Full Detailing for Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin

From our shop

About 25 minutes

Cars

$200

SUVs & trucks

$250

Common job

Lease return prep

An inspection is not a buyer

A private buyer looks at a car and forms an impression. A lease-return or fleet-return inspector works from a checklist with charge thresholds, and they are looking specifically for the things the checklist prices.

That changes the target. Wear-and-tear charges typically key on things like interior stains beyond a certain size, odors, upholstery damage, scuffed door sills, and paint defects that exceed a stated threshold. A vehicle can look perfectly presentable and still fail on four line items, each of which is billed.

So a return prep is not about making the car look nice. It is about taking specific line items off the inspection sheet, and knowing which ones are addressable is most of the value.

What is addressable and what is not

Odor is addressable and it is the highest-value item, because it is frequently billed as a flat charge regardless of cause. Stains on cloth and light leather are usually addressable if they are surface rather than dye transfer. Door sill scuffing and dash haze come up well. Wash marring on paint is addressable with light correction and it is worth doing on a return, since paint condition is frequently a charged item.

Deep scratches through the clear coat, torn upholstery, cracked dash plastics and curb-rashed wheels are not detailing problems and we will not pretend they are. We will tell you which items on your vehicle fall into each category before you spend anything, because on a return the honest number is the whole point.

The company-car version

Allowance and fleet vehicles come back on a similar checklist and with an additional wrinkle: the person handing it back is frequently not the person who drove it hardest.

A sales vehicle that has carried samples, food, and three years of highway miles arrives with concentrated driver's-side interior wear and paint that has never been decontaminated. The full detail addresses both halves in one day, and on a company vehicle it is usually the cheapest thing that can be done to it relative to what the return charges would be.

Book a few weeks ahead of the return date rather than the day before. If something needs a second pass, you want the time to do it.