Toyota 2017 Camry - Paint Scratches since new. Dealer buffed, many more scratches found - Refuses to do anything

It’s in the proper category. Many years ago I owned a GM dealership. One of the many reasons I’m glad I got out of that business after three years was customers like you! So you had a few scratches on your car. Did that change how the car ran, or the utility you got from it? No. It was my experience that I could never make a customer like you happy, and when I had a customer like that, I found that the best thing I could do was ban them from doing any further business with us. Sorry you’re having these “problems” (which I don’t think are serious at all). I concur that your only recourse is to retain a lawyer.

Toyota Will has not posted since FEB 2020 and sombody named Champ revived a 3 year old thread.

So? Why is that a problem>

No, I haven’t posted. Tired of being attacked by posters like you. There is no need for me to add to this, as a subsequent dealer scratched the paint with their garbage flapper auto car-wash, and they were willing to have the body shop of my choice (a high quality shop) do what was needed to buff and touch up the few deeper areas. So, I lucked out and the car looks great.

DON’T go through car washes with the flaps. Do it yourself at a self-service car wash, or you can use the touchless car washes which are expensive, and my body shop says they still are not maintained the multiple times daily they should, and he has seen cars run through them, and come out of the wash with scratches that need high-quality detailing to buff them out with very high wet-dry grit sandpaper that is kept in water, then buffed with two or three different buffers for a clean end result.

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Don’t take your hateful attitude towards customers and aim it at me. I didn’t have a “few scratches”. I had numerous scratches from the dealership’s negligence of not properly maintaining a flap auto car wash. If you knew your former profession, you should have had the simple and common knowledge that each car that goes through that wash has grit and dirt that the flaps ram onto the next car, and can severely scratch up a nice new paint job. You should know that to properly maintain these machines, which should be outlawed, is to have constant cleaning of the flaps and other mechanisms after every few cars to minimize damage.

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I always wondered seeing many cars with paint problems on the hood and roof were due to car wash places due to grime buildup on the brushes acting like sandpaper.

During the winter I’ll go through the touchless car washes. But I’ll never take a vehicle I like through a car wash that has brushes or flaps. From May through October I hand wash the vehicles in my driveway.

This needs to be repeated. In bright shiny letters, over and over again.

That grit the brushes scrubbed off the cars in front of you is now being scrubbed against your paint, and that’s even in well-maintained washes. It’s not like they’re coming out between every car and restoring the brushes.

I get mine detailed a couple times a year where it gets hand-washed, and use touch-free washes in between. Haven’t used a brush wash in probably 20 years. Besides, the touch free washes are much better theater anyway, with all the lasers and black lights making the soap glow. :wink:

We have a car wash near me which has excessive pressure IMO. Using that wand will wear you down quick and if your hand was to get in front of the water jet it will peel skin. Takes 2 hands to control it.

I see people with new and newer cars there all the time and doubt that they even think about what that pressure mixed with large amounts of soap is doing to the paint.

The only thing I use that place for is cleaning engine parts, motorcycle frames, and so on. The pressure is strong enough that if I am for instance blasting a transmission clean I lash the trans to the grate over the drain with a rope.
Otherwise, water pressure will keep rolling the trans over and over. Small stuff such as intakes and so on have to be tied down also or they will go skidding right out of the wash bay.

ok4450,

I’ve used self-service car washes for years, & never had any paint damage from them (unless a couple of times I briefly let the tip of the wand touch (hit) the car.

I admit the pressure is strong. You can’t your hand too close to it. I try to be about 4-6" away from the paint; any further & it doesn’t clean the car well.

What do you recommend? Certainly not going thru a flap type (common) auto wash. That is the most damaging of all.

I for one am not going to sign in to your survey . I have a feeling you will be flagged . And why did you not at least start your own thread in stead of tagging on to a completly unrelated subject .

Oh sorry about that! I’m not used to navigating around and just figured out how to create a new topic, so I’ll delete that now.

Most car washes (at least around here) the pressure is not strong enough to do any damage IMO.
The one I mentioned with the very high pressure is an anomaly.

Still, years of even lower pressure combined with soap can take a toll and no one knows what kind of chemicals the paint is exposed to on the roads much less acid rain.

Years ago with a buddy of mine in his 1 year old Mustang an oil field service truck passed us. A few seconds later the windshield and entire front of the car became covered in paraffin from crude oil. My buddy had to peer around the A pillar to see as the glass was whited out so he passed the guy and we beat him to the next town. While talking to the cops the truck went by. Cops stopped him and cited him for unsecured hazardous load as he had left a tank cap off.

Company admitted responsibility and paid a bunch to have the car cleaned. Friend signed off on it and all was well; for a while. A year or so later the paint on the front of the car was badly oxidized and believed to be so because of that paraffin. Release had been signed so the friend was left with paying for repainting the nose of the car.