I don’t think those are close to the car wash scenario at all - I think they are close to a scenario where I pay a discounted rate in advance for 12 car washes and I get coupons for them and if I give one to my next-door neighbor , that’s one that I don’t get. There a total of 12 washes. If I give Clint the range card and ammo, I don’t get the range time and ammo.
I had a whole other scenario, but then I thought about the range a little more. Let’s say I buy an executive club membership. If I only have time to shoot one day a week , can I give it to friends to use the other six? What about if I buy the LE membership - can I share it with anyone who has a shield and ID?
Well, my local scrub-a-dub doesn’t even say you get one wash per day. It says the unlimited plan is unlimited, for one vehicle, commercial vehicles excluded from the offer. And it costs only slightly more than 2 washes.
(I didn’t bother looking up the terms for every nearby state.)
Yeah, a discount price, 12 for the cost of 8, isn’t comparable. I’d expect most customers to use all of the 12 coupons.
I think it is the same scenario. Joe can’t get more than one wash per day since it’s tracked by the car wash’s computer system and the RFID sticker. So in effect he paid a discounted rate in advance for 30 (ish) washes per month, and the RFID sticker is akin to a coupon book. When Joe uses the sticker for his wife’s car, that’s one day he can’t wash his car, same as if he loaned the sticker out to his neighbor for the day.
If in fact Joe would wash his car every day if the car wash enforced a one-car-only policy, his alternating cars every other day but maintaining the same number of washes per month is a pretty minor issue IMO. If he’d bought this subscription with the intention of washing his car every week (4-5 washes per month) but then also used the sticker for his wife’s car for a total of 8-10 washes per month, then that’s a bigger problem.
No, I think @doreen is spot on. I think it’s more reasonable to characterize what Joe bought as “the right to wash one vehicle as often as he wants (up to once per day)” rather than “30 washes per month.”
I think the problem with this is that’s it’s hard to believe that Joe would ever wash his car every day. Sure , he says he would, but I might say I would stay in McDonald’s for two extra hours getting soda refills if they stopped me from giving you my cup on the way out. Doesn’t mean it’s true, especially if I’m trying to present myself as someone who isn’t cheating. In fact, it’s hard to believe that Joe washes each car every other day, so about 15 times a month each. It’s far more likely to be the 4-5 washes for each car scenario.
Except I drive my car through my wash about 20 times per month, Because it is on my way to work. I don’t get ridiculous and do it on days it rains (or freezes) like Joe claims to do,
Comparing the car wash to soda/buffets isn’t equal as no matter what one can’t exceed 31 washes in a month where the amount of soda or chicken wings could be indefinite.
Our local car wash is advertised as “unlimited,” but clicking through to buy,it says “up to once daily” If you get the ultimate wash, it costs less than two single washes. The second tier, the pricing is the same as two singles, and the third tier, it’s about two and a half singles. My problem was I couldn’t even get to the car wash an average of once every two weeks. Ended up with several months (well, really more like a whole year) of just not using it at all. (It wasn’t really that near where I live.)
The Clint scenario would be like me buying the car wash subscription and giving the sticker to Clint. Clint uses it only on his car and I never use it.
You can come up with as many scenarios as you want. The only ethical thing is to do what you agreed to do when you entered into the contract. The exception is if the owner specifically gives you permission to do otherwise.
The ‘ish’ is important - they set their price on the assumption that the majority of folks won’t do a daily wash (best case for them is someone like @pulykamell below). And the sticker is IMO a fairly clear indication that the ‘coupon book’ is non-transferable. Obviously, that would be hard to enforce for a coupon, but you could a name on each coupon and have your cashier check id.
Yeah, the car wash was by my parents’ house, whom we would visit almost every Sunday, but then COVID hit and I had completely forgotten about the subscription until like a year later when checking over my CC statements during tax season.
At one time I had an all-you-can-eat subscription to an automated drive through car wash. It was located at a corner of the strip center with grocery store near the on/offramp to the highway nearest my house.
To pull off the boulevard, hit the wash, and re-enter the boulevard took 4 and a half minutes if no one was fumbling with paying ahead of me as I drove up to the card reader.
I did not wash my car every day, but I washed it nearly every day, especially in winter when it’d get nasty with salt & ice every day. Leave the house to get groc on the weekend? Hit the wash place. Leave the house for work? Hit the wash place. Going out to dinner & didn’t wash the car already today? Hit the wash place.
Once it’s in your habit and it’s quick enough and it’s cost-free at the margin, driving a car with wiper marks on the windshield or bird poop on the hood or a few dirty brown water spots on the fenders behind the wheels just feels low rent & dirty.
All that makes (admittedly privileged) sense for a comfy suburbanite w a nice car, soft hands, & clean shoes. A guy who lives out in the boonies driving a 25 yo pickup truck often on dirt roads with hay bales in the back? Not so much. Or for someone living in an area where water is scarce, rather than where flooding is the larger threat.
But that’s their problem. Assumption is the mother of all screw ups.
What they are actually doing is taking a calculated risk. They have calculated that the majority of people won’t do a daily wash and have included a risk that includes them perhaps making no profit or even taking a loss from those that do against those that don’t and the car wash still making a profit. As long as Joe is in the minority , even sharing the RFID tag, the business is coming out ahead overall.
Now imagine instead of Joe and his wife sharing the RFID tag every day, they both get one and use their individual tags every single day. Then instead of the business taking a loss on just one tag they are taking a loss on two. In other words, they were better off with Joe just sharing the one tag.
On the other side of this is Joes rationalization. Rationalization is one of the strongest of human drives. Joe is rationalizing that because he paid for everyday he has to get a wash every day no matter what, and the specific bucket of bolts going through the wash is immaterial. The business has his money and they owe him a daily wash. What difference does it make what is inside the bay? And he feels a sense of loss if he doesn’t use his car wash code, even though that loss is less than a buck. If Joe could come to terms with the fact that hat once he got a 4th car wash in a month he was ahead of what he would have paid piecemeal he may not have the psychological need to get a wash everyday.
But they didn’t assume. They wrote in the contract that it’s not transferable. If they interpreted it differently they would have written the contract differently. There’s really no way around this, Joe is cheating the car wash.
But they are assuming. They are assuming some will use the wash the maximum times and most won’t.
Speaking of cheating. When the car wash is down for maintenance for an entire day should they not automatically pro-rate Joes bill? He paid for a daily wash and on that day they failed to provide it.
Better yet, they should pro-rate Petes bill. Last February my car wash was down for 8 days. February is an important time for car washing. We’re knee deep in salt here.
You keep bringing up how certain scenarios within the plan are worse for the business that other ones that are voiding the contract. There is no dispute but it’s irrelevant to the ethics. Taking full advantage of the plan is ethical. Not following the plan that you agreed to follow is not.