gave in and said I will pay the Romanians to wash it. Now we have not been there since Covid and I have got used to washing our cars myself but it is not a job I like in winter. I recall that the small car was £7 and my SUV was £9 for an outside wash. We pulled in and it was empty, normally there would be a queue of cars waiting. I saw the sign which said car wash from £9.95 so I assumed I would be in for a tenner. When I go to pay the guy in charge says £20 so I gasp and say what for the small car? Yes, he says, all my prices have gone up blah blah blah. I pay, put the tip back in my pocket, and walk off disgruntled. When I tell Mrs D she thinks it was a rip off so we are back to doing our cars at home.

I appreciate I can be out of touch on things but at this price the business will be dead I feel.

Is anyone else paying this price for a wash?

DWD

Never been to one of those. I think cubs and scouts should bring back "Bob-a-job" week...

theres 2 i use in my area. one charge me a tenner for my van. £5er for a car. the other is in a posher snobs area and they charge £10 a car and i think £15 a van,

saves me doing it myself.

i did pay a lad who runs a business called mobile car spa. got him to come and fully vallet and wash the van. he came to the house i was grafting at and charged £80 van looked canny sweet after like. hes a sound bloke too. think he was on for maybe 3 and a half hours maybe even 4 hours

They aren't Romanian, they are Albanian, they all pretend to be Romanian or Turkish usually (same with Turkish barbers, they are Albanian too). All these business are fronts for the Albanian mafia, pimps and drug dealers, they don't care how much business they do and they charge high prices to keep people away. They just like to use them to launder cash.

We have several car washes here, always empty but loads of staff, we have 4 "Turkish" barbers on one small street, again rarely have a customer but lots of staff sat around drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. All just a way to launder drug money etc and send it back to Albania.

You may well have a point there but this particular car wash has been there for ten years with the same guy in charge. In the past, there were always at least six cars waiting but when we went in the other day there was no one. I think there are a lot of businesses like you describe though as there are quite a few restaurants and bars where you never see anyone in there. There is a pricey men's clothing shop that I have never seen a customer in when passing for at least three years.

DWD

both the car washes i mentioned are always busy. theres always foreign lads grafting there with some english.

Today we so happened to pop into Mcdonald's for lunch as we were passing. It has a nice upstairs with big windows and we sat looking out over the car wash entrance by chance in the 40 mins or so we were there Mrs D said she had not seen one car go in. Back in the day, Friday was a hugely busy day for the car wash and you could see cars tailing back in the queue. I think it is on borrowed time. I talked to my pal who had used the Tesco car wash and they charged him £23 for his Focus, just the outside, he does his own now and said it appears closed now.

DWD

my thought if you are paying minimum wage then perhaps 12-15 for a car is fair assuming the government is subsidizing the wages through working tax credits allowing the employer to underpay the employees so we are all paying through our taxes to allow exploitation
because we seem to have a choice available for those who where overly exploited in the past where a still low paid job become available possibly in catering where wages have risen greatly through shortages and desperation from employers point meaning a actual reasonable working life rather than being close to exploitation ---
but as i say just my thoughts

I suspect the business model is failing. I think he was probably doing 20 cars an hour before lockdown, obviously at the busy times but there was always someone in there when I went. So roughly £200 an hour a £10 a car and a day could generate a £1000 plus. Now he is probably doing nothing like that as I doubt he has the 50 cars a day to break even with the previous price structure. The employees all looked like off the books cash in hand to me and that is not so easy now with cashless payments creating a nice traceable income stream. Add to this the disposable income pinch and people will choose to clean their own cars at home or use the cheaper manual self wash that are still available in some garages. £20 a car is not a price that a lot of folk will pay.

DWD

Update to this. I saw a taxi parked outside Tesco so I stopped and asked the driver where he got his car cleaned. He said 'not at a hand car wash I can tell you and laughed' I related my story and he told me the taxis use an automated car wash where he gets the outside done for a fiver. These are a bit like the old fashioned car washes with the big cylindrical plastic brushes. When we drove past an IMO car wash facility later in the week there was a queue of cars going through so I think there is the answer. Hand car washes will die out. On the IMO website the most expensive wash appears to be £12.

DWD

dewaltdisney wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 10:46 am Update to this. I saw a taxi parked outside Tesco so I stopped and asked the driver where he got his car cleaned. He said 'not at a hand car wash I can tell you and laughed' I related my story and he told me the taxis use an automated car wash where he gets the outside done for a fiver. These are a bit like the old fashioned car washes with the big cylindrical plastic brushes. When we drove past an IMO car wash facility later in the week there was a queue of cars going through so I think there is the answer. Hand car washes will die out. On the IMO website the most expensive wash appears to be £12.

DWD

I read somwhere hand carwashes are proof of our productivity issues. We have so many illegals here willing to work for under minimum wage is the reason they exist. In a modern productive economy these would be replaced by machines. Obviously i assume this would exclude your premium valet type services.

I only used it in the past as it was a fiver. I got the arse when I got an Suv and they charged me more than my previous Mondeo. Then Covid came and I bought a jet wash and cleaned them myself. I only ventured back as it was so cold which kicked this thread off. I will do my car when it is a bit warmer

DWD