Do you guys valet your car?

[RickFLM4]

Originally Posted by Darth One

in Coral Springs, but happened to be in Parkland last night. but it's all the same area anyway!

Yeah I drive through that rain on the Sawgrass yesterday. Not fun!

[S.Carter]

I worked valet for about a year at a high end hotel in downtown San Francisco. There was 2 people on a team of about 15 that knew how to drive stick, the rest just "cant find it grind it" or "I'll learn to drive stick whenever someone brings me one to park" NEVER fucking let valet park your car no matter how nice the hotel/restaurant is. The people parking are getting paid the same as McDonalds workers and the hiring people dont give a shit if you can drive a stick. Most just lied and said they could drive manual. People would drive up curbs to get more space on the ramp. Ugh so many horror stories. If you MUST valet take pictures before handing over the keys of EVERYTHING. That will at least give you evidence that there was no damage prior to giving it up. Every claim was fought by my manager as hard as they could because no claims = bigger bonus for them. DONT DO IT!!

[uniqueMR]

Nope. I rather park by myself

[NoMoreAudi]

Originally Posted by GaoKS

I did once in my DD Accord. I came back out to retrieve something before they took it away and the valet had about 6 sets of keys set on the hood trying to sort them out. It took everything in me not to come unglued. Needless to say, the M will never get valeted.

lmaoooo

[DWEI]

Sooo. I was a valet at a high end hotel for 6 years throughout highschool/college and let me tell you...don't lol

[nicknaz]

Originally Posted by Dwei727

Sooo. I was a valet at a high end hotel for 6 years throughout highschool/college and let me tell you...don't lol

+1

Captainaudio's situation of knowing the attendants and valets personally for a long time is a different situation and definitely not the norm

[iamvietness]

i pay the valet and park it myself

[SuckaGDog]

I did valet at my local BMW dealer from senior year of high school into my junior year of college. We got desperate because many of our applicants failed drug tests. So we pretty much got to the point of accepting anyone that could pass even if they couldn’t drive a manual. Grinding gears and stalling on the service drive was pretty frequent. Even sometimes in front of the vehicle owners lol.

I was one of the few vehicle enthusiasts that worked on the drive. I’ll admit I did check out some cars (rev, sped through some gears, etc), but nothing outright destructive on the vehicle. I still respected them and treated it as if it was my own car. My colleagues on the other hand though.. Let’s just say if valet is a must I’d pay and park myself, or go to a nearby self park lot.

[ByeFelicia]

Never have, never will.

[bmrwrld]

That is a big hell NO! I take the 330 instead if I have to park anywhere.

[Darth One]

Originally Posted by ByeFelicia

Never have, never will.

i tell a b****, you without me is like Harold Melvin without the Blue Notes!

[CJPatel]

I have no choice at my condo building. We have valet only. And they just got a new valet service, the new guys are so clueless its scary. I even have to let them valet my Lambo. There's probably 100+ $100k cars in my building so I'm not too worried, but def noticed some extra door dings lately. I've reported those, but have no choice really.

What really makes me cringe is these seats are super tight and anyone thats not 160 lbs like me will really stretch it out.

[Deteria]

I never valet my own car. If the establishment's policy is valet only, I either park it myself, or I'll go elsewhere. My loss is their loss.

[ImGoingPlaces]

Originally Posted by titan7

So true. While I don’t believe people try to mess something up on purpose remember that other people’s idea of acting carefully is abuse to me.

Sorry. Forgot about the bling on my belt that scratched your leather seat.

But I carefully placed the car keys on the roof and carefully slightly dragged the steel keys across the paint when I picked them up.

I carefully got into you car by grabbing the leather steering wheel, I forgot I don’t trim my long fingernails that scratched the hell out of the leather.

I can go on and on, but I get in and out of my cars and wash and detail them like I am performing open heart surgery, yeah, I know I can’t expect anyone else to act this way which is why I avoid it unless I can’t, I.e. service. However, I my SA for both BMW and Porsche know I am nuts but that’s still no guarantee.

god i love me some bling on my belt

[Cavpilot2k]

Originally Posted by pheerIx

I doubt any valet drivers even know how to drive manual anymore.

Last year I turned my 135 over to a valet. 10 minutes later I overhear them asking around the staff who knows how to drive a stick. I nearly died laughing.

If it is a person's job to drive cars, even if it is a summer college kid job, you damn well should know how to drive a manual.

But these days, it's good insurance against valets. 6MT FTW!

[NorCalAthlete]

Used to valet at a Ritz Carlton...while I generally would say "don't valet", there're some caveats.

- as someone else pointed out, we'd drive a lot of really nice and expensive cars, and a lot of really cheap cars. BMWs I liked driving because they had some of the best, smoothest manual transmissions, but I drove dozens per day so even an M4 wouldn't have been all that special - M3s were common and we had a small, tight garage so you couldn't really do much even if you wanted to.

- If you like indulging in chemical entertainment, home grown entertainment, etc (I'm talking drugs mmmmmk?) - don't get high before you valet, and don't have a car that screams "I deal drugs / take drugs / smoke weed / etc" be it from smell or anything else. Those ones were commonly raided by valets for cash, drugs, etc. Out of a team of maybe 20 it was only 3-4 who'd do it...but they'd do it constantly. The mentality was "what're they gonna tell the cops, your valets took my illegal drugs?"

- +1 to the "2 people on a team of 15 really knew how to drive a manual". Most couldn't, or could just barely do it well enough to creep out of the drive and into the garage.

- Pay close attention to your rear bumper. This isn't as much of an issue anymore with the ubiquitous nature of backup cams these days but back in '02 / '03 when I was a valet we didn't have those, and we had to back cars in everywhere as a matter of policy. Well, it gets hard to judge distances when you're going between 50 different kinds of cars so a lot of times valets would just creep backwards till they felt a bump, then pull a couple inches forward and park it. I tried not to do this as much as possible because I grew up as a "car guy" but it did happen by accident a few times. I always noted the damage if there was any small scratch or scrape but never got any complaints against me.

I could go on and on but yeah. Avoid if you can, but don't worry too much if you can't.

Also, if you're going to valet it, do it during the busiest rush times when the valets are all sprinting around from car to car. They won't have time to fuck around in your car.

[IM2C]

I don't even let my tint guy to pull it into his garage.

[IM2C]

I don't even let my tint guy to pull it into his garage. Valet? Not happening.

[///M4ster Yoda]

Originally Posted by CJPatel

I have no choice at my condo building. We have valet only. And they just got a new valet service, the new guys are so clueless its scary. I even have to let them valet my Lambo. There's probably 100+ $100k cars in my building so I'm not too worried, but def noticed some extra door dings lately. I've reported those, but have no choice really.

What really makes me cringe is these seats are super tight and anyone thats not 160 lbs like me will really stretch it out.

I would have bought a condo at a different building

[boss2k]

Originally Posted by CJPatel

I have no choice at my condo building. We have valet only. And they just got a new valet service, the new guys are so clueless its scary. I even have to let them valet my Lambo. There's probably 100+ $100k cars in my building so I'm not too worried, but def noticed some extra door dings lately. I've reported those, but have no choice really.

What really makes me cringe is these seats are super tight and anyone thats not 160 lbs like me will really stretch it out.

You have a lambo and u live in a condo where there's valet parking only , move out asap to a nice house

[NoMoreAudi]

Originally Posted by boss2k

You have a lambo and u live in a condo where there's valet parking only , move out asap to a nice house

There are condos/luxury apartments that rent out and appreciate better than houses do. HOA fees can be in the thousands of dollars per month for these places, where valet parking is required and you're not allowed to bring your own groceries up to your unit.

[boss2k]

Originally Posted by NoMoreAudi

There are condos/luxury apartments that rent out and appreciate better than houses do. HOA fees can be in the thousands of dollars per month for these places, where valet parking is required and you're not allowed to bring your own groceries up to your unit.

If I had that kind of money I will stay in a nice independent house and not a condo