Had my car detailed and...

[supraking]

I went to a local guy who was highly recommended by some other BMW owners and who does a lot of detailing work here in Montreal.

My paint was in bad shape and had a ton of swirling/marring on it (I'll save the story behind that). He said it took him 7 hours to polish, about 2 hours longer than he originally estimated. On the bill was "intensive polish, micro polish, nano polish." Then he hand waxed with zymol concours.

I picked up the car at night in a garage so I only saw the car in the sun the next day. There were some light scratches and swirl marks... not even close to as many as there were before detailing, but I'm thinking they were either deeper than he wanted to remove or they appeared when he buffed the paint after waxing.

All you seasoned pros out there, I wanted to know if you ever have this kind of result after polishing and waxing a client's car. Is some minor swirling (sparse lines, nothing dense) to be expected in the end, or should the paint literally look the way some of those 50-50 shots look on the boards? Should I ask him to use a more intensive polish next time?

Will post pics when I can. Car has already been washed twice so I'm sure a few more marks have shown up since then.

[JohnL135I]

I'm not a pro detailer, But when I had my Jet Black BMW I managed to get that baby swirl free.

If you paid money for a detail, I would expect a swirl free finish from a good detailer, I would take the car back or request a refund.

[thez99]

Yea, um 7 hours, that shit should be perfect. I do a 45 min. once over hand polish with Klasse and it gets rid of half the swirls on the paint just with that. I only polish and wax by hand myself, but when I do it does a pretty damn good job, makes the paint perfectly smooth, gets rid of most of the swirls and imperfections. Sure theres some real in depth stuff that is really hard to see unless your lookin hard, but thats how it is until you do a real in depth power polish

How much did you pay for this shit job?

[BlackjackMulligan]

Do you have Jet Black? My Jet Black actually micromarrs even as I wipe the polish off after polishing out the swirl marks. A lot of guys over on Autopia.org actually use each polishing step to remove the residue from the previous step I believe, to avoid micro marring the surface..

[supraking]

My 1er is monaco blue, and to address some comments, you can only see the marks when looking for them (i.e. in direct sunlight). No holograms, and when I said there weren't a lot of swirls when I got it back, I mean very little. Don't get the idea that there was still swirling everywhere and he didn't even do anything.

Normal price was $320, got a nice introductory discount (almost half off). He has over 60 regular clients, including car nuts with garages full of vintage porsches and ferraris. So maybe he just didn't go as deep as he could have.

[thez99]

Geez, guy i have do some heavy detailing sometimes charges me $150 for a FULL job, wash, clay, machine polish, seal and wax. Good job too, uses softened/ionized water which helps, i just got into that.