Hacker News Reader

Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

1) Who is spending $20 a month on car washes?

2) If the problem is that subscription users aren’t paying local sales taxes, why not charge property taxes? (or, Land Value Tax!)

View on HN

$20 is 2 car washes. Around here moo moo car wash chain is all over and you cat get unlimited washes for like $30/month. Anywhere there is a moo-moo’s there is also a line of cars. Some people get obsessed with keeping their cars squeaky clean here.

$30/month to wait in a line. Fun times we live in.

Why assume there is a line? I spent like $1500 just for the tickets twice last year to take my family of 4 to Disneyland which is mostly standing in line.

Surely Disneyland is more fun than a car wash

If you take the kids to the car wash when they're small enough, you can tell them it's Disneyland.

>1) Who is spending $20 a month on car washes?

Not me because I don't care about my car enough, but that doesn't seem like a particularly outrageous number to me.

You end up spending that much if you live in a winter climate. Salt is really bad for cars, so you end up washing a time or two a month generally.

Sadly, I am. The air is dirty, the car gets filthy, and it's against the lease and mighty inconvenient to wash in an apartment complex.

I was when I lived in MN. I had a subscription for unlimited car washes (I did the "medium" level). When I commuted in winter I would wash my car at least once a week, sometimes twice. Summer, maybe once every other week. It just took two washes to break even, 3 was coming out ahead. There were times when it was really dirty that I would go through twice back to back.

There was hardly a time there wasn't a short line to go through and many had the subscriptions, you can tell because the attendant just guides you into the track and there was an RFID tag on your windshield and if the attendant didn't have to take payment you knew they had the subscription.

To answer question 1: older people, from my experience. They don't want to have to buy a new car so they take exceedingly good care of their current one. This includes car washes almost weekly.

I used to wash my car every few weeks, but with an unlimited model, I now wash it every few days. It literally takes 2 minutes to pull in and through the car wash.

this will ruin your paint over time

No doubt, and it seems the Kia EV6 has worse paint quality compared to prior cars I've owned. It's definitely in need of a paint correction. For now though, my water quality at home is terrible, so it's a lesser of two evils for me (due to health reasons, I really don't have the stamina to wash it the right way) The hard water not only makes it hard to wash without spots, but it's a double whammy when my sprinkler system hits my car and spots it up.

> 1) Who is spending $20 a month on car washes?

I've spent $200 - $350 on car detailing as a service several times now. They drive to your home and work on your car for several hours to get it looking brand new.

As someone who drives an SUV, has dogs in the car frequently, and gets my vehicle muddy on the inside, this is a fantastic service.

A bunch of my neighbors use the exact same service.

This a national company? I’d love to find someone around me that does this.

Search "mobile detailing" - it's a common form of franchise, as it's relatively cheap on the equipment.

Read reviews. Ask around at nearby dealerships if they use one.

In winter where I live there's a ton of salt on the roads and you don't want to leave that stuff caked on your car

me. i went into one of these car washes, got the hard sell from some poor person standing outside, didnt realize it was subscription - to cancel you have to call a phone number between 8 and 5, which of course i forget to do for several weeks ,

Car dealerships are a big source

Don't car dealers often have an automatic wash on site? Unless these are little used-car lots?

Some do, most do not. I used to make test equipment and so was at many of the dealers within 100 miles to test something so I saw a lot of dealers.

One car wash per dealer would be even more dense than the current number of car washes. Dealers seem to be everywhere.

Depends on the dealer. But definitely not all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com