There are plenty of barristers and doctors out there that dont make 600 in a week let alone 2 days work.
The end result should be perfect as should any service but 600 quid (actually i've heard of details costing three times that) is well over the odds for a job that needs no qualifications or training and can be finished in a day.
Sure there are some folks out there with money to burn who just dont care but for my money i can think for better ways of spending £600.
as for the suggestion of doing half half with a detailer and comparing.... thats missing the point a little since i really couldnt be ****d to put that much effort in.
i snow foam, i two bucket wash, i clay, i have a DA polisher and a whole pile of cleaners, polishes and expensive waxes. i love my car looking good but the absolute maximum time id put in getting it shipshape is about 3 hours. i simply couldnt spend more time on it yet I'm probably ten times more **** about my cars than average joe and wont let it anywhere near a car wash or a mechanics workshop but some of the stuff i see on DW is just so OTT that its bordering on insanity unless it is a show car or garage queen exotica.
Thats cool, you say you've got everything i.e polishes, DA polisher etc... but how much have you spent on all the equipment? Snow foam lance, pressure washer, two buckets, 'expensive' waxes and everything in between? Few hundred??
Most cars could get corrected in a long 12 hour+ day but it's hard on the body, as you should know if you've done it yourself. If YOU were a Detailer/Valeter, what would be happy charging for a hard days work??
Anything less than £150 and it would not be worth it surely considering product costs, tool costs yet alone time and health costs, VAT charges if you're in that band. You'd be charging to run a business, not to make someones car look pretty so everything would have to add up to make it viable.
You're saying its not skilled and anyone can do it. True. But anyone can do any job with a little self teaching or trial and error. Take plumbing for example. It is supposedly a skilled job and it can pay very well indeed but we had part of our plumbing spring a leak yet I, with NO plumbing experience what so ever got a new part, installed it and fixed the problem. You cannot single out Detailing from any another job and say it isn't skilled. Any job is about comman sense and having a little know how. The more you do the more you learn and the more skilled you become it is a fact.
Same goes for car mechanics, Charging from £45 - £120 per hour as you say mercedes charge. Now without offending Olly or anyone else, Mechanics is just about comman sense and undoing nuts and bolts, replacing a part and doing it back up. Anyone can do that. But it's where the experience comes into play that earns it's money. Without faffing around looking at other things a little experience can pin point a problem without the need for costly diagnostics etc... which means they can get more jobs though its doors because they've seen it all before and know what to do.
Sure qualifications mean something when you're applying for a job, but where do they come from? From learning and experiencing what ever it is you're learning otherwise you wouldn't know what to write in the exam correct? Detailing/valeting has to come from trial and error or one of the few detailing courses in the country, there is no official 'college' qualifications for it. But Autoglym and the like do their courses so you can 'learn' about how to use the products and what to do with them but you can do the same with almost any job. Everything is about learning, if you have an open mind you'll go far, if you don't then that is your problem.
You pay to have it done by someone else because it would cost about the same as buying all the gear yet they would know what they're doing and can do it in half the time or less.
It is all about money, time, and health costs.
Someone mentioned something about it is easy kid can do it. I'm only 23, yet I already suffer with back pains, maybe you could get an idea as to how much strain the body takes. Like I said before anyone can do almost any job, it just takes a bit of comman sense or a small helping hand in doing it properly. I say almost because work such as fine art, wood crafting, engraving etc... finds some people are naturally gifted and litterally 'born skilled'.
