End of lease car clean in Stevenage

What the inspector looks for

Three years of Stevenage, and what it leaves on a lease car

The inspection follows the industry's fair wear and tear guide, but the inspector is a person with a torch on a drive, and a dirty car gets a harder look than a clean one. The things three years in Stevenage leave behind are specific. The Norway maples drop honeydew on anything parked under them, and a car that has lived in a garage court in Chells or Pin Green has it baked into the roof and bonnet as faint rings that read as paint damage until the paint is decontaminated. The A1(M) leaves brake dust on the alloys as a brown shadow that a wash cannot shift and an inspector photographs first. Hertfordshire's winter salt leaves tide marks on the carpets, and the woods and Fairlands Valley leave the footwells and the boot in a state the shampoo add on exists for.

The order of work

If the paint feels rough or the wheels are brown, book the Exterior Detail for the week before: the iron remover and the clay take off what three years of the motorway have bonded on, and the End of Lease clean then finishes a car that already looks cared for. If the inside has had a dog, children or a winter of wet coats, book the Full Interior Detail for the same week. Then the End of Lease clean itself, three to five days before collection, so the shampooed carpets dry fully with the windows cracked and nobody has to use the car afterwards.

What the clean covers

Outside: a proper two bucket wash, the wheels and arches, tar spots off the sills, the tyres dressed, the glass finished and the plastics brought back. Inside: everything vacuumed, the plastics and leather cleaned, the inside glass, the boot cleared and cleaned, the door shuts and sills wiped, and the shampoo add on for anything that has soaked into the fabric. Every stage is photographed with the time and date and the photographs are yours to keep.

How to book it

Where the car is parked, three to five days before

Type your postcode into the booking page; if a Network washer covers it, the End of Lease clean appears with the price for your car's size. Someone unlocks the car at the start of the window, the washer brings water and power, and the photographs and the receipt arrive when it is done. A drive is easiest, but a court bay or a parking square works if every door can open, and the clocks went back on 25 October, so a morning window gives the carpets the afternoon to dry.

The clean happens at home, not at the dealer. The car is then driven to the hand back on a dry day, or collected from the drive with the photographs already taken. Nearly half of Stevenage's homes are terraced and many of the town's lease cars live in Radburn courts, which is fine; the only place the clean cannot happen is on a verge, which the borough fines in most New Town neighbourhoods.

The returns we see in Stevenage

• The Gunnels Wood company car: Exterior Detail a week before for the A1(M) iron and tar, End of Lease clean three days before.
• The Great Ashby family SUV at the end of a PCP: End of Lease clean with the shampoo add on, because of the children and the dog.
• The car that lived under a maple in a court: Exterior Detail for the honeydew rings, then the End of Lease clean.
• The station commuter's hatchback: End of Lease clean alone is usually enough, with the inside glass done.
• The car you are buying at the end: the Super Valet instead; it is yours now.

More on this: what a mobile valet includes and exterior detailing in Stevenage.