Are my expectations too high? Did I get boned?

[ReadTheBook]

Long story short, took a 5 month old AllTrack to get a 1 stage correction and ceramic pro, at one of the area’s premiere installers. I’m not happy/impressed with the amount of water spots, bug splatters, fine but long scratches and even a fine liquid bead trail I see now that I’ve got it home and can look at it in my garage without my sunglasses on.

All of this of course looks to be sealed in under the Ceramic Pro.

With the few previous cars I’ve had the opportunity to have a single stage correction done after much more time living outside and certainly with much older paint, I don’t recall seeing this level of imperfections left. They really cleaned up spectacularly, and yet a car with 2k miles and 5 months old doesn’t look that great.

Hell, even when I personally did a pass with 3d HDSpeed on another VW of the same generation, which has similar metallic paint, I didn’t end up with the amount of water spots and bug spots this new car has.

Pics:

http://imgur.com/a/tZCr8An

I’m just trying to know if my expectations are too high or should I be complaining? Thanks!

 

[staying_tuned]

There isn’t much clear on these cars so there could be an argument made that there wasn’t much to work with on the deeper scratches however the misc. bugs, swirls and webbing absolutely shouldn’t be there.

Take the car, in person, to the owner if he or she also works there and park in a sunny spot and walk them through the issues. Had a somewhat similar experience on a wrap where actual small pieces of bark were trapped under the PPF then coated over. I suspect that the installer let it drop on the floor or stepped on it, yet still applied it. In my case he took the car back immediately and made it right. If they are considered “premiere” they’ll want to protect that reputation.

 

[Navi]

well it depends

did you ask if stage 1 would remove all the defects? Usually stage 1 is a very light polish. Perhaps car needed more?

 

[staying_tuned]

well it depends

did you ask if stage 1 would remove all the defects? Usually stage 1 is a very light polish. Perhaps car needed more?

Those sealed bug guts though?

 

[Navi]

looked more like clear coat etching from baked in bug guts to me

 

[Ghost GTI]

Yeah like Navi said, 1 stage correction doesn't usually involve a compound step where most of those deep imperfections would be removed. Especially for VW paint that's super hard, you definitely need a heavy compound to get that shit out. Learned it the hard way after spending hours just polishing my new car, only to find out it hadn't done shit to correct any of the issues I wanted to fix.

 

[uberdot]

I think they got this guy working in the back at that shop.

 

[Cuzoe]

I don't know Jack about detailing a car but I work at an aircraft repair facility and we offer interior/exterior aircraft cleaning, including woodwork repair. Most often the woodwork repair is fixing scratches which can be done in the aircraft if they're not too deep/large. Otherwise we removed the pieces, polish in the shop, then reinstall... at more cost, obviously.

Sometimes a customer will request "light" woodwork be accomplished during a maintenance visit. If after evaluation (or after attempting to polish out a borderline blemish/scratch) we don't think light woodwork is going to get the result we suspect the customer wants we inform them. It's their choice to have us continue as originally requested, move to the more expensive option that gets the results they really want, or have us stop for now and wait until a time when they can have the more expensive service performed. Time spent evaluating or testing an area is credited to the later service if they have us do it.

A combination of everything posted previously is probably true. I would still go back to the shop with the issues. I think they should have noticed the issues you see and they could have given you a set of options to address them (or not). You're already paying to have correction and coating done so it stands to reason that you want relatively blemish free paint underneath. Plus they could have made more money and had a more satisfied customer.

 

[Olafthegolf]

Did you end up going back?

 

[ReadTheBook]

Did you end up going back?

I did. He took the car back in and corrected it again no questions asked.
It looks fairly good, at least the really bad water spotting is gone. Some of the smaller 2-3mm spots remain all over the finish.

I am not going to go into it too much more, but I won’t be going back because I am not completely satisfied and I did not feel that he and his staff were completely honest with me. Some of what he said he thought happened was completely illogical to me from timeline standpoint.

I‘ll be visiting another Ceramic Pro vendor for the yearly service.

 

[staying_tuned]

I did. He took the car back in and corrected it again no questions asked.
It looks fairly good, at least the really bad water spotting is gone. Some of the smaller 2-3mm spots remain all over the finish.

I am not going to go into it too much more, but I won’t be going back because I am not completely satisfied and I did not feel that he and his staff were completely honest with me. Some of what he said he thought happened was completely illogical to me from timeline standpoint.

I‘ll be visiting another Ceramic Pro vendor for the yearly service.

CarPro IronX & Renew is a solid annual refresher and can be done in less than an hour after a thorough wash. I hit our vehicle’s roof, trunk and hood twice per year with renew. Been using ceramic for nearly 5 years and have yet to need to apply additional ceramic layers, just decontaminate and renew via spray bottles.

 

[ReadTheBook]

CarPro IronX & Renew is a solid annual refresher and can be done in less than an hour after a thorough wash. I hit our vehicle’s roof, trunk and hood twice per year with renew. Been using ceramic for nearly 5 years and have yet to need to apply additional ceramic layers, just decontaminate and renew via spray bottles.

I hear you. I guess with ceramic pro in order to maintain warranty it goes to an installer once a year. That’s fine and I’ll be going elsewhere.

 

[bentin]

You know what they say, if you want it done right...