Whilst I agree that it is unethical, your link doesn’t help with that. The line you quote is not on that page, and I tried to work out where any further T&Cs might be with no success.
Edit, actually it is, sorry: don’t know how I missed it so many times.
In that post I was speaking to @Jasmine’s assertion that such things are acceptable in general against any corporation.
It’s not a loophole, the T&C forbid doing what he’s doing.
If it’s OK to exploit a weakness, that means it’s OK to go inside and unlocked house or car and take whatever you want.
Well, as I understand it is they are likely washing drug profits as well as cars. (Everything I know I learned from TV!)
I think Telemark phrases this well. This is beyond maximizing his benefit through strategy. He’s stealing - he just has a rationalization such that he doesn’t think it a bad thing.
As someone observed, I think it especially dodgy, since he obviously COULD pay to have both cars washed. (And seriously - who washes their car every other day?)
This particular post jumps out at me. How, exactly, is it a criminal act?
Now, like buffets and such, let’s assume the car wash thinks not that everyone is going to gorge at the “all you can eat”. They estimate that some people will wash their car 3 times a week and some 5.
But Joe washes his car every day like he paid for. Even on days it’s raining he goes through. Just his own car, not his wifes. He paid for it, he’s taking it. Is he doing anything wrong “gorging” himself at the buffet, so to speak?
What if he only washed his car once per week and then his wifes car once per week? He used the pass only twice in a week when he could have used it 7 times.
He agreed to a contract that it would only be used on one car. End of story.
As others have suggested, have him ask the management if what he wants to do is ok with them. If they are good with it, I am good with it. Yes, they assumed that some people would use it three times and some five times, not that it would be six to ten times because some jackoff is using it for two cars. If enough people doubled up, they would have to raise the price or eliminate the promotion altogether which harms the honest people.
If the deal says “non-transferrable”, he is committing theft of services. Whether the offense is “criminal” or civil, he’s stealing. (Many non-lawyer/LEO types do not make that distinction between criminal and civil violations.) He (and apparently you) just want to argue that it isn’t that bad because of various factors.
We can set up all manner of other situations which may or may no the analogous. But from the facts you describe, he is stealing. Not a lot, but enough to establish that he is not a rigorously ethical actor.
Being Devils advocate her, but how is it theft?
Joe paid for one car wash a day and that’s all he’s getting.
What if he walked up and activated the wash without sending a car through? It would still be part of the one per day he paid for. He paid for one wash per day. Why does it matter what is in the bay while water and soap are spraying down?
If he activates the wash with no vehicle in the bay is it any more or less ethical than if his wifes car is in the bay?
I bought my current Jeep Wrangler new in 2016. I wash the undercarriage at a self serve car wash once or twice every spring to get the salt and crud off. The rain keeps the dirt off otherwise.
Joe amazes me.
In both cases he is being a dick. If I were the owner, I would ban him for life for doing either.
He paid for a service and agreed to a contract. Breaking the agreement/contract is unethical. It doesn’t go beyond that. If he didn’t think one car only was a bad deal for his particular use case of one wash per week or whatever, he shouldn’t have entered into the agreement. He doesn’t get to unilaterally change it.
Would you agree that if the car wash owner or manager doesn’t want you doing it, that doing it would be unethical?
Joe lives next door to the car wash. 
What if he never sent ANY car through the wash but every day just walked up and activated the wash on an empty bay. Having the daily wash he paid for spray down on nothing. But only once a day like he paid for.
Then he isn’t washing a car. Come on. Maybe the car wash would have to update the contract to make that not allowed anymore because it didn’t occur to them that someone would be such a shithead.
Why do you keep skipping the part about how he agreed to do a thing and has broken the agreement? You also haven’t answered the question about what if the management doesn’t want you to do that.
Joe did not pay for one car wash per day. He paid for one specific car being washed once per day. IANAL, but anything beyond that is violating the contract. Whether that’s theft of services or not I don’t know.
I suspect that at this point the OP is being intentionally obtuse.
How about this? Joe decides to offer his pass for sale on days he isn’t washing his car. At a couple of bucks a pop, he’s able to get his washes for free. Any problem there?
Joe is being a dick. Not a huge dick - just kind of a dick. There are countless other permutations in which we could debate whether the person/actions were more or less dickish.
Why would this be the case? No grocery store manager wants those coupon clipping jerkfaces who hold up the line and pay $5 for $200 worth of food, but it’s not unethical simply because the manager doesn’t like it.
This is unethical only because it violates the terms that Joe agreed to. Violating the terms of a contract is generally not a criminal offense.
I’ll be honest, Joe is there every single day, and nobody who works there noticed that he doesn’t have the sticker that everyone else has on their windshield? Seems to me, if management cared about these terms, they wouldn’t make it the responsibility of their customers to enforce the terms.
For example, you want a ‘no refills’ policy for soda, and you also want to to save money by handing cups to your customers so they can fill their own drinks, you have to accept that the occasional customer will go ahead and refill his own drink rather than call the police about the crime you’ve witnessed.
Any company is free to offer a “one carwash a day, bring any car you want” plan and presumably rake in more profits from that being a more appealing offer to people. If you believe you have a convincing case, you’re welcome to pitch that idea to them. Absent that, that they choose not to offer it is something they have independently decided and it’s really none of your business why.
In my experience, people who have a hard time respecting people’s decisions in one area of life often do it in other areas of their life too. It’s easy to go from “that carwash is saying this is their policy but they can’t really mean that, I’ll just decide for them what’s acceptable” to “this woman is saying this thing I want to do makes her feel uncomfortable but I can’t really see why she would feel so strongly so unless she can produce an argument that convinces me, I’ll just decide for her that doing it shouldn’t make her feel uncomfortable”.
Well sure. I wouldn’t call the police for soda theft or car wash theft. I would ban them from my store for life though.
So, we are dealing with a person that that made an extensive initial investment of time (modifying the sticker) as well as a daily continuing investment of time - driving a car to the car wash every single damn day……….for what?
Getting more than you’re entitled to from the car wash? Screwing the car wash owner out of, at most, the cost of a second pass?
Someone needs to get a life. I wouldn’t understand the fixation on pwning the car wash owner unless he was having an affair with the guy’s wife, or something.
I guess, broadly speaking, if the contract specifies one car, it would be unethical because you are knowingly breaching a contract, breaking a promise, going back on your word……although I don’t think this rises to the gravitas that I usually associate with ethical issues.
But the guy is probably a miserable human being regardless.
IF Joe had habitually washed his own car every single day for a few years, on the pass, but then switched to the current alternating (ie, my car, her car, my car, her car) model, then one could argue that his behavior didn’t actually cost the car wash any incremental money.
If. A pretty big ‘if.’
But it still strikes me as both unethical and wrong, since it appears to violate the T&C spelled out and generally standard in the industry. His actions (removing and laminating the adhesive pass) also imply consciousness of guilt to me.
As a business, I think it would be grounds for yanking the pass, but probably nothing more.
As to the general question of criminal vs. civil … if you don’t return your rental car when you’re contractually obligated to … a day or two later – particularly if you don’t take their calls – they’re far more likely to call the police than to file a civil lawsuit.
Despite the potential existence of an argument that it’s a contract dispute