Unreliable machines - a near accident - and awful customer service during a crisis...
Let me tell you exactly why not to visit this location. After today's experience, I will be canceling my membership of two years and never returning.
Today around 4:40 PM I drove through the car wash. About a third of the way through - with my car covered in soap and zero visibility - I felt a kind of shaking and rumbling below me and around me. Some of the machines seemed to slow down, but I was still rolling forward and then, all of a sudden: a dull thud as my SUV stops suddenly. The brushes are still whirring around me. After maybe 10 seconds everything finally shuts off. I still can't see so I hit my windshield wipers and see that I'm right up against the car in front of me!
I'm slightly panicked as the huge brushes are practically at my door and I don't know if I'm going to have to exit my vehicle.
A minute later I see two staff members approaching the full size pickup at the front of the line (pickup, black sedan, my SUV, in that order). They motion for the pickup to exit the car wash. The pickup driver had to gun it over the rollers to exit. Then, skipping the black sedan, I don't know the logic there, they come to me and ask me to reverse backward over the rollers (they were trying to create space between our two cars so that we could complete the remainder of the car wash). The staff member also assures me that I did not in fact, hit the vehicle in front of me, but the roller stopped me and there are mere inches between us. I'm thinking, well I sir, did not hit the vehicle because I was in neutral and just sitting here but - semantics. I told him I'd like to inspect my vehicle and he tells me they can also look at the cameras. (Trust issues I guess, CYA!) - oh and no apology as of yet, no asking if I'm okay, nada.
Anyway, I put my car in reverse and feel my tires hit the roller behind me, and I say I'm going to have to press the gas and they motion for me to do so. When I do, my tires squeal and skid against the roller. And let me tell you I am not about to damage my tire tread or rims so I look over at the staff member and say, "No. Nope. Not doing that." (at this point. I'm thinking I'm going to have to leave it in neutral and they're just going to have to manually push me over those rollers because - again - I am not damaging my vehicle for the sake of this.)
Then they go up to the person in the sedan in front of me and ask him to go forward instead. No explanation of how we ended up so close either! This guy goes ahead and does it - tires, squealing and screeching multiple times as he bounce-BOOM-bang-bounces forward over a set or two of rollers.
They then turn the car wash back on and we drive out. I pull around to the vacuum area - black sedan is nowhere to be seen because my immediate thought was going to be to ask him if he was also going to inspect his car and if he was OK. But low and behold, he had actually gone ahead and gone back through the car wash. The young man approached me and said that I could go ahead and go back through as well since it didn't work right the first time. I looked directly at him and said "No. Hell no. Never again."
I grabbed a towel to wipe the soap off my back window because mind you, even though the car wash came back on, as we rolled through the water didn't come on until the very end... And in the meantime, as I'm wiping my windows, nobody came up to me to explain what happened or apologize. Nothing to ask if I was OK, to look at my car with me, to ask if I wanted to see video ... literally no one spoke to me again.
I've been in customer service for a long time, and this was shocking. It's very rare that there is zero action taken by staff at any establishment to address a situation. Sure, they said we could drive through again. Oh how nice! I would certainly love to drive through your broken, unreliable machine again! Please spare me.
One thing to add - if you're at all confused as to why they have 2 stars on Yelp yet they hold a 4.7 on Google, I can give you insight into that as well. As previously stated, I have been a member for 2 years. Prior to that, I had visited a handful of times as it's very close to my house. One time when I visited, a staff member said that if I felt I could give them a five star review, there was some sort of discount on signing up for the membership. Businesses aren't allowed to do this, but they used the proper verbiage to get around it. Something like "If you can't leave us a five star review then let me know how I can improve our service today" or something like that. It's been two years so I honestly don't remember what the discount was but at the time I did feel confident in them and so I went ahead and left a five star Google review as requested. Then I signed up for the monthly membership.
I hope the details were helpful. I know this got lengthy! read more